Tag: Health

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Let’s Talk About Fasting

It always surprises people to learn that when a new customer comes into Journey Juice and tells Amy she wants to do a Juice Fast or Cleanse, Amy does her best to talk them out of it. People say,

“But doesn’t a juice cleanse cost $200? Why would she talk them out of it?”

Yes, the Journey Juice cleanses are $200-$300, depending on how many days you choose. But most of the time a new customer just wants to lose some weight really fast and probably has never drunk cold-pressed juice. The last thing Amy wants is for their first experience drinking Journey Juice to be painful or awful. Yes, if you do not eat any solid food for five days and just drink Journey Juice, most people will lose some weight. But without changing their daily food habits after the cleanse, they just gain it back. So Amy encourages her new customers to start by introducing one cold-pressed juice per day into their diet. If they eat three meals per day plus snacks in between, she encourages them to substitute that one juice for one of those meals, or at least one of those snacks. When Amy’s customers substitute a Journey Juice for a high carb or fast food lunch for five days, they are amazed at the results. One of the little discussed details in the juice cleansing business is that oftentimes the good results are more about the bad foods that were given up, than the wonders of cold-pressed juice. Giving up bad foods and drinking Journey Juice are both very good for you.

Fasting is often vilified in the popular press because it is hated by Big Food, Big Pharma, and even most nutritionists. That’s because there is no money in it. Literally, fasting means not eating. Not buying their products. And another word for fasting is detoxing. And detoxing means stopping the pharmaceuticals. And the results of not eating for two or three days usually are very positive.

People have been fasting since Hippocrates suggested it was beneficial in the 4th century BCE. His most famous quote is, “First, do no harm.” That’s the Hippocratic Oath, but doctors don’t actually ‘take the oath’ anymore. Our favorite Hippocrates quote is

“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.”

We also like the more popular, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

There are four different types of fasts:

  1. Juice Cleanse or Juice Fast. Three to five to seven day cleanse (fast) during which you are supposed to not eat anything solid, and only drink cold-pressed juices. This means you are giving your digestive system a break but still ingesting some carbs and calories (and sugar).
  2. Water Fast. Nothing but water for the duration of the fast. Pro Tip: Maybe put some salt in that water! This fast means you are consuming no calories, no carbs, and no sugar.
  3. Dry Fast. Very controversial. Fasting (NOT EATING) without even drinking water? This type of fast will drop the pounds faster than you can say, “Richard Simmons.” But many ‘experts’ warn against this type of fast as dangerous. But it’s actually very effective if you are overweight and want to lose a lot of weight quickly. This is the deal. If you stop eating for two or three or four days, you will lose a substantial amount of weight. Not eating means your body will live off of your stored fat during the fast. So as long as you’ve got some stored fat to live off of, you should be okay. But if you are pregnant or an athlete or someone with 15% body fat or less, you should probably not do a dry fast. But most people who want to lose weight, have 20 pounds or more of fat to lose. The best advice we can give you is to eat really clean for a couple of weeks before fasting. What we mean by that is don’t eat any carbs or fast food or processed foods or fried foods before you fast.
  4. Intermittent Fasting. This is the most popular style of fasting, because it is easier than the others, but it still gets good results. Most experts say to limit eating and drinking to four to eight hours per day, so you will have 16 to 20 hours of fasting per day. The idea of intermittent fasting is to mimic fasting of two to three days, but only really fast for ~16 hours or so. It is important to eat very clean when intermittent fasting. You should drink one or two Journey Juices or more, and avoid fried foods and processed foods (bread, crackers, chips – all of the non-veggie carbs). Eat some high quality protein like Georgia shrimp or Alaskan wild-caught salmon. Grass-fed and finished beef or pork is also very good for you. Check out Journey Juice’s “Juice Until Dinner” for an easy intermittent fasting option.

That’s it, folks! Fast Away! Please email, text or call us with questions. Cheers!

As always, this article is based on our personal beliefs and not intended to treat or diagnose any disease, condition, or illness.

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American Made Food Ingredients Vs European Food Ingredients

Take a quick look at the ingredients in Heinz Ketchup made for American consumption. Then take a look at the ingredients for the ketchup Heinz makes for European consumption. Why are they different? It turns out that many major American food manufacturers – Big Food – make a totally different product for European consumers than their American customers. Why? Because they can. It’s much cheaper and way more profitable to sell Americans highly processed food with many artificial ingredients that are illegal to sell in Europe. Ketchup is the first example because it’s so simple. It’s tomatoes, sugar, salt & pepper and maybe some basil and oregano. That’s it.

Heinz adds high fructose corn syrup, then another version of corn syrup, then ‘natural flavors.’ Pro Tip: Anytime you see ‘natural flavors’ on an American-made food ingredient list— Mangiatore Attento!! (Eater Beware!) The USDA does not regulate that phrase so ‘Natural Flavors’ can be anything. Raspberry flavoring, anyone?

It turns out that the USDA allows a whole host of artificial ingredients that are outlawed in Europe. So Big Food, like Kelloggs, Post and McDonald’s, fill their highly processed products with artificial ingredients that lower their costs and (maybe) lower your life expectancy. The Europeans do not allow those companies to add artificial ingredients; therefore, they don’t put all that poison in the products they sell in Europe. Those companies, also, do not make as much money in Europe as they do here in the United States.

Have you ever had a Coke from Mexico? It tastes more like the Coke we drank in our childhood than the Coke made in the US today. Why? Because the Mexican Coke is sweetened with real sugar, and the American Coke is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup which is cheaper to make.

Here’s a fun Third Grade Science Class experiment you can do at home: Put one sugar cube in a tub of margarine (vegetable oil) and one sugar cube in a stick of real butter. Then sprinkle a little sugar on the outside of both the margarine and the real butter. Then put both close to an ant hill on the playground. Ants love sugar, and they will spend hours fighting through all sorts of substances and barriers to get to a sugar cube. They will eat through the stick of butter to get to the sugar cube, but they WILL NOT eat through the margarine. Why not? Instinctively, they know the vegetable oil will kill them.

Unfortunately the American government – USDA (agriculture), FDA (food & drugs) – approaches its citizens’ health and safety with a ‘wait and see’ attitude. Whereas, the European governments exercise the ‘Precautionary Principle’ (Basic Definition: Don’t feed your people suspected poison just because you don’t have scientific proof it is bad for their health). When it comes to health and safety regulations for American-made food, we are all just a bunch of lab rats. If something makes enough of us sick, they will outlaw it. But it takes decades for this grand experiment to reveal definitive results so the collateral damage is long since done. (e.g., US average life expectancy vs European: Men 75 vs 80; Women 80 vs 84. CDC 2022)

Consumer advocate and food safety expert Vani Hari (AKA The Food Babe, www.foodbabe.com) has been researching American made food ingredients for more than a decade. She has successfully led several lobbying campaigns to force many Big Food companies to stop using dangerous chemicals and artificial ingredients in their products. Her Food Babe Army collected more than 380,000 signatures on a petition presented to Kraft Foods demanding they remove harmful petroleum-based yellow dyes from their very popular Mac & Cheese. Fortunately for Americans, there is a wealth of information out there about healthy food as well as many consumer advocates like Vani who are doing the hard work of exposing the unhealthy food. We have to be our own advocates and educate ourselves about what is healthy and what is
not. Remember what Amy always says: “If you cannot pronounce an ingredient, it’s probably not good for you.”

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Ten Common Health Misperceptions

In his popular 2009 book, “The Primal Blueprint,” Mark Sisson wrote about common misconceptions, or what he called, ‘Conventional Wisdom.’ There are literally hundreds of common health misconceptions of various levels of ignorance. Many of them have been repeated and published over the years by people who make money off of these claims (e.g., Big Pharma; Big Food). Here is our list contradicting the ten most important common health misconceptions. As always, the following list and explanation is based on our personal beliefs and not intended to treat, diagnose, or prescribe any disease, condition, or illness.

  1. Too much sun is better than not enough sun.
  2. Too much cholesterol is better than not enough cholesterol.
  3. Too much vitamin D is better than not enough vitamin D.
  4. Too much fat is better than not enough fat.
  5. Too much protein is better than not enough protein.
  6. Too many eggs is better than not enough eggs.
  7. Too much red meat is better than not enough red meat.
  8. Too much salt is better than not enough salt.
  9. Too much CO2 is better than not enough CO2.
  10. Too much Journey Juice is far better than not enough Journey Juice!

Did you know that construction workers in the U.S. have a lower incidence of cancer than the general population? It is thought the reason may be their higher levels of vitamin D, because they spend more time outside than the general population. The first three common misconception are related. We’ve all been warned about ‘too much sun’ and ‘too much cholesterol,’ so that more than 42 percent of adults, and more than 50 percent of children are vitamin D deficient. (NIH 2015) When mothers slather SPF 80 sunscreen on their children at the beach in the summer, they do not realize they are making them vitamin D deficient. And no, that sugar-filled cereal and skim milk are not giving the kids vitamin D.

Do you know how vitamin D is manufactured? Your body uses the sun’s ultraviolet (UVB) rays to react with the cholesterol in your skin to activate the production of vitamin D, which is a precursor hormone that plays a vital role in hundreds of bodily functions including immune, cardiovascular, endocrine and metabolic. (NIH 2021) Of course, taking statins lowers total cholesterol, which is a vital compound found in every cell in the body. People with the lowest cholesterol have higher all-cause mortality rates than people with the highest cholesterol. (Journal of Clin. Med. 10-1-19)

The next four items on the list are also connected. Eating healthy fat and protein from grass-fed, properly raised animals – especially eggs and red meat – is the healthiest diet known to man. Eating good fats will not make you fat! (‘Eat Fat Lose Fat,’ 2004)

Salt. The word salary comes from the Latin word for salt, sal. In ancient Rome, soldiers were sometimes paid in salt, because it was highly valued for its health benefits and its ability to preserve meat and fish. It was called salarium. (NPR, 11-8-14) Avoiding too much salt is one of the oldest health misconceptions around. Remember, salt makes up about .4% of our body’s weight, about the same as the ocean – from whence we came. (BBC Jan. 2024) Too little salt is definitely more dangerous than too much.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is not a poisonous gas. Without it we would not have plants. No plants equals no animals; No animals equals no meat; No plants & animals equals no humans. Fun fact: Navy submariners spend months at sea breathing air that is 3000 parts per million (PPM) of CO2. Earth’s atmosphere is 400-500 PPM. (NIH 6-1-2018)

It is very hard to consume eight servings of raw fruits and vegetables each day. But it’s very easy to drink them. Just drink one 16 oz bottle of Journey Juice daily. As Amy always says, ‘It will make your cells dance!’