Jamie Jensen, the founder of Living Juice, stood next to her table at the Laguna Beach farmers market Saturday. The midmorning sun blazed, and she served up tiny paper cups of her cold-pressed juice to people who stopped by.
Gone are the days when drinking your vegetables meant a can of sodium-laced V8 or choking down a mouthful of wheatgrass that tasted like it came from the lawn mower bag. "You don't have to do this," Jensen says, holding her nose.
Worker Devin Sherritt mixes an order at Nekter Juice Bar in Laguna Niguel. The store offers fresh-made and bottled healthy juices.
EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
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One of her best bottled concoctions is called the Shine On. It's infused with pear juice to liven up the celery, kale, chard, cucumber and romaine. It's not only healthy, it's sweet and refreshing.
It's also $8.50 for a 17-ounce bottle.
Businesses that produce and sell their own raw fruit and vegetable juices are ramping up to meet the growing demand. Jensen started Living Juice in January, and she's opening a store on Forest Avenue in Laguna Beach next month. Irvine-based Ritual Wellness just opened a storefront, Ritual JuiceBox, at the Camp in Costa Mesa. Nekter Juice Bar, a Santa Ana-based chain, has grown from one store to eight in two years, and plans to open 15 more in 2013, including one in Laguna Beach.
Organic or traditional?
Living Juice and Ritual use organic produce, which inflates the cost. Ritual's menu has a variety of juices, including the Red Energy (beet, carrot, celery, pear, red apple) and the Sweet Greens (spinach, romaine, kale, celery, cucumber, green apple). They cost $9 for 16 ounces.
Others don't go the organic route, which keeps prices comparatively low. Irvine-based Juice It Up! charges $5.25, $6.25 and $8.25 for its new line of raw juices, which aren't organic. Nekter generally charges $4.75 for its 16-ounce beverages, made in-store, and $5-$6.50 for its 16.9-ounce "grab and go" bottles. Nekter President and CEO Steve Schulze says his stores use high-quality produce, which is cleaned with a nontoxic veggie wash.
"It's basically from the earth to the glass, and benefits we are able to bring to the masses, we feel, outweigh the benefits from using an all-organic product."
Lisa Gibson, a registered dietitian from Irvine, says even at the lower prices, these juices are exorbitantly expensive, and you shouldn't have to be rich to eat well. Though Schulze and the people at Ritual say their products can serve as meal replacements, Gibson says there aren't enough calories or protein in them to sustain the body. The problem can be more acute with the multiday cleanses, in which customers are encouraged to drink only juice. A person can burn 1,200 calories a day just sitting in bed, "so if you're taking in 400-500 calories a day, you're at a calorie deficit," Gibson said.
A juice bonanza
At the Ritual JuiceBox stand in Costa Mesa on Monday, Marc and Nancy Penso listen to the pitch about cleanses, how they can help the body "reset." Marc Penso, an attorney in Irvine, was skeptical. "I'm a cheeseburger-and-fries guy," he told the clerk. "This is completely foreign to me."
They ended up buying 28 bottles of juice, bundled into big shopping bags. Fourteen more were to be delivered to their home Wednesday. Marc was to drink eight bottles a day, Nancy six ? one about every two hours.
Marc said they're doing the cleanse as a "prelude to the holidays."
"And getting into our ski pants," Nancy added.
By Tuesday morning, however, Nancy was rethinking whether they needed that Wednesday delivery.
"We couldn't begin to drink all that juice yesterday," she said. "We were pathetic."
Contact the writer: lhall@ocregister.com or 714-796-2221
Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/juice-380520-organic-juices.html
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