THE JUICE IS ON THE LOOSE
FINALLY, CLEANSING MAKES ITS WAY TO THE MAINSTREAM—
HERE’S WHY YOU NEED TO GET IN ON THE SQUEEZE
With the fusion of East meets West and traditional and alternative informing the zeitgeist of a
postmodern America, centuries-old practices that were formerly reserved for eccentric celebrities
and fringe “health nuts” (think: your friend’s hippie parents or the ever-svelte and annoyingly
energized vegetarian who lived down the hall from you when you were 24) are now penetrating
the country’s popular consciousness. Major magazines, morning shows and checkout line chatter
have started to champion a retreat from eating as the cure du jour for everything from fatigue to
bad skin, depression and disease.
But is a juice cleanse right for you? And how the heck can a busy, workaday mom or dad function minus three square meals a day? Here, Erica Huss Jones and Zoë Sakoutis of the burgeoning Blueprint Cleanse talk buffalo wings, the importance of digestive health and why their foray into nationwide delivery is a real sign of the times.
THE FAMILY GROOVE: What exactly is cleansing?
ERICA HUSS JONES AND ZOË SAKOUTIS: Simply put, cleansing with juice is a way to allow your digestive system a much-needed chance to rest after all the abuse it puts up with on a regular basis when we eat things that we weren’t naturally designed to digest—i.e., processed/packaged/chemically engineered foods (yes, “low carb,” “low fat,” and even Splenda fall into that category), meat, dairy, alcohol and sugar. A juice cleanse nourishes the body on a cellular level with raw live ingredients that require no work to break down and absorb, so that the liver, colon and intestines have an opportunity to take a breather and clean house.
TFG: Why should you cleanse?
EHJ and ZS: The body is designed to rid itself of waste and impurities to a certain degree, but given what we put it through (when we can’t resist that last seven-layer bar or a handful of buffalo wings), those digestive organs could really use a helping hand.
TFG: Who should cleanse? Who shouldn’t?
EHJ and ZS: With the exception of people with specific digestive health complications, who should consult their doctor before embarking on any program, and nursing mothers, who require far more caloric intake than any juice cleanse can offer, everyone else should cleanse. And even those nursing mommies would benefit from having all that fresh juice in their systems, but they should treat it as a supplement rather than a replacement for solid food.
TFG: How often should you cleanse?
EHJ and ZS: There’s really no “should” about it. As often as possible is what we say! Your body will thank you for it. But we recognize that in the real world, it’s difficult to find all the time that you’d like to dedicate to something like this, which is why we offer flexibility with our program. Even if you can do three days once a month, it makes a world of difference to your body.
TFG: What can you expect from a cleanse physically, emotionally, mentally?
EHJ and ZS: You can expect increased levels of energy, better sleep, a general feeling of lightness, clearer skin, brighter eyes, a more focused sense of concentration, an increased awareness of what you put into your body, and hopefully an overall feeling of pride in doing something so good for yourself. And since we know you’re wondering, if you are carrying some excess weight around, you will see it start to melt away, even after just a few days of juicing.
TFG: Your cleanses are made with raw juiced fruits and vegetables. Raw food is a buzz term bandied about more and more nowadays. What is raw food?
EHJ and ZS: Raw food is just that—food that is consumed the way it arrived here, in its purest and most unadulterated form. Fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, sprouted grains, etc.—anything that has undergone minimal to no processes from earth to table. And if you want to get technical about it, anything that remains under 118 degrees throughout its lifetime before consumption.
TFG: Why are raw food ingredients so important?
EHJ and ZS: The magic word here is enzymes. When you eat foods that are still living, you are consuming tons of enzymes that aid in the digestive process so that your body is not left to do all the work by itself. Without those bad boys, the body grows tired and sluggish, depleting its own limited supply of enzymes and doing some heavy work to break down foods and push them through the body. But with a little help from live foods, digestion is a breeze and the body can refocus some of that energy on other things.
TFG: What other things?
EHJ and ZS: Live foods contain enzymes that aid in digestion. Cooked foods no longer contain enzymes, so your body has to call upon its own limited enzyme reserves. When you add live food, you add enzymes. So instead of depleting your body’s natural and limited supply of enzymes by always eating cooked food, simply add live food to your diet to aid in digestion. When the body doesn’t have to work so hard to digest, it can reroute that energy to start on the natural healing and cleaning process, as well as tapping into other systems—circulatory, respiratory, etc.
TFG: How do you prepare for a cleanse?
EHJ and ZS: Preparing for a cleanse requires little more than just cleaning up your act on a gradual basis. No cold turkeys here. Start a few days before your cleanse and cut out meat, dairy, sugar, dense carbs (oatmeal and whole grains included), and alcohol and coffee (yes, coffee), until you are eating almost entirely fresh and live foods that require minimal digestive effort, so the body is accustomed to minimal effort and has actually already begun the cleansing process. Drink plenty of water and herb or green teas, and starting a cleanse should feel no different.
TFG: How to do you transition out of a cleanse?
EHJ and ZS: Same as preparing, only in reverse. You should start with eating solids of the most cleansing sort—fresh raw fruit for a full day. Slowly add back veggies, then light grains, then all the other stuff (if you’re even still inclined toward it) over the following several days. All in, a three-day juice cleanse is actually at least a five-day experience of clean living.
TFG: Can you cleanse on your own via your own juice concoctions or should you use a service like Blueprint?
EHJ and ZS: You can certainly do a modified cleanse experience on your own even just by eating clean and raw, but if you’re going to do a proper juice cleanse, it’s really best to leave the dirty work to us. The amount of time, grocery money, energy and counter space required to try to re-create the juice we offer would astonish you. You are consuming about 15 pounds of produce per day from our six-juice daily regimen—good luck squeezing that yourself at home!
TFG: Why does Blueprint have three levels of cleanses?
EHJ and ZS: We offer three different levels because people come into a cleanse with different dietary habits. A vegetarian teetotaler is going to need way less transition than a steak-eating martini drinker, and we want to make sure there is something for everyone. The first level has the most fruit juice, and therefore is the “easiest” level to start with. As you progress in levels, you are replacing fruit juices with green juices, intensifying your cleansing process.
TFG: What kinds of fruits and vegetables do you use in your juices, and what are their benefits?
EHJ and ZS: Just some examples: cucumbers, which stimulate kidney functions and flush out debris; romaine, which lowers high blood pressure and breaks down cholesterol; beets, which are rich in antioxidants and iron; and pineapple, which is a natural digestive aid and anti-inflammatory agent.
TFG: What are the long-term health benefits to juice cleansing on a regular basis?
EHJ and ZS: Juice cleansing on a regular basis boosts the immune system, alleviates allergies, improves thyroid dysfunction, normalizes weight, normalizes blood pressure, reduces signs of aging, alleviates symptoms of PMS, promotes clear skin, increases energy, increases fertility, combats viruses, aids in fibromyalgia issues and more.
TFG: How often do you two cleanse?
EHJ and ZS: On average, each of us cleanses about twice a month, for three to five days, but even when we’re not doing a full-on cleanse, we both tend to drink fresh juice throughout the day.
TFG: You mention drinking fresh juice throughout the day when you’re not doing a full-on cleanse. What about the prepackaged, mass-produced meal-replacement juices we see on the shelves of every food mart from Whole Foods to 7-Eleven? Are these any good if you can’t do a program like yours?
EHJ and ZS: These are not so good in our book—they are packaged and therefore processed—nothing is fresh or live but rather chemically engineered and therefore more difficult to break down and absorb. If you can’t do a program like ours, we would advocate changing over to a diet of primarily raw fruits and vegetables, even if you just do that for the first two meals of the day and go back to a “normal” dinner.
TFG: Do you find that living a cleansing lifestyle has made you healthier in terms of cold-catching and/or other illnesses or conditions?
EHJ: In my own experience, in the two years I’ve been doing this, I’ve entirely eliminated the migraines I used to get on a monthly basis, and I’ve had a total of one cold, whereas I used to get a cold with the change of every season.
TFG: Your company is based in Manhattan and recently started shipping nationwide. In what ways have you seen the demand evolve since you started?
EHJ and ZS: Cleansing is certainly not a new method of getting healthy, but it’s one that is gaining momentum and receiving more attention now that we’re in a time of an emphasis on simplified living and back-to-basics thinking. People don’t want quick fixes and gimmicks when it comes to their health. They want something that they can incorporate into their lifestyles that will stay with them long term, and beyond that, they want something real. Our juices are made only from ingredients that have been around a long time—before scientists discovered how to create food.
TFG: What’s the most important thing to know about cleansing?
EHJ and ZS: So much of it is important—first off, everyone should take the opportunity to cleanse if possible, because no matter how well you eat, your body really does need a break. Also of critical importance is that cleansing should not be confused with fasting, as this is not a deprivation program: You are feeding your body and probably consuming more nutrients in one day of juice than you do in a regular week. Lastly, sometimes it’s difficult, we’re not going to lie. Not everyone breezes through Day 1 and feels transformed. But it’s important to stay focused on all the good you are doing your body and go into it with an open mind. Every day might be a different experience, but it’s all ultimately a huge favor you are doing yourself. So find a buddy if necessary, but quit making excuses and clean up your act!
JUICY COUTURE
Got designs on a cleanse? Go to www.blueprintcleanse.com.
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