JUICES FROM THE JUNGLE

a.k.a. Sugar in Disguise

Several decades ago, anyone who didn't know me could have located my residence just by looking for the empty glass Tropicana® bottles on my porch.  Although glass has given way to plastic and Tropicana® now has competitors, I'm still a freak for juices in this millennium.  Ziggy, of course, is as fond of juices as I am.

Refrigerated juice/smoothie combinations are available from companies such as the Naked Juice Company®.  They're a little more exotic (and expensive) than mixtures like those from Dole® and Tropicana®.  You'd have to go outside the US to get a comparable selection of such ready to drink exotic juices (check out Dole's website at http://www.dole.com/.)

The ones that taste the best are the Naked Juice® products. Yes, I know, juices are just an excuse to get some sugar, but a cup of juice every day isn't going to make all your skin fall off or something like that. Manufacturers exploit the reputation of juices for being "healthy," but I don't mind: in the case of some exotic juices, you can't normally get the fruits fresh anyway. Naked Juice® was the target of a recent class action lawsuit claiming that it misrepresented the products by making health claims, but I never bought them because of any such claims: I wanted something exotic, something different, and something that tasted good--which their products did.  A competitor, Genesis Today™, does not tickle my palate. One of their products I would not let my birds taste it because it contained tea extract.  Another issue I have with the Genesis Today™ product is its confusing label and ingredient list which plays up the acai content but:

One serving is 240 ml, which is more than 240 gm.  However, the label says each serving has only 24 gm of acai berry in it, which is less than 10 percent, yet, the listing of ingredients, which by law must be by preponderance by weight, shows that the main ingredient is acai puree, which consists of juice, pulp and extract.  How can the #1 ingredient be slightly less than 10% of the actual weight?  Is it like 9.9% acai, and then 9.89% each of pear, apple, pineapple, grape, etc.?

The best-tasting Naked Juice blends were pomegranate/blueberry and rainforest/acai.  Ziggy would guzzle the rainforest/acai.  Naked Juice® does not recommend freezing their bottles, but my experience is that the quart bottles freeze nicely, although an occasional bottle will leak out the cap during freezing due to the individual bottle being slightly overfilled.  A cure for that is to open each bottle and pour out a few ounces for tasting before freezing (not an unpleasant chore!)  The Naked Juice® products are so delicious that they deserve their own deep freeze. Just a few months ago, Ziggy, Buddy and I drank the last of the Rainforest Acai I'd kept in the deepfreeze since 2007.

I am trying to put as much pomegranate into our diets as possible because of its potential cardiovascular benefits.  Biochemical evidence is mounting that my own craving for dark colored berries is a very smart craving indeed.  Current research (not just the "eat your fruits and veggies" you heard when you were growing up) is finding astonishing health benefits from these berries. And, regardless of the sugar, there is one study that gave me all the excuse I needed to drink a glass of pomegranate juice every day. The study appeared in 2004, and was entitled, Pomegranate juice consumption for 3 years by patients with carotid artery stenosis reduces common carotid intima-media thickness, blood pressure and LDL oxidation."

Import stores sometimes have bottles of pomegranate "molasses"--cooked down pomegranate juice.  The price is dramatically lower than what "health" food stores charge.  It's not as good as fresh or refrigerated juices, and the heat processing undoubtedly reduces the nutrient content some, but it's still a healthy addition for sauces and casseroles, and is a necessity for certain middle eastern dishes.

Bolthouse Farms® (click here to visit Bolthouse Farms) also makes good refrigerated smoothies.  Make sure to get the liter size instead of the individual size (sometimes available at Wal-Mart, or, in two-packs, at Sam's Club and Costco.)  Their Blue Goodness™ is more than worthy of its name.  Bolthouse Farms® also markets products under the Earthbound Farm® label, which is well known for its organic carrots and bottled carrot juice. Costco carries a three-pack of organic carrot juice from Bolthouse Farms® that can't be beat.

A DAY IN THE LIFE...

Ziggy sleeps on his portable perch in my bedroom. We get up slowly so he can greet the day in true parrot fashion, with a few crows of triumph, etc. After a few bites of a Lara Bar® to begin the day's feast, he will partake of some celery.  He has to have celery 7 days a week, or so he thinks. Since he only rarely drinks water, a substantial portion of his fluid intake is from celery and other produce, so I do keep him supplied.  Celery is not all the same to him:

I could live my life without celery, so I never paid much attention to it.  The fact that Ziggy didn't have the same gusto for celery all the time did not strike me as unusual until I finally noticed that, when he only nibbled a little, the celery would be light green with large stalks, but whenever the celery was dark green with small stalks, he would go crazy for it.  So now I have to be particular about celery! It also seems that he prefers conventional celery to organic celery, which disturbs me since conventional celery is among the foods highest in pesticide residues, study after study.

He will usually demand apple, which on rare occasion means apple.  A long time ago, he morphed the word "apple" into "anything good," so there's less than a 10% chance that he means an actual apple when he says "apple."   ("Apple" before bedtime used to mean almond or pecan, now it can even mean honey.)  We'll have some of a couple of different fruits, whatever is seasonal.  As I am writing this, for the last couple of weeks, we have been having a lychee or two, each bird getting a couple of bites, and a red prickly pear fruit, both birds feasting, and maybe some banana or some kiwi.  I offer them powdered foods in between the fruit items, so that they can use the fruit to clean their beaks.  Ziggy grabs a huge beakful of powdered greens, while Buddy, being dainty, takes several small bites.  They may get a bite of maca powder or some other nutritious substance I keep on hand, like ground flax or rice bran.  

These days, Ziggy has to have his liver medicine, lactulose and milk thistle extract. To make sure he eats it, I mix it into something he's not supposed to have, i.e., my healthy human food. He gets Siliphos® since it is more bioavailable and mixes better in food, although there are small amounts of other milk thistle extract in the food from my cooking. When I only had one bird, I would puncture a gelcap of fish oil and squirt the contents into my mouth, then let Ziggy have fun chewing up the empty cap. I figure that he would get a milligram or two of fish oil, every other day or so, which isn't going to hurt. With two birds and only one capsule, I have to let each of them have one lick off of the paring knife instead of creating a jealousy conflict from letting only one have the "goodie" to play with. (Note: you don't want a lot of oil, or fish oil, in bird diets. Fish oil prolongs bleeding time; I had to stop taking it during my cancer treatment for that reason. And although small amounts of omega threes given to birds are beneficial, there are some concerns about larger amounts being deleterious.)

I'll have a tablespoon or two of lecithin granules with breakfast, and sometimes Ziggy will grab a beakful.  Buddy cannot resist lecithin. We'll also have some bee pollen.  Pollen is a perfect snack--it is extremely nutritious and it's sweet; Ziggy loves it. I eat so much that I have to buy it several pounds at a time. One caveat regarding pollen: although the percentage varies with species of plant from which it is derived, pollen IS a sweet, a sugar. It's in the neighborhood of 40% sugars, so, regardless of how "healthy" the rest of it is, keep that in mind.

Ignore all the wacko nonsense you may have heard about bee pollen; all kinds of claims get made for it, especially among "health" food fanatics.  Usually these claims tout the supposed nutritional composition of "bee pollen" as if it were a single substance. The fact is that every single kind of pollen is different because the plants the pollens come from are different; the amino acid and other component profiles vary wildly.

I mentioned fruit.  We are always going to be snacking on fruit throughout the day. Because Houston is such a large port city and is so ethnically diverse, the variety of available uncommon foods is stunning.  Sure, we eat bananas, but I prefer colored fruits, for variety's sake and for antioxidant content.