Gcscoci Tastes
Driven To Extractionby.s.
Gabbay
Those fast-selling juicers offer
potent liquid nutrition and an
adventure in flavor.
I
t mashes, pulverizes, and extracts, and it
has captured the vitamin-starved hearts
of the American people. Its the juicer, of
course. Health-conscious Americans have
already snapped up between three and
five million of the devices this year— near-
ly ten times as many as three years ago. The
appliances, which extract essential liquids
from vegetables and fruits, are hot enough to
warrant a week's worth of attention in the pop-
ular comic strip "Sally Forth" (Ted tries to
convince Sally to purchase a juicer) and to
fly off the shelves in local stores.
Juicers and books about juicers have been
"flying off the shelves," says Toula Patsalis,
owner of Kitchen Glamor stores in Novi, Red-
ford Township, Rochester and West Bloom-
field. "In the summer, we couldn't keep them
in stock," she adds.
Why juice? First and foremost, it's nutri-
tious. Unlike cooked or processed vegetables,
juiced vegetables contain nearly all of the
vitamins and minerals of the original food.
Moreover, if you drink juice made from veg-
etables and fruits that you normally might
avoid, such as carrots or cabbage, you're in-
gesting nutrients such as beta carotene that
might otherwise escape you. (Found in car-
rots and other yellow and orange vegetables,
beta carotene is believed to counteract car-
cinogenic activities in the body.)
Juicing also allows you to ingest the nutri-
ents of more vegetables than are normally eat-
en in a day. Some even claim that juicing can
cure specific medical conditions. Users of the
Omega Juicer, made by Harrisburg, Pa. based
Omega Products, have credited cucumber
juice with relieving allergies, and broccoli juice
Free-lancer Alyssa Gabbay is a frequent contributor to STYLE.
with easing digestive problems. And in The
Juiceman's Power ofJuicing, author Jay Ko-
rdich (also known as "The juiceman" of tele-
vision info-mercials fame) prescribes juices
for conditions ranging from acne (the "Blem-
ish Blaster''— a mixture of car ts and green
peppers) to urinary tract infections ("Eve's
Promise"— apples combined with pome-
granates.) There's even a Hair Growth and
Hair-Loss Prevention Tonic made from car-
rots, alfalfa sprouts, and lettuce.
But don't take those claims too much to
heart, say nutritionists. Although some of the
benefits may be based in fact— for example,
greens are calcium rich, and calcium is good
for the teeth, so drinking parsley or kale juice
could, theoretically, ward off tooth decay
they are not proven. In other words, don't ex-
pect juicing to cure your yeast infection or
stop your hair from falling out
"Juices are a great way for people to have
a balanced diet who do not eat enough fruits
and vegetables," says Gail Posner, a nutri-
tionist with Fambrook Medical Two in South-
field. She explains that one cup of juice is equal
to two servings of a fruit or vegetable.
But juice is far from a complete diet Drink-
ing only the juice of vegetables fails to provide
you with the fiber that's a necessary part of
a healthy diet— so you must supplement it
elsewhere. Most nutritionists disapprove of
juice fasts that some use to "cleanse" their
STYLE • FALL 1992
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