Columbia Gorge Organic Drinks: A Challenger To Naked and Odwalla?

The time was, buying juice drinks from brands like Odwalla and Naked required a trip to the natural foods store. Now I can find Naked at pretty much every larger corner store, including the bodega across the street. Isn't this a good thing -- healthy drinks getting more mainstream? Or has the fact that Naked is now owned by PepsiCo and Odwalla owned by Coca-Cola a reason for concern?

This is not the blog to foster immediate panic and suspicion over the fact that a large company is distributing "health food." One should never assume anything when it comes to personal health and nutrition -- research and personal experience should be your guiding lights.

That said, there is nothing wrong with researching alternatives, either. In this post I'm going to talk about two drinks I've recently bought from a potential challenger to the Naked & Odwalla throne, Columbia Gorge.

Look, your big issue with buying any of these juice products on a regular basis is sugar content. Many years ago I had to go to a specialist with a pre-diabetic condition, and they said: watch it on the sugar from juices. This is a constant struggle for me in terms of finding healthy juice drinks ("smoothies"), and why I'm more likely to stick with something like kombucha.

Sugar content with a regular-sized bottle of Naked "Green Machine" (which I have purchased often), is 28 grams. Sugar content for Columbia Gorge's "Just Greens"? 1 gram. I bought "Green Machine" because I assumed it was a "green" veggie-based alternative to Naked's other products...but the sugar content was pretty much the same compared to their other drinks.

Of course, the difference is that "Green Machine" tastes like immediate sugary yummyness, and "Just Greens" tastes like a fresher version of V8. Point is: if you are drinking this stuff on a regular basis, you need to be imbibing more of the latter. You can't be over-doing it on the sugars, fruit-derived or no.

"Just Greens" contains the following: Celery, Cucumber, Spinach, Mustard Greens, Kale, Collard Greens and Parsley. As they say on the label, it's a "drinkable salad." If you don't have time to juice up your own "green smoothie," Columbia Gorge's brand is a great alternative -- and it's all organic. Organic, unlike Naked and Odwalla (except for their carrot brand).

If you're a regular Naked/Odwalla user, though, the austere quality of Columbia Gorge's "Just Greens" may come as a shock...so I suggest try the "Carrot Beet Celery" instead. This flavor has enough of a "kick" from the beets to satisfy your sweet tooth, and is quite tasty and satisfying. Your sugar content is going to bump up to 11 grams (and keep in mind each 8 fl. oz. bottle has a serving size of 2), but it is most likely to keep you on the brand.

Columbia Gorge also has an array of other flavors -- Mango Cogo, Raspberry Peach, Strawberry Banana, and more -- but because I'm trying to switch to more lower-sugar vegetable-based juices, I focused on "Just Greens" and " Carrot Beet Celery" for this review.

There's another important point to consider here: while I do not support immediate suspicion over corporate health food brands, I do support smaller businesses. Columbia Gorge is very much a family farm business:

"Unlike the big guys, we do everything ourselves: we squeeze, press, or puree our own fruits and veggies, compost greenwaste, and buy directly from small organic farms what we can’t grow on our land."

So, there's that to consider as well.