My First "Raw" Food Experience: BluePrint Juice

I'll admit that I didn't even realize that BluePrint Juice's "Red" was even a raw, unpasteurized food product until I was 1/3 in the middle of drinking it (probably not the smartest way to go about things, actually). My husband had purchased it at a health food store and I grabbed it from the fridge. Drinking it at work, I noted the "100% Raw" imprint on the minimalist packaging and decided to look into it further.

First, about Red: it's a rather hearty blend of apples, carrots, beets, lemon, and ginger. I'm looking for juice drinks that are more veggie than fruit, and this fit the bill nicely. Beets are a great way to get the taste of sweetness in your veggie drink (I recently reviewed the excellent Columbia Gorge's "Carrot Beet Celery"), and the root has tons of antioxidants that fight stuff like cancer and heart disease.

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.