Wellness Juice

You walk to the drink area at the restaurant/ cafeteria/ mall with your empty cup in hand. You pause for about a quarter-second to think about choosing a healthful drink selection--so that you don't feel bad later--and then beeline to the Coca-Cola button on the drink machine. Or, perhaps you gravitate to the (sweetened) iced tea, add some more sugar, and then mix it with some lemonade for an Arnold Palmer. This is a common scenario,  showing how we all try to be balanced when we eat and drink, trying to find that guilt-free, enjoyable combination of yummy and healthy.
 So I have good news for you! It is ridiculously easy (and by ridiculously I mean much easier than you think) to find ways to have flavorful, good-for-you, not-ridiculously-sweetened drinks during lunch or snack-time. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the answer to beating our unhealthy beverage selection is monumental and will radically alter your lifestyle forever (do you doubt it?). The answer is...
...
...
JUICE!
There, I said it. Juice. The yummy stuff that we drank as kids in little boxes with bendy straws; the grape juice we'd sometimes drink with our friends and pretend was wine on family holidays; the real version of the stuff that comes out of the Sunny-D bottle.... I'm offering these little vignettes about juice because I assume that for most of you, it's been a while since you've had a glass (or box!) of juice. Juice is the health super-hero of the year because it's naturally tasty, naturally (somewhat) sweet, (usually) naturally made, and full of vitamins. Plus, while we all love the breakfast time OJ, there are other kinds of juices with various health benefits just sitting out there waiting for us to discover them. And while you've probably read a little blurb or two on Yahoo! or perhaps Self magazine, I personally can attest to the fact that the stuff I read on Yahoo! doesn't really stay with me very long (except for the terrible picture of a Grandmother who'd been sprayed with pepper spray.... yes, unfortunately I shall remember that for a very long time :(  ). So, here I'll give you a juice-by-juice run-down on all the yum factors, health benefits, and what to get.

Grapefruit Juice
Yum Factor: High
Health Benefits: Vitamin C, Citric Acid, important oils our bodies need
Helps With: Colds, Insomnia, Fighting Breast Cancer (eat the pithy white layer of the grapefruit that is between the peel and the fruit to get bioflavonoids which help protect against cancer. 
What to Get: Grapefruits (Costco or the grocery store), any kind of grapefruit juice with a rational amount of sugar


Cranberry Juice
Yum Factor: Rather High
Health Benefits: Natural Anti-biotic, High in anti-oxidants, helps with indigestion, Vitamin A, C, and E and important minerals, helps cleanse your body, protects eyesight, protects skin
What to Get: Oceanspray (although it's super-sweetened), lightly sweetened juices, or even the cranberries at Thanksgiving!


Pomegranate Juice
Yum Factor: Rather High
Health Benefits: naturally helps to cleanse the body, keeps your arteries in good health, anti-oxidants, Vitamins B and C, helps with cholesterol, morning sickness, anti-aging
What to Get: a pomegranate from the grocery store (plus, it's a mitzvah to eat a pomegranate!), POM juice


Apple Juice
Yum Factor: High
Health Benefits: Vitamin A and C, Fiber, drink un-oxidized apple juice so that you don't stiffen up after exercising (so useful!), Teeth Health (apples actually help clean your teeth if you bite them--so don't worry about the sugar content!), prevents lung cancer
What to Get: whichever kind is ripest and freshest--or pick one from a garden tree!, MOTTS apple sauce, Whole Foods apple juice (it's delicious), or any other kind as well! and, I suppose, apple pie....




On a different note, I have one last piece of advice for you in terms of shopping for these fruits and juices. Do not buy Lakewood Pure Cranberry cranberry juice. About twenty minutes ago, my mother and I opened it. It's awful--literally undrinkable without adding about a pound of sugar-- and while it's 100% cranberry juice, this just brings back how important it is for us to be realistic about our healthy drink choices; if it's painful, disgusting, sour, and ridiculously astringent to the taste, don't drink it (Yes, that terrible juice was all of those things).  It's okay to purchase a brand that uses additional sweetening--just balance it out and try to find a good juice that doesn't need to much extra sugar. 
For more interesting info on healthy juices and fruits, visit http://www.juicing-for-health.com/index.html . And, no, you don't have to buy a juicer--they just have good data that's easy to read. 
Happy juicing!