I Juice? Part 2 – Suja and Whole Food Juice Reviews.

Greetings and Salutations.  I realize this post is many days behind the initial post on my second/third juicing experience.  I have no excuse.  I suck.  But, better late than never!  As I mentioned in the first part of this post, I juice? Still? Seriously? https://prettydamnuseful.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/i-juice/, I strayed from just Blueprint juices this time around.  Actually – I only had one Blueprint Juice, the Cinnamon Cashew Milk and we all know from the first time around, I find this drink to be heavenly.  This time around I mixed juices from Suja and Whole Foods to create my own custom, you don’t have a damn degree in juicing either, cleanse.  So for all you blueprinters or first time users of these products, here are my thoughts on the juices I tried from each brand.

One last note, I tried to follow the Blueprint type format So each day I drank 3 green juices, 2 fruit juices, and a nut milk.

 

The Suja Cleanse Juice Line.

Suja Juices

So, overall, the Suja juices were comparable to Blueprint juices.  The Suja juices were cheaper at whole foods, $6.99 a bottle in comparison to $8.99 a bottle and the nut milk (almond coconut) was also $6.99 in comparison to the $11.99 price tag on the Cinnamon Cashew Milk.  I’d like to make one note, the Suja juices are named by their benefit (I guess) so the cute names aren’t mine.  I actually found them annoying because I had to try to remember what’s in them and the name.  Just a nit.  Here’s brief overview of the juices I tried:

• Green Supreme – This was supposed to be the last green juice of the day.  I didn’t look that up until day 2, so I started with this juice.  Oh well.  This can be described as Salad in a bottle.  If you like the Kale Blueprint juice – you’ll like this one.  If you don’t like that one, you won’t.  It wasn’t particularly sweet and while I like green juice, my experience is most people find this one to be outright yucky.   Nina found it to be “grassy”.
• Glow – This was still salad in a bottle, not much sweeter than the Blueprint green juice and while it had some extra stuff, tasted very similarly to Green Supreme.
• FIJI – Not sure I could differentiate between this one and Glow.
• Fuel – Tastes like carrots.  If you like carrots, you’ll like this one.  If you don’t, you won’t, but as the second juice of the day, it is no PAM (Pineapple Apple Mint from Blueprint).
• Vanilla Cloud – The Suja answer to the Cinnamon Cashew Milk…. For $5 less, it passes and it is good, sweet, and filling.  It is however, not nearly as heavenly as the Cinnamon Cashew Milk.  However, don’t get me wrong, it is very very good – especially after a day of basically vegetable juices.
• Purify – I didn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.  This kid does NOT do beets.

Whole Food Juices

Whole Foods Fresh Squeezed Juices

Whole Foods also has a line of fresh pressed juices.  While I was staring at the dwindling juice choices in the aisle, another helpful customer pointed out the Whole Foods Juices stating they were cheaper, but she wouldn’t drink them because they aren’t Organic.  I find that hard to believe.  Isn’t everything at Whole Foods Organic?  Either way, they were cheaper and available and organic or not – I do not really care.  I believe on my trip their juice bottles were in the $5.99/$6.99 range.  Also, they have cute names, but for some irrational reason they don’t irritate me as much as the Suja names.  My peeves don’t have to make sense, they are mine.   I tried two of the juices there:

• Greens with Envy: Contains: Green Kale, Curly Parsley, Baby Spinach, Broccoli, Cucumber, Bartlett Pears, Pineapples, Lemon.  This green juice was actually quite sweet to me.  I think the pineapple made the difference, but it was DEFINITELY sweeter than either the Blueprint or the Suja green juices.  It almost felt like a green juice cheat.  It was good though.  I couldn’t say much about the nutritional information because the label wasn’t detailed enough to compare to the other brands, but this is definitely the most delicious of the juices, especially for green juice haters.
• Belly Rub:  Contains: Green Cabbage, Bartlett Pears, Pineapples, Curly Parsley, Fresh Mint, Fresh Ginger.  This was the closest thing to PAM I found.  A co-worker examined the bottle and reminded me that the cabbage diet was used to and I quote “clean you right out” so I should be careful.  Between you and me, this juice gave me killer gas.  I actually had to excuse myself to the bathroom and then wait it out until empty to “unload”.  I guess cabbage can be quite brutal.  The juice was tasty, but may be best consumed when you are not likely to be in public or around people that can hear or smell for a while.

My final verdict – if you want to save a little money over Blueprint (and it’s actually cheaper at your store)  go for Suja.  It seemed to be basically same difference to me and the juices were pretty tasty.  If you REALLY hate green juice, ease into it with the Whole Foods Greens With Envy.  It’s much less Salad in a Bottle.  If you are a regular juicer, this may seem a bit on the sweet end of the spectrum for you.

In my next post – I’ll talk about my four/five-ish day experience and how it compared to the first juice cleanse I did.  I shall call this post Juice Angry.  Juice Crazy.  Juice Happy.

For more information on Suja Cleanses see: http://www.sujajuice.com/collections/juice-cleanses

For more information on Whole Foods juices see: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/service/cold-pressed-raw-juice

BPC – Day2 – The Morning

Okay.  I was in a very bad mood last night.  I’m sure the other people who weren’t hungry aren’t really liars.  They probably actually did the pre-cleanse.  Dear Readers – DO THE DAMN PRE CLEANSE.  If I had, I would been used to better food.  I would also not be having the horrible caffeine withdrawal which is what I think is really killing my experience with this.  A and I both have headaches, are lethargic, and I’m a brand of grumpy that bears no need to discuss.  This morning i’m going to have half a cup of black coffee per cheat guidelines to get me through a long drive home 😦 I also had some cucumbers last night.  A stayed strong.  Me, I ditched 1/2 my last green juice in favor of cucumbers.  A cucumber has never tasted so lovely.  This morning I’m in a better mood, but my head is still pounding…. Will let you know my outlook on life post-coffee.

BPC-Day1-Juices 3-5

*sigh* We decided we should get some air, get out about, so we went to Ikea.  I call this journey, the agony and the ecstasy.  I must have temporarily lost my mind and forgotten all the delicious num num’s at IKEA.  I begged A to let me have some Swedish Meatballs.  No go.  I almost assaulted a man for his cheese pizza.  A stopped me.  We had the Cayenne Agave Lemonade while there and nothing ever tasted so good, I’m sure of it, but it wasn’t enough.  About an hour in, I abandoned mission and asked A to just get me the hell out of there.  We’re home now and I’m drinking my third green juice (over it) and A is enjoying the Beet juice (he likes it).  Whoever said you’re not hungry on this cleanse is a LIAR.  I’m starved.  A says to give it 24 hours and if I’m not glowing tomorrow, he’ll take me to get meatballs.  I’m trying.  I think I’m going to have a few cucumber slices per the BPC acceptable cheats.  We’ll see……

Blueprint Cleanse – Day 1 – Juice 1

3 days worth of Blueprint cleanse juices from Whole Foods

A and I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning (9:30 am) ready to juice.  Now here’s something you should know.  We TRY to be healthy, but as you can see from the bacon in the fridge, the diet coke peeking out, and the distinctive top of wine bottles – we also love food and wine and we LOVE bacon….more on that later.  We are both avid coffee drinkers.  If you don’t believe me, please check out A’s coffee thermos….

You think you love coffee….do you drink one of these a day?

yeah, we love coffee.  We also love our wine and did I mention bacon.  I say this to say that if he and I can make it through this, then you dear reader, should not be worried.  Here’s the other thing.  I tried to do the pre-cleanse of cutting out meat and processed food.  I failed.  Just the day before I had a delicious chicken tikka panini from Whole Foods.  I also had pound cake and wine.  We had wine.  Soo….this might be more painful for us than need be since we blatantly ignored the pre-cleanse.

So Juice one, the green juice was drank at 9:30 a.m.  Now, I already knew what to expect and liked the green juice.  After one big swallow.  A groans and says, “It’s going to be a long day…” as he frowned at the bottle.  Now, he didn’t hate it, but he did call it a salad in a bottle.  He finished it, but without gusto and enjoyment 🙂 I think his green juice experience is par for the norm.  If you don’t do green juice, you’ll find this one hard.  To his credit, he didn’t need to embellish it with lemon juice or agave nectar, both of which I offered (what a trooper).  As for me, green juice down.  Yum.  Dying for a cup of coffee, gonna have some herbal tea in a few to see if something hot will stave off the headache I already feel coming on…..

For additional Blueprint info see these posts:

Blueprint cleanse – the Inception https://prettydamnuseful.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/blueprint-cleanse-inception/