The Fresh Network Blog

Green shakes

I recently discovered a brilliant and very simple way to make green juices into a gourmet treat. This is a great alternative to adding fruit – though there is nothing wrong with adding some apple, pear or pineapple to take the edge off a potent elixir of dark greens. Add the juice of a lemon too and the interplay of sweet and tart will dominate, leaving the earthy bitter of the greens as a subtle – and decidedly more palatable – background taste. 

But bored of that after several years of it I started experimenting and came up with another way to make heavy-duty green juices taste good - even those with broccoli! I’m making my juices into shakes by adding nut milk, and they have never gone down as easily. Here’s an example: 

• 200g spinach or other dark greens
• 1 small head broccoli
• 1 red pepper
• 3 sticks celery
• Small piece root ginger
• Raw almond milk

Juice the first five ingredients and pour into a glass. Then add raw almond milk to taste – I find that two parts juice to one part nut milk is plenty.

Healing Cancer from Inside Out

We recently brought the brilliant DVD Healing Cancer from Inside Out to the UK for the first time. It quickly sold out, we have more in stock now and by popular demand we also have the accompanying book of the same name (pictured).

The emphasis of the DVD is on establishing that conventional methods to "cure" cancer will never rival the natural approaches that can heal it. The book, meanwhile, is a practical guide to a comprehensive anti-cancer lifestyle. As stated in the introduction, "This book focuses on providing the details for supporting cancer patients and essentially picks up where the film leaves off."

We recommend you invest in both the book and the DVD. The book is £12.97, and the DVD is £17.97, but we're selling both for a discount price of £26.30, a saving of £4.64, or 15%.

Go here to find out more about the book.

Go here to find out more about the DVD.

Go here if you missed the excerpt from our exclusive interview with cancer expert Thomas Lodi, M.D., one of the experts featured on the DVD.

Coffee and health

We received a letter from The British Coffee Association in response to a comment about coffee in our recent Spring issue. For those who didn't see it, the comment in question was: "Coffee is a central nervous system stimulant which has been linked with anxiety, mood swings and adrenal exhaustion. Just say no!" Here is the letter:

Dear Get Fresh,

We read with interest your article “The top 10 substances that destroy health” in the March edition of Get Fresh. With regards to the points raised in the article we wanted to highlight that in fact there is little scientific evidence to demonstrate a correlation between moderate caffeine intake (4-5 cups per day) and anxiety. Research concludes that “In lower doses caffeine appears to have little effect on this mood-state or, under certain circumstances, it may even reduce anxiety levels.”

Coffee is one of the most heavily researched products in the world today and the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence has found that moderate consumption of four to five cups per day (or 400mg caffeine) is perfectly safe for the majority of people and may confer certain health benefits. Pregnant women should, however, moderate their intake in line with the guidelines issued by the Food Standards Agency in November 2008 to 200mg of caffeine per day from all sources.

Dr Sarah Schenker, dietician, said, “Whilst extreme levels of caffeine may exacerbate stress the research in this area clearly shows that when consumed in moderation (up to 4-5 cups of coffee per day) there is no evidence to suggest that coffee/caffeine will add or lead to stress or anxiety”

Yours Sincerely

Dr Euan Paul, Executive Director, British Coffee Association

We will be responding to the letter in our next issue. In the meantime, we just wanted to share it with you and invite you to send us your comments.