Green Juiced Monster
By: Lindsay Dolak
In my 22 years of female-ism, there are a few things that I have come to acknowledge, know, and accept about my gender:
- Girls can be manipulated
- Girls can struggle with self-acceptance in their adolescence.
- Girls love green juice.
In fact, you would be hard pressed to not see a “fresh pressed” green juice in the hands of at least one girl on campus, on any given day. Whether a supplement to a recent health kick, or a Monday morning liver detoxifier, green juices are a major trending topic in the food and health world. Unfortunately, all the hype is rarely due to their health benefits.
Green juices are perceived as healthy a), because the color green is associated with clean, fresh, and natural and b), because green juices are marketed as healthy. Every bottle of Naked juice’s “Green Machine” lists exactly what fruits and vegetables, with quantities, are inside of the bottle. What could be healthier than slugging back a drink that boasts the benefits of ten broccoli crowns, an entire field of spinach, and 250 granny smith apples, right? And I can’t think of anything more beneficial than a few servings of fructooligosaccardes, too! Oh wait, silly me, you can’t get that in the produce section at Wegmans. It’s a synthetic (read: fake!) fiber and sweetener in every bottle of Green Machine.
It is important to acknowledge and credit Naked for sticking true to their claim of “No Added Sugars” in each bottle. However, with all the naturally occurring fructose in the fruits and vegetables in each concoction, any more sugar and your stomach might literally shrivel up and fall out of your ass. When you drink a Naked juice, your body is taking in more fructose at once than it is meant to over the course of even a few days. Fructose is a major contributor to a bunch of shitty stuff like cardiovascular disease, liver disease, arthritis, and depletion of vitamins and minerals in the body. Oh, and might I add, fructose makes you fat
While fructose is a naturally occurring sugar in fruits and vegetables, the process of making a Naked juice or juicing, in general, strips the fiber necessary to break down the massive quantities of fructose you’re consuming. You know what happens when you consume mass quantities of black beans in one sitting and the body has no time to process the fiber and protein? Your body chokes up, you start to smell, and you lose all your friends (probably). Similar things happen when the body tries to process so much fructose in so little time.
The jolt of energy you get after chugging a green juice of any kind? Similar benefits can be found in bottles of Mountain Dew. So there ya have it: not so lean, to your body pretty mean, but we drink them because they’re green. #whitegirllogic