Sponsored by Clean Juice.
At the risk of aging myself, I’ll open this article by telling you that when I was little, there were five primary types of juice available in the marketplace. FIVE. Orange. Apple. Grape. Prune. And V8.
That’s it.
Since those good old days, though, a lot has happened in the juice world. First, as we became more and more aware of exotic fruits from tropical locales, unique flavors such as mango and guava started showing up on the shelves.
Next, because we just couldn’t get enough excitement in the juice aisle, manufacturers got together and decided to create crazy flavor combos, which are otherwise unheard of in nature. Apple Pomegranate. Orange Mango. Guava Prune. (just kidding on that last one)
Then, because there just weren’t enough fruits to go around and concerned parents everywhere were begging for more sneaky ways to incorporate vegetables into their kids’ diets, veggies started to make an appearance in juices that were not, in fact, our grandparents V8 jugs.
And finally, in the last and possibly final evolution of our juice history, juice bars and smoothie shops began to show up everywhere.
It was then that it got kind of confusing for us, the juice consumers. No longer relegated to something we consume only at breakfast, juice had skyrocketed to health food superstardom seemingly overnight. Yet, this meteoric rise wasn’t without its drawbacks, the biggest being that we, as the consumers, still aren’t entirely sure which juices we should be drinking.
Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s the juice.
It was in my own personal quest to answer that very question that I found Clean Juice in Frisco. It was clear to me, after one sip, that this wasn’t the bottled sugary concoction of my youth. This was JUICE. And I was hooked.
But I wanted to know more. I wanted to be able to share with you, Frisco, why this juice tastes different, why it’s better.
So for that, I went to the expert, Ashley Green, owner of both the West Frisco and Starwood locations. She graciously agreed to tell me more about their juice process, known as cold pressing, and to show me why it is different.
First, she offers all of the juice newbies of the world a little grace. After all, she was once just like us: “I’ve bought juices off a grocery store shelf, spent hours using a centrifugal juicer to make my own juices at home, bought large jugs of juices that I had no idea when they were made that weren’t cold-pressed… Seriously, I’ve had it all.”
I feel better already, don’t you?
Traditional juicing, the kind that most of us are familiar with, involves a centrifugal juicer. These machines have sharp blades and juice the fruits and vegetables by spinning them at high speeds, tearing the ingredients. Because so much speed is required to create juice, a fair amount of heat is created within.
And while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when it comes to nutrition, it’s not necessarily a good one either, because certain vitamins don’t do well with high heat and lose their nutritional value quickly once heat is applied. This compromises the nutritional integrity of important nutrients like Vitamin A, E, K, C, and B and makes juices from a centrifugal juicer less ideal for those who are drinking them to improve and supplement their diets.
In contrast, Clean Juice uses the cold pressing method for all of their bottled juices (they have a centrifugal juicer for their regular juice menu). This method employs a giant machine, named Pulp Friction in West Frisco and Elvis Pressly in Starwood, which gently presses the ingredients using force, not rotation, therefore creating no extra heat and keeping all of the nutritional content of the fruits and vegetables intact.
There’s a definite difference.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of witnessing “Elvis Pressly” do his thing at the Starwood location, and let me just say, it was quite impressive. In fact, considering that I’m a foodie by trade who’s had my fair share of unique culinary experiences, when I say that watching the Cold Press process in action was one of the most fascinating things I’ve seen in the kitchen in a long while, it’s a big statement.
Because it IS fascinating. It is methodical beyond belief. Every single ingredient is weighed down to the ounce so that every single bottle is uniformly delicious. Every ingredient is cataloged and every bottle is dated so you know you’re getting fresh juice with each sip.
It’s loud — Elvis is no joke when it comes to the force he applies to those veggies. And, maybe most surprisingly, it’s fragrant. I watched a batch of Sweet Green being pressed and when that mint hit Elvis, the entire room filled with a fresh, spearmint scent only Mother Nature can create.
If I wasn’t sold on Cold Pressing already, the experience of watching it happen would have sealed the deal. But the truth is, even without understanding why Cold Pressing is nutritionally better for me, I already understood intrinsically that it was not your typical run-of-the-mill juice beverage.
I’ve been drinking them for a while now and even, at Ashley’s encouragement, did a cleanse a few months ago. There’s a difference and it’s largely the taste. What I find so compelling about the cold pressed juices at Clean Juice is that in every bottle, each ingredient is fully present with every sip. In my personal favorite Sweet Green, every flavor pops — kale, apple, spinach, cucumber, mint. Nothing is masked with added sugars or covered with extras.
It’s a palate adjustment if you’re accustomed to traditional juices with high sugar content and additives, but once you do, there’s no going back. You’ll crave the bite of the kale and the sweetness of the apple and you’ll want each flavor to be there. Nothing added. Nothing detracted.
As Green says, “I know I don’t need to tell people it’s different; you can taste the difference because of how it’s made and what’s put in it.”
And as for me, Frisco, I completely agree.