Buying Produce
If you are really enthusiastic about making juices, blends and smoothies you may want to bulk buy some of the basic ingredients. Carrots, apples, bananas, pineapples and oranges are often used as base juices to which other ingredients are added. Additional ingredients, such as summer berries, are best used when really fresh and so should be juiced on the day of purchase.
Freshness
The produce you use for juices, smoothies and blends should be as fresh as possible to ensure that you will get the maximum nutrients from your drinks. It is not necessary to buy produce that looks perfect, but do avoid any that is bruised, damaged or overripe. Aim to buy fruit and vegetables that are in season if you can. By buying seasonally and locally, your produce will be bursting with health-boosting vitamins and minerals.
Ripeness
The riper the fruit, the more sugar it will contain and the sweeter it will be. It also means that the fruit contains more nutrients, especially if the produce has been ripened on the tree or plant. Fruits that are picked green and ripened in transit contain fewer nutrients.
All fruit and vegetables benefit from being stored in cool, dry conditions. However, if fruit is slightly underripe and too firm to be juiced, find a sunny windowsill on which to ripen it for a couple of days. Avoid wrapping produce in plastic bags as it cannot breathe. Ideally you should store ingredients in individual bowls or trays - for instance, one for citrus fruits, one for bananas and one for onions - as they all have different ripening times and one item can affect another, leading to premature rotting.
Food that is grown organically is slightly more expensive than regular produce, but there are some clear advantages in choosing it.
The levels of chemicals that you are exposed to via pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers will be significantly reduced if you choose organic produce. Advocates of organic fruit and vegetables also claim that they taste better because there is less water bulking out the produce. It is certainly true that if you taste an organic carrot and then compare it to the taste of a non-organic carrot, the former will usually have a more solid texture and a stronger, more intense carroty taste. This inevitably means that your blends will have more flavour, as there will be
less water diluting the juice.
Even if you don't want to buy entirely organic produce, you may want to consider buying bulky base items, such as carrots and apples, from organic ranges.
For convenience, and because you can't always find fresh produce out of season, it is worthwhile keeping some dried, frozen, canned and bottled fruits or vegetables to hand in your store cupboard (pantry). Use these as substitutes whenever you run out of a fresh ingredient or if you find that an ingredient is unavailable or out of season. Choose fruits that are preserved in unsweetened fruit juice in preference to syrup, as this is a more natural state. Dried fruit is also a useful standby, especially dried apricots, dates and figs.
Frozen fruit such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and bags of frozen mixed summer fruits work very well in smoothies and blended drinks.
If blended straight from the freezer, they turn smoothies into deliciously chilled slushes and you will not need to add any additional ice.
Whole nuts and seeds (for grinding into blends or for sprinkling on top of drinks as decoration) and dry ingredients such as wheatgerm should be kept in airtight jars or packets and stored in the refrigerator to keep them fresh once opened. However, because of their high fat content, nuts and seeds will become rancid if you keep them for too long. Make sure you buy from a supplier with a rapid turnover and always check the use-by date on the packet before you add them to drinks.
Most herbs and spices are irradiated (treated with radiation to delay spoiling) but this is forbidden with organic produce. If you wish to avoid irradiated herbs and spices you need to buy organic.
GM CROPS
Genetically modified foods are a recent innovation. If you have concerns about this type of produce, buy organic fruit and vegetables. Be aware that most soya products are GM-based, so look in your local health food shop and choose products that state they contain "non-genetically modified soya" on the packet.
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