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Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness Juice | Healthy Food of the Day

This Nutrient-Packed Fruit and Vegetable Juice From Bolthouse Farms Tastes So Good, You’ll Forget It’s Good For You

Getting your five servings of fruits and vegetables each day shouldn’t be difficult. But sometimes it is.  Although fruit juices count toward your “Five A Day”, they can be high in fruit sugars (fructose) and often don’t have the nutritional benefits of the whole fruit (especially when it comes to fiber.) Also, many bottled fruit juices are made from concentrate and don’t even contain 100% fruit juice.

So I was intrigued when I ran across the Bolthouse Farms  line of fruit and vegetable juices at the grocery store. These 100% all natural juices had all kinds of cool names like Blue Goodness, C-Boost and my new favorite, Green Goodness. I’ve tried some of the Odwalla juices in the past and wasn’t terribly blown away, so I decided to give Bolthouse Farms a shot.

Green Is Good!

I was particularly interested in something called Green Goodness – a vegetable/fruit juice (actually it’s more like a smoothie) that had all kinds of interesting, healthy ingredients that frankly didn’t sound like they would taste very good blended up in a bottled juice. But being the healthy food adventurist that I am, I decided to spring for a bottle of Green Goodness just to see for myself. The worst that could happen, I figured, is that I’d be out a few bucks.

Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness is a blend of wheat grass, de-odorized garlic (curious as to how they do this), spirulina, spinach and blue-green algae. I told you it wasn’t going to sound very appetizing. But hang with me here. Bolthouse then adds in some pretty tasty fruit including apple, pineapple, mango puree, banana puree and kiwi juice. There’s also a bunch of exotic sounding ingredients like jerusalem artichoke, Nova Scotia dulce, dragon fruit juice, open-cell chlorella and even echinacea purpurea extract.

Oh, did I mention the broccoli and barley grass?

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Keep Those Swimmers Happy: Folate May Help Encourage Healthy Male Sperm

Maybe Popeye only had half of the picture.

New research from the University of California - Berkeley, indicates that eating folate-rich foods, like spinach and other dark, leafy vegetables, might decrease the risk of birth defects not just in women, but in men as well.

“Recent studies have suggested that paternal diet affects sperm count and motility, which is important for conception, but this new study takes it further to say that male diet may be important for healthy offspring as well,” said study coordinator Suzanne Young, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “Our study is the first to look at the effects of diet on chromosomal abnormalities in sperm. These abnormalities would cause either miscarriages or children with genetic syndromes if the sperm fertilized an egg.” 

The researchers are careful to point out that there is only a link between increased folate consumption among males and decreased birth defects in their female partners, not a causal relationship. 

What’s the difference?

Links only demonstrate that something about the research subjects’ diet (which in this case contained higher folate levels) had an impact on decreased birth defects. More controlled studies are necessary to isolate whether folate, or other factors, may have contributed to the improvements in sperm health. Furthermore, to determine with certainty whether folate operates in a similar way in the broader population, researchers are recommending that the study be conducted with a larger group.  

That said, ongoing research suggests that a diverse diet, which includes a wide-range of vegetables (including spinach) has positive health benefits. Good sources of folate include spinach, leafy vegetables, asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kidney beans, and orange juice.

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