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Thanks largely to the inspiration of Heidi Ohlander and Philip McClusky, I’ve been on a bit of a raw juicing jag for the last week. This trend is going around at the moment and I’ve finally gotten on board, or at least am beginning to wade in. While many are going on an all-juice diet for a period of weeks or months, that is not my fate, there are too many other components to my cancer diet that I need to adhere to. In fact, this post isn’t even about juicing. It’s about the color of beets. While I have been getting the charge associated with juicing, mostly I find myself drawn to the amazing colors I’ve been finding in the process. I come from an art background; I graduated with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and spent four years showing my paintings and sculptures before starting my own animation and video business. Yes, I actually made a living as a painter, believe it or not. I’ve always been attracted to earthen tones, black, and deep, brooding reds. These colors found their way into most of my paintings back in the day, circa nine or more years ago. Now fast forward to the present, and Freshtopia.net. I had never consciously considered how my preferred color palette in paintings of old might affect my tastes on the show, be it in food or show aesthetics. I just realized it has. The juicing phenom didn’t really resonate with me until a beet was thrown into the mix. As soon as a small dose of the ruby elixer entered my glass it overwhelmed, visually at least, the rest of the carrot, ginger, apple and celery juice. When the reds hit it was like something was triggered in my mind, making is something that I suddenly had to have. Yes, I like the taste of beets well enough, but in this case it was the color that got me. Interestingly, many foods deep red in color have substantial cancer-fighting properties. Tomatoes are high in lycopene, an anti-cancer powerhouse. The capsaicin found in chili peppers is a powerful antioxidant. And the chemical agent in beets that give them their rich red-purple, betacyanin, is a clinically proven cancer fighter. Beets are also associated with reduced heart disease and birth defect rates. Click here to read more about the health benefits of beets. Oh, and studies cited in the former link suggest that the anti-cancer properties of beets are greatly diminished by heat and cooking, so eat them raw, or at least take it easy on the heat. Sidebar: The thing about juicing that has always bothered me a bit is the idea of throwing away all that perfectly good pulp. As such, two days ago I decided to add a bunch of pulp to a batch of flax crackers I was putting together. The next day when they were finished I was very excited to see that I had two-tone crackers, one side beet-red, the other flax-gold, again a faithful representation of my palette of choice. Apparently the liquid(ish) flax base settled through the more fibrous pulp layer – gold on the bottom, red on the top. Ok, enough romancing the red. This was all just an excuse for a little food porn anyways. Perhaps I’m a vampire at heart. I propose that in a world of vegetarian vampires, beets would be the fix of choice.
