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Juicing for medicinal purposes at Tahoe-Truckee: ‘It tastes more alive’

Cassandra Walker
cwalker@sierrasun.com
@snow1cass
New Moon Natural Foods in Truckee offers a large selection of beautiful, organic produce. Their knowledgeable staff can help you choose the perfect juice ingredients.
Cassandra Walker / Sierra Sun |

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The Mill Juice Shop is located at 10825 Pioneer Trail, Truckee, and 935 North Virginia St. B., Reno. Visit http://www.themilljuiceshop.com to learn more

New Moon Natural Foods is located at 11357 Donner Pass Rd., C., Truckee, and at 505 West Lake Blvd., Tahoe City. Visit http://www.newmoonnaturalfoods.com to learn more.

TRUCKEE, Calif. — Tahoe-Truckee puts health first, and being conscientious of what you put in your body is the first step toward making smart diet choices.

If you’re looking to amp up your body’s daily nutritional gain, juicing is a popular route to take, and for good reason.

Juicing fruits and vegetables preserves vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, which are degraded during cooking processes.



Juicing allows you to drink the garden, if you will, introducing more produce to your diet with higher concentrations of nutrients that you typically wouldn’t eat daily.

‘IT TASTES MORE ALIVE’



“You can see the difference that the vitamins and compact nutrients from juice does to your body,” said Megan Petrilla, who owns The Mill Juice Shop in Truckee with her husband, Ben Wolcott. “Obviously people need certain pills for certain things, but it’s crazy the health benefits and energy you get from just drinking juice.

“Forget the multi vitamin — drink juice, man.”

The pair opts for cold-pressing their juices, which is a method using a large juicer with a blade spinning at lower RPM. This reduces heat and oxidation in the juicing process, preserving all the produce good stuff.

“I feel like you can taste the live enzymes when it’s cold-pressed,” Petrilla said. “It tastes more alive.”

Keeping air from entering the juice allows The Mill to bottle its powerful health elixirs, sealing in their nutritional benefits until the customer twists off the cap.

The Mill has mastered its juice recipes, and Petrilla says flavor consistency is key: “I know what every one of these juices tastes like because my husband makes them.”

The two have also opened a second location in Reno near the university and invite everyone to stop by, try some juice and improve their health.

“I really think that if we all ate a plant-based diet we would be healthier people,” Petrilla said.

CREATING FLAVOR, AVOIDING GMOS

New Moon Natural Foods, with locations in Truckee and Tahoe City (note: the Tahoe City location doesn’t have a juice bar), has a gorgeous selection of fresh fruits and vegetables and is a wonderful place to stock up on all of the ingredients you’ll need to make nutrient-packed juices.

If you’re looking for juice-on-the-go, New Moon also features a wonderful juice bar at the Truckee location, using centrifugal juicing to extract the company’s medicinal juices.

“At New Moon Juice Bar, we serve a made-to-order juice to be drunk more or less immediately, so we use a centrifugal juicer,” said Billy Griffin, owner of New Moon.

The benefit to this method of juice extraction is guests can order their juices to their taste.

“Our customers can get exactly the flavors and ingredients they want, in any size they want, that’s brimming with macro- and micro-nutrients in the original plant,” Griffin said.

The Juice Bar also uses strictly organic ingredients, which “creates better flavor and avoids pesticides, GMOs or other nasties that can sneak into our food,” Griffin said.

With a centrifugal juicer, you should drink the juice quickly. Oxygen is introduced to the juice during the maceration process which breaks down nutrients more rapidly, so be sure to slug your juice down within the first 2 hours of ordering to reap its benefits.

Griffin said in addition to customizing juices, customers can choose additives to enhance their experience.

“Our customers often go for our high-nutrition add-ins, such as E3Live, a living blue-green algae that’s packed with protein and chlorophyll,” he said.

Juicing at Home: Tips from the experts

Go Organic: When juicing at home, The Mill and New Moon swear by using only organic ingredients. “Make sure you use organic produce – it’s so crucial,” Petrilla said at The Mill. “The juice is so packed with concentrated nutrients from all of these fruits and vegetables, you really don’t want GMOs and chemicals in there, you’re almost hurting yourself — buy organic, please.”

Give a Good Scrub: Petrilla says if you can’t access organic produce, it’s important to wash your fruits and veggies very well prior to juicing.

Ginger – Go Lightly: Start out with small doses of ginger, Petrilla cautions: “A lot of people have ruined their juices with that.”

Pregnancy Tip: “I really like fennel, and add it to ‘The Greens’ juice because I’m pregnant,” said Teaya Durfy, an employee at New Moon, regarding one of the business’s signature blends. “It does taste like licorice though, not everyone likes licorice.” Fennel is a good source of folic acid, which is recommended to introduce to a pregnant woman’s diet in order to prevent neural tube defects developing during pregnancy.

Beet-Red: “I really love beets,” said Jordyn Blust, who works at the New Moon Juice Bar. “They offer anti-inflammatory and detoxification benefits, but beware — they will dye everything. Even your insides…that freaks people out.”

Beets will dye your hands and cutting board while you’re preparing them — and do not be alarmed by red pee, it’s totally normal.

Cassandra Walker is a features and entertainment reporter for the Sierra Sun. She can be reached at cwalker@sierrasun.com, 530-550-2654 or @snow1cass.


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