Fantastic find

I've been considering doing a juice fast — a cleanse of sorts. I've read that the body uses about 30% of its daily energy on digestion alone. By relieving it of having to burn all this energy processing food, it can spend that 30% on other things like tissue repair and toxin removal. The benefit of using vegetable juice during this period is that you're still getting nutrition, but your body doesn't have to really do anything to but absorb it.

For the ten years that I worked from home, it was easy to do anything I wanted with my diet and or exercise routine. Now however is a different story. I don't want to take time off from work just to do a fast, nor do I want to try to do a fast while vacationing somewhere — it just wouldn't be feasible (or fun). Plus if I'm going to do it, I need more than a weekend. The main problem is what to do in the middle of the day when I'm not at home. I actually live walking distance from where I work, but I don't like the idea of going home to juice. I want to relax and be social during my lunch hour. People have asked me, "why not just make a bigger batch of juice and take some to work?" The answer to that is, the longer fresh juice sits, the nutrients don't last, though this would still be better than anything store-bought. According to a friend of mine, oxidation also starts to occur, which is the opposite of all the wonderful benefits of antioxidants.

The solution to my problem of getting just-prepared vegetable juice in the middle of the day (whether fasting or not) is a place I can quickly walk to from my office in River North, called Protein Bar.

In addition to a selection of healthier wraps (minus the breakfast ones, which are loaded with sodium — grateful that they publish this info, so I know what not to order), salads and such, they have a selection of fresh raw vegetable & fruit juice recipes. I found out today (by asking) that they will substitute or include ingredients from one recipe in another, as long as it's from the stock of ingredients they already use for juicing. That means that because they use parsley in one recipe but not in the one I ordered, they were willing to add some parsley to it. Their juices are not cheap at $6 and some change for a 16-oz. serving, but the combinations are well thought out, taste good and it beats having to go home and do it myself. Time is money.