For the last couple of months, IT professional Vidushi Khera follows a rather peculiar eating pattern, skipping solid food entirely and instead consuming six cold pressed juices delivered to her doorstep, early in the morning.
“I was following many diet plans but none of them seemed to work. I had heard about the popularity of cold pressed juices in the West from my friends and decided to give it a try.”
Vidushi is among the growing breed of Bengalureans who are getting hooked onto cold pressed juices available aplenty in the market today.
The juicing bug that caught on with a clutch of Hollywood celebrities and health freaks in the United States, has managed to make its way to Namma Bengaluru as well, consisting essentially of an assortment of fruits and vegetables that are ground slowly in cold press machines into a slurry.
This is supposed to keep the nutrients intact as opposed to grinding juices in your mixer which results in heating and destroying the nutrients.
“I had tried to make these juices at home, but did not quite succeed and learnt that it is not very healthy. I now subscribe to Raw Pressery and Fresh Pressery for my weekly fix.”
Some of these cold pressed juices such as Fresh Pressery have more than 4,000 subscribers and are seeing more than 300 bottles being retailed everyday while many others has seen subscriptions grow substantially.
Vaishali Mehta, Sumir Mehta, Sanchit Gaurav and Rujal Naik were bound by a common interest in looking at healthier eating options and a need to feel fresh throughout the day — a pursuit that resulted in Swa Juices, a company that offers cold pressed juices in Whitefield. Vaishali says, “We were on the lookout for healthy food options and chanced upon cold pressed juices that was becoming very popular in the West. It has been a personal journey for all of us.
If you want to consume a large quantity of fruits and vegetables, you would have been chomping on it all day. Juices make more sense. We started by making the juices and sampling it ourselves. We aim at providing one juice a day to our customers.
It is very important to balance your diet with these juices. We make our juices completely organic and do not add any preservatives. We look at Swa more as a service than a business as such.”
Launched about a year and a half ago, Fresh Pressery offers a line of six cold-pressed juices.
They have a manufacturing unit in Koramangala and also sell the juices at a café on Lavelle road. Rishaad Vazirally, one of the co-founders says, “We were all facing health and obesity-related issues and had felt light and energetic after sampling these cold press juices. We thought that a cold presser made sense and set up Fresh Pressery. Cold presses are expensive technology and use no heat to press the vegetables and fruits to extract the juices. Because there's no heat involved, all the enzymes, vitamins and minerals are intact."
He adds, “Each juice contains about a kilogram of fruits and vegetables which provide you with enough vitamins, minerals, carbs, proteins and sugars to take care of your nutritional requirements. The juices are numbered and timings are provided on the label. It must be drunk once in about three hours. It is akin to having six small meals instead of three large ones. We do not add any extra sugar or preservatives. The batch is delivered fresh to the home or office of the subscribers early in the morning. “
Shonali Sabherwal, a macrobiotic nutritionist, offers a word of caution, “Many juice firms say that juices can substitute real solid food. That may not work for everyone, especially if someone has a weak constitution. The nature of these cleanses has to be determined by a health professional. A juice works as a filler but cannot be a substitute for a real balanced meal. It must be part of a complete exercise regimen and not a substitute for meals.”
A day with juice for company
The set of Fresh Pressery juices arrived in the morning – 250 millilitres fresh from the freezer. The set contained six juices with the corresponding time at which each of them were to be consumed. I kicked off by gulping down capple, a mix of carrot and apple, with a hint of ginger. It tastes much like a regular fruit juice with a fizz of ginger. It was a refreshing start to the regimen. Two hours on, I started on the second juice of the day, an after party flush, a blend of watermelon, mint and lemon, which was one of the best in the package. Slightly sweet and surprisingly zingy, it had an aftertaste that reminded me of household remedies that grandmothers usually churn up. Black magic, a combination of the mysterious activated charcoal, alkaline water and lime with a hint of honey also tasted good and sated my hunger pangs for the evening.
The green flush and red purifier juices were part of the cleanse package and offered an artful mix of vegetables that didn’t taste great but made me feel rather light and active.
At 7.30 in the evening, I drink my fifth juice for the day, the yellow hydration juice that had pineapple mixed with coconut and made for a quick downer. The almond milk was the king of the pack as far as taste goes and went down at 9.30 p.m. Creamy almond milk with a touch of vanilla and honey proved to be a filling substitute for an after-dinner meal. I woke up the next day really hungry, but feeling fresh and rejuvenated. The procedure works best if you balance it out with healthy food.
Popular cold press outlets
Fresh Pressery (Koramangala and Lavelle Road)
Raw Pressery (1, MG Road Mall)
Rejov (Nature’s Basket, Foodhall)
