Nourish Books: What is a super charged juice?

Christine Baily: That’s a very good question. The reason that we’ve chosen to do super charged juices and smoothies is because for a lot of people a juice is a great start to the day, it’s a great way of getting extra nutrients in, but a lot of people these days, even by doing smoothies and juices, will still be low in essential nutrients. We know that from a lot of the government surveys, and certainly as a practitioner myself I see that in the clinic a lot. The reason for doing what I call “super charged juices” is to just take that juice or that smoothie up to a whole new level with nutrient packed health boosting ingredients.

What I mean by that is that there are some foods that we term “super foods”; that’s a word that’s been used a lot, in fact, over used. What I mean by a “super food” is it’s one that is natural, it contains an exceptionally high nutrient density, and it also contains a lot of extra benefits, so it may well contain what we call plant nutrients or phytonutrients. It may contain a whole wealth of antioxidants as well.

But often they have extra special properties. I’ll give you an example: one of my favorites and one that I suppose a lot of people probably do know is Maca, which often comes as a powder form. The Maca is a traditional food that’s used in Peru, it comes from a tuber that almost looks a bit like a tulip, and it’s known as something called an adrenal adaptogen.

What that means is that when we’re stressed, whether we’re very low in energy or almost quite hyper, this food has an ability to help our body become more resilient to the stress that we’re under, and it works at the actual brain level at the hypothalamus, without getting too complicated, and it can actually help our body adapt to the stress that we’re under.

Now, hey, who isn’t under stress these days? And actually just a small amount, less than a teaspoon of Maca, can have quite profound benefits to our energy levels, from coping with fatigue to helping with hormonal balancing. We can’t do that from just adding some vegetables and fruits – it’s just not possible.

The “super charged” element is to pick key foods that we know from the research have particular health benefits, and they’re packed as well with a wide range of nutrients to support overall health, taking a juice or a smoothie to completely new levels and, therefore, you’re going to get much more benefit than you would otherwise.

Nourish Books: That sounds fantastic. This book came about because you recognized that simple juices, un‑supplemented juices, don’t have all the requirements health-wise that you recommend as a nutritionist?

Christine: Absolutely, right, John. And I’m trained in functional medicine, and what we do is look at individuals; we look at their health history, we look at their signs and symptoms and we look at where there’re imbalances in their body, and quite often, we find them.

We may find that people’s digestive system is not working appropriately. They may have hormonal imbalances, they may have adrenal fatigue, they may have a thyroid issue, they may have high toxicity and their liver function isn’t working as well. And simply adding a juice or smoothie, yes, it’s going to help you, if you get the ingredients right and you keep the sugar down, of course, but it probably won’t be enough. And a lot of people don’t necessarily want to resort to supplements or have endless pills that they’re having to take every day – they want a natural way of doing it. This is where the super charged juices and smoothies started coming in.

I participate in national shows all over the country. I work with doctors here, I work with practitioners and I work with the public. We started playing around with adding certain key ingredients for people who needed something in particular, for example, we know collagen weighs in protein, which is readily available in powder form. We know how good that is for bones; we know how good that is for connective tissue, for joints, for skin, for hair, for anti-aging and for the gut. And simply adding those foods into those juices can help to readdress those imbalances in people’s body and bring them to a state of health where their body in itself can start working at a more optimal level – that’s how it all came about.

Nourish Books: It’s better to drink your supplements than to pop a pill?

Christine: Well it can be, and a lot of people don’t want to. I suppose the other thing is they don’t want to take the pills. Because I’m using foods and this is a key important thing, so I might add something like the Maringa leaves or we might add little SIE or goji or something like that. We’re using the whole food here, and that whole food has all the nutrient in it, all the vital chemicals, and all the antioxidants.

Taking an artificial supplement may just be one element. It doesn’t have all the other phytonutrients that that plant, that berry or that seed has. And they have them for a reason and they work in synergy with each other, so by having the whole food rather than just an extract can actually have a lot more profound benefit to your overall health.

And for example, I work with a lot of children and they can’t swallow pills and they don’t want to, if you can sneak it into a creamy delicious fulfilling smoothie, hey, which kid is not going to like that.

Nourish Books: I don’t know any.

Christine: I have three boys as well, as you know John, and they’re my guinea pigs. They love using my Vitamix, they love using the Nutribullet, they love using mangisa and I just let them go for it. And so I know that every juice has been tried and tested hundreds of times with these kids and many other children, because I run a lot of hands on days for children and they love them – absolutely love them.

They don’t know that it might be particularly good for their brain and they don’t really care. The mom might care and the father might care – they just know it tastes good.

Nourish Books: That’s so important. You mentioned that your process of developing recipes involves your family; tell me a little bit more about that?

Christine: Yeah, it always has to, because everyone’s taste is slightly different of course. But I’ll just share something with you: I’ve got three boys; one is a teenager the others are ten. And one of my twins actually has an autoimmune disease, which means that I’ve been very careful to find out what the potential triggers are and we’ve managed to completely heal him through changing his diet, through foods and through nourishing him.

And for me it’s always been fundamental that whatever I give my children, because I love them so much, I want to nourish them, and I want to build them up. But I want it to be fun, I want it to taste good, I want them to enjoy foods and enjoy real un-processed food.

One of the ways of doing that is just get them involved in whatever I do, so if I’m developing a recipe, whether it’s for a book or a company, or I’m in the middle of writing a new course for people, I’ll get them to help out in the kitchen but also absolutely taste everything.

And they love it and I think one of the ways we can help our own children to develop a healthy lifestyle is to fundamentally learn how to cook, and understand how ingredients go together and how you would balance a plate. I think that’s just fundamental, so they’re all involved.

I do a lot of national shows and events here, we do a lot of filming here, and they would be in the background being my sous chefs; they’ll be handing out samples to the public – they absolutely love it and it’s the right experience for them for life.

Nourish Books: Sounds fantastic, I can’t wait to try some of these new juices, Christine, thank you so much.

Christine: I want you to try the chocolate smoothie with cauliflower. That is such an amazing combination that you wouldn’t think would work but it does. It tastes great and if your kids don’t like any vegetables, try it: it’s brilliant.

Nourish Books: And they don’t know there’s cauliflower in there?

Christine: (laughing) Not a chance. And of course, the benefits of a lot of these recipes are they’re simple to do. You don’t need to be a chef; you don’t need a degree in nutrition. I’ve done a little hard work for everyone. I have looked at all the ingredients and I’ve put them together for a reason.

That’s also why you’ll see in the book that we’ve actually labeled them, so we’ve said, “These we’ve selected particularly for MG, these we’ve selected for immune health, brain health, or stress, or if you just want to have more radiance; your skin, your hair, or your nails.” And hey, who doesn’t want that ‑‑ better than Botox or weight loss.

I’ve done the hard work for you and it is all nutritionally analyzed as well, so if you’re following a particular diet plan and you want to track fat, curbs, proteins or calories, that’s all done for you as well. It’s easy to follow, and we even give you a simple three‑day plan as well, if you want to just kick start your new year or a new healthy regime. It’s an easy book to pick up, follow and just reap the benefits of.

Nourish Books: Thank you so much. This has been informative. I very much appreciate it.

Christine: Lovely to speak to you John.