A bottle of Pom Wonderful landed on my desk the other day. A cute little rotund ball of juice, promising to bolster the body with antioxidants, relieve digestion issues, lower cholesterol and the like.
The first thing I always do, of course, is flip any product over and read the ingredient list. While many drinks are marketed as healthy, a considerable amount on supermarket shelves are loaded with all sorts of undesirable (and oft-unpronounceable) ingredients.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn Pom Wonderful is actually pomegranate juice, albeit made from a concentrate. It also tastes pretty great.
While I think it’s an option for those who lead a busy life and don’t have time to make fresh juice, I’m personally not a fan of the pasturisation process, which is typically used to extend shelf life. However, the Pom Wonderful peeps use a flash method. My question is, is flash any better than the traditional process?
According Sally Fallon, nutrition researcher, chef, journalist and author of Nourishing Traditions – The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats the jury is still out: “flash pasteurization heats (the product) very rapidly and only holds it for a few seconds. So it’s unclear which is worse (pasturisation or flash pasturisation), whether there’s any advantage, nutritional advantage to one or the other. Both of the methods get rid of the enzymes and that is the test for successful pasteurisation.”
I had some questions for the Pom Wonderful company, which they were more than happy to answer…
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If we vegans get tired of talking protein, we can always switch the subject to iron. One of my favourite ways to ensure I get a good amount of iron is by drinking blackstrap molasses (stir a teaspoon or two into a cup of warm water).
This by-product of sugar cane processing is also packed full of other nutrients that are beneficial, no matter your diet of choice.
Check out some of these health-boosting benefits:
• As many a meat eater may tell you, animal meat is loaded with iron. What they likely won’t mention is that blackstrap molasses provides more iron for less calories and is totally fat-free.
• When you’re pregnant or menstruating your need for iron increases. Two teaspoons a day gives about 15 per cent of the daily recommended iron intake. Add raw green to your diet to really pump up your iron.
• Blackstrap molasses is a great source of calcium. Calcium is essential to life (and doesn’t come from cows milk as the marketing hype suggests). I recently heard that, besides strengthening bones, calcium binds and removes toxins from the colon and helps with prevention of migraine attacks.
• It’s also an excellent source of copper and manganese and a great source of potassium and magnesium.
My blackstrap molasses of choice is from Wholesome Sweeteners. It’s fair trade, organic and of course, vegan.
If drinking molasses isn’t your thing, check out these delish-looking gingerbread cakes from fab recipe site Vegan Yum Yum, just in time for Christmas. When I make my batch, I’m going to substitute crushed flax instead of the egg replacer. I’m also not into margarine, so will check out some more natural vegan alternatives.
Gingerbread Cakes
Makes 9 small layer cakes
2 Cups Flour
2 tsp Ginger
2 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 Cup Molasses (unsulphured, like Grandma’s brand)
2/3 Cup Hot Water
1/2 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Ener-g Egg, optional
Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1/4 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
1 lb Confectioner’s Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Zest from 1 Lemon
Preheat oven to 350º F.
Mix the flour, ginger, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl until well combined.
Prepare two 8×8 baking pans as follows: grease the pans with margarine. Lay a square of parchment paper down in the inside of the pans, cut to fit the bottoms. Grease the paper as well. Use some of the try mixture you just made to flour the pans, shaking/tapping out any extra.
Whisk molasses and hot water together.
Cream the margarine and sugar. Whip the mixture with the optional Ener-g egg until light and fluffy.
“We’re trying to overcome the crunchy-granola reputation. Our image needs to be polished. People think that a vegan diet is a sacrifice, that it’s tasteless and unappealing. It’s not. They think you can’t get enough protein, calcium or iron. You can.” — Priscilla Feral, national president of Friends of Animals and author of The Best of Vegan Cooking. Priscilla was quoted in a story, Turn Over a New Leaf: Vegan Diets are Moving Solidly into Mainstream, on the Hartford Courant news site.
Day one of a three-day cleanse. Time to recharge the battery. Started the day as usual with a dash of Celtic sea salt in a glass of spring water. Loads of fresh organic juices to come…
Celtic sea salt (below left) is packed with live minerals and 80-something trace elements including iodine, iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, potassium and zinc. Whether you’re cleansing or not, adding it to spring water and drinking first thing in the morning is one of the best things you can do for your body.
Everyday table salt (below right), however, is another story. It is so highly processed that it actually becomes a protoplasmic poison which disrupts the circulatory system, nervous system and fluid balance. Yikes.
