Pedestal – Page 3 – Chef V's Blog

Terrific Turmeric: Why Nutritionists Are Calling it a ‘Super Spice’

November 30, 2021 Chef V

Veronica working from home

Turmeric has always been identifiable by its golden color and popularity in Indian cuisine. However, the fragrant spice’s health benefits have only recently gained attention. Some nutritionists are now even calling it a ‘super spice’.

Read on to learn more about turmeric’s numerous health benefits and why we heavily feature it in our detox soups.

What is turmeric?

In America, some people may consider turmeric an exotic spice. However, in many parts of the world like India, it’s a staple ingredient.

Turmeric technically refers to the plant turmeric, which is a relative of ginger. The rhizomes, or root stalks of this plant, can be boiled, dried, and then ground down to create the orangey-yellow powder we call turmeric.

Turmeric is native to India. In India, turmeric isn’t just a flavorful ingredient – it is also an important part of traditional medicine as well as a dye for Hindi and Buddhist monk robes. In fact, due to its color, Europeans originally nicknamed it Indian Saffron.

Thanks to its bright color, mild flavor, and medicinal benefits, it didn’t take long for turmeric to become popular throughout Asia as well as internationally.

Why is turmeric so healthy?

Turmeric is packed with health benefits, largely thanks to a bioactive substance called curcumin.

Curcumin is a well-known anti-inflammatory and polyphenol. It promotes good heart health, boosts liver function, and aids in digestion. The latter benefit is particularly important during detoxes when you’re trying to rid your body of harmful toxins.

Of course, we can’t miss out on one of the most important turmeric benefits. It tastes delicious! If you’re making your own soups or healthy curries, turmeric is always a great ingredient to include.

blueberries

Does turmeric have side effects?

There is no concrete evidence of any side effects to eating or drinking turmeric.

Anecdotally speaking, some people new to turmeric have reported small amounts of indigestion after consuming large amounts of the ingredient. However, this is often a reported side effect of many new spices and ingredients and may just be a sign of your body getting used to it.

Perhaps the most preposterous myth about turmeric is that it causes pregnant women to go into labor early. There is zero evidence of this. In fact, pregnant women may very well benefit from including more turmeric in their diet.

The Super Ingredients

By design, a lot of ingredients are found in both of our healthy detox soups. These detox vegetable soups have been designed specifically for getting the most out of a juice cleanse, and pair perfectly with our other products. Our healthy detox soups will fuel you to roll right through our 21-day cleanse.

Cooking with turmeric

At Chef V, we’ve included turmeric and curcumin in both of our delicious detox soups. Not only does the ingredient taste delicious, but it also aids in helping your body detox harmful chemicals. Not to mention, its natural pigment makes every soup look beautiful and inviting!

Juice Cleansing the Easy Way: Fiber and Juice Cleanse Diets

November 29, 2021 carl@pedestalsearch.com

Veronica working from home

There are, sadly, many people who will turn their nose up at the very idea of a juice cleanse. Very often, this group consists of those who tried a juice cleanse and couldn’t make it through. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, however, if you can get through a juice cleanse, especially if you are just starting out. Plenty of people report feeling too hungry, exhausted, and low energy to make it through. However, this is rarely a problem for those taking a Chef V cleanse, especially our more modest goal versions like the 3 day juice cleanse.

So what’s our secret? Chef V’s cleanse program is designed to give you all the nutrients you need while cleansing. And one of the most overlooked, but impactful nutrients when it comes to juice cleanse diets has to be fiber. Here, we’ll give you everything you need to know about fiber, and why it’s so important to even a simple 3 juice cleanse.

So What is Fiber Anyways?

Alright – so, fiber is a carbohydrate. Wait, don’t run away! Not all carbs are always bad for you. And fiber is a very unique carbohydrate indeed. Often, the problem with carbs is that they tend to dump a lot of sugar into our blood, causing blood sugar spikes. fiber, on the other hand, simply passes through our digestive tracts, not overstaying its welcome. This isn’t to say, however, that fiber passes through you without any long-term health benefits.

The fiber that we eat tends to come in two forms, soluble and insoluble, each with its own purpose and benefits. Soluble fiber helps keep your digestion working at a regular place. It’s not just digestion that soluble fiber helps you manage, however – it also helps you lower cholesterol levels, and manage blood pressure and blood sugar. Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, simply passes through your body and is vital to preventing bowel syndromes like constipation.

What’s important to note about fiber is that while it’s super important to our health, it’s only found in plant-based foods, like fruits and veggies. In particular, dark leafy greens, squashes, carrots, and some fruits (like apples) are great sources of fiber.

Fiber and Juice Cleanse Diets

You’ll find that some juice cleanses (even short 3 day juice cleanses) will play havoc with your bowels. This is because, very often, those juice cleanses focus on the sexier nutrients like antioxidants, and don’t give poor humble fiber a second thought. Or, if they do consider fiber, they only want to chase the cholesterol-busting soluble fiber, while not giving enough attention to the bowel-helping insoluble fiber. This means that people often suffer intense intestinal distress when undergoing a juice cleanse diet.

Thankfully, if you’re on a Chef V detox diet, whether a 3 day juice cleanse or a 21 day juice cleanse, you don’t need to worry about running to the toilet every half hour. This is because we specifically designed our detox diet to be something that people could actually, you know, finish.

How do we do it? Well, first of all, we don’t just toss you a crate of juice and call it a day. Our Chef V cleanses come with protein shakes and detox soups as well, to make sure that you are getting a well-rounded amount of nutrients and fiber into you – especially through our detox soup’s sweet potato and carrots. Plus, our fresh juice is filled with tons of fiber-packed leafy greens. This means that our juice cleanses are great for losing weight by cutting down on carbs, not because of all the exercise you’re getting doing sprints to the bathroom. If that sounds great to you, make sure to check out the ingredients in our cleanse.

Sweet Victory: How to Win the War Against Sugar Cravings with Low Sugar Juice Cleanses

November 29, 2021 Chef V

Veronica working from home

Halloween might be long gone, but many of us still feel haunted by the ghosts of sugar cravings. It can be really hard to kick sugar cravings once we’re started to make a habit of indulging them and working excess sugar into our diets. Here, we’ll go over how to combat sugar cravings, including by using detox juice in low sugar juice cleanses.

What Causes Sugar Cravings?

As the eminent scholar Sun Tzu once said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” In your constant struggle against sugar cravings, it’s therefore important to understand just why your body keeps demanding the sweet stuff, and why your mind keeps giving in.

There are actually a few reasons that we end up craving sugar – no two people’s battle against sugar cravings is the same. Some of the main reasons for sugar cravings are generally the following:

1. Blood Sugar Issues
Not all sugar is bad, of course. The trick is trying to regulate the right amount. Your body is trying to run a constant balancing act between your blood sugar levels, and your natural insulin levels. Get too much sugar and your insulin levels spike – thus making you think you need even more sugar. You can easily end up trapped on a sugary roller coaster with no way off.

2. Stress
Sometimes it’s not that your body’s sweetness cravings are too powerful. Sometimes it’s that your mind is in a particularly vulnerable state. If you are under constant stress, or not sleeping well, your body can start to release hormones that mess with your blood sugar level, leading to you rushing for the sugary foods for comfort.

3. Addiction
Some studies have suggested that sugar might have addictive properties. This means that some people are just going to be wired to crave sugar more than others, especially if they have a history of binging.

4. “Empty Sugars”
A lot of refined sugars in processed foods (such as high-fructose corn syrup) provide the taste of sweetness while not actually giving you much in the way of real sugar or nutrition. This means that you are left unsatisfied and more desire to eat sugar.

5. Dehydration
Not getting enough to drink during the day can cause an increase in appetite, particularly for sweet things. Without enough water, our body struggles to perform many of its basic functions – including converting existing sugars into energy. So if we’re low on water, our body gets confused by the lack of sugar conversion and assumes that we need more.

6. Digestive Issues
As we can see, sugar processing in the body is a delicate process, and there are plenty of stages where it can either get messed up, or your body can’t recognize that it’s getting the sugar you need. One of the most important steps is digestion. If you have issues with the flora in your gut (not enough good bacteria, or too much bad bacteria), you may not be getting enough sugar from your stomach into the rest of your body.

7. Carbohydrate Overload
Often, it’s pretty obvious if what we’re eating is a sweet treat that will add glucose to our bodies. But did you know that many kinds of carbohydrates will break down into glucose as well? Too many carbs can actually cause your body to spike its insulin levels so severely that you may become somewhat insulin immune.

How Do I Beat These Sugar Cravings?

As you can see, sugar cravings aren’t a simple matter. Rather they are the result of your body demanding more of the things it needs to function prosperity, or your mind panicking and misunderstanding what you need right now. Of course, knowing is only half the battle. The other half of the battle is going to need some good tactics in order to beat those sugar cravings.

1. Moderate Indulgence
Sometimes the best strategy is to stage a temporary retreat. What’s most important is that you avoid those devastating sugar binges. Eat one cookie to avoid going through the whole box. Get a bar of dark chocolate to avoid binging on higher-sugar chocolate. Better yet, try mixing your sweet indulgence with something a bit healthier. Go for a chocolate-dipped banana rather than a processed candy bar. Make sure to eat slowly, and savor the flavor.

2. Get a Healthy Alternative
Sure, your body might be telling you that you need junk food right now. However, if you grab some healthy and slightly sweet fruit, you may find that it manages to curb your sugar cravings, giving you the glucose you need. You can even find some sweet gum to chew on to help give at least the sensation of eating sweets, without adding any new calories or carbs into your diet. Most importantly – drink plenty of water with your snack!

3. Get Moving
Sun Tzu wrote an entire chapter of his famous “Art of War” on the subject of maneuvering. Moving around is very helpful for fighting sugar cravings as well. If you have a sugar addiction, exercise can give you those feel-good chemicals in your brain – without the subsequent crash in mood that comes after realizing you ate the whole tub of ice cream.

4. Maintain a Healthy, Regular Diet
If you end up often skipping meals, or eating meals low in nutritional value, your body and mind are going to go into full panic mode trying to figure out what is going wrong. And often, their solution is going to be to try to get you to eat sugary foods in order to bump up your blood sugar levels.

5. Low Sugar Juice Cleanse
Sometimes all this maneuvering around and accommodating your sugar cravings isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to attack the problem head-on. Sugar cravings can be such an insidious enemy because of their tendency to create cycles. You crave sugar, so you load up on sugary foods. Then your body is thrown out of whack and overproduces on insulin. Then your blood sugar drops, and you are back to square one, craving sweets desperately.

A low sugar juice cleanse is the perfect way to help fight those sugar cravings directly. Detox juice helps serve as a “reset button” on your blood sugar levels, helping you break that deadly cycle. However, it can help in other ways as well. A low sugar juice cleanse is great for the health of your gut. The promotion of better gut health means that you’ll have a better time extracting natural sugars in the future.

Low sugar juice cleanses are also a great way to lose weight. This can help reduce your stress, as well as the issue of all that extra fat slowly breaking down into new sugars. In fact, when it comes to defeating sugar cravings in open battle, a blended juice cleanse is one of your most powerful weapons. So why not go check out our cleanse options, and ready yourself for your victory over sugar cravings?

Your Guide to Nutrition and Sleep

November 22, 2021 Chef V

Veronica working from home

Sleep and Nutrition have a bigger connection than you may realize. If you’re suffering from insomnia, the issue might lie in your diet. This piece will explain why sleep is so important and how nutrition and sleep relate to each other – and how a blended juice cleanse detox can help you out if you’re not getting as much shuteye as you should.

Dangers of Sleepless Nights

There are a host of issues that come with not getting enough sleep. No matter how healthy you eat and how much you exercise (and how much you juice cleanse), you can still ruin your health by not getting that needed shuteye. Sleep is so important because this is the time when your body and mind can regenerate and recover from being active all day long. This means that sleep isn’t just important for physical health, but for mental health and cognitive abilities as well.

The most obvious symptom of lack of sleep will be, well, sleepiness. That sounds benign, but trying to get anything done during a day when you haven’t had enough sleep is a real chore. This sleepiness can conceal some more severe effects, such as lack of alertness, problems with memory, increased stress, and difficulty concentrating and exercising. Lack of sleep can also severely impact your immune system.

And that’s just the issues you’ll run into during the short term! Poor sleep patterns over an extended period can lead to some significant health issues. The stress caused by lack of sleep can lead to conditions such as hypertension and stress eating, which can lead to greater weight. Lack of sleep can even mess with the hormones that help regulate your cardiovascular system – this means even more weight being put on, as well as an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes. Lack of sleep can also lead to severe or worsening depression or anxiety over time.

Tips for Better Sleep

Human society has been doing its best to ruin our ability to sleep in a variety of ways. Too much light in the evenings, and too many glowing screens, tend to confuse our body’s ability to slow down functions in preparation for sleep. The best schedule for sleep involves at least an hour of “downtime” before bed – nothing beats a good book for this. Not only does this relax you, but it also starts to train your brain to associate the time before bed with winding down.

Scheduling is also important. It can be all about when you get up in the morning, as much as when you get to bed. If you can get up at a consistent hour, you’ll start to train your body to go to sleep at a proper time to wake up at that hour.

It’s also important to have a sleeping space free from distractions. For many of us this can be difficult, but cutting down on sound and light is important. If your bed isn’t giving you the comfort you need, you may want to look into a change of mattress or pillows.

And then there’s the very interesting link between sleep and nutrients, which we’ll get into here next. As they say, you are what you eat – and you want to be someone with a body ready for sleep!

Nutrition and Sleep

As you can see, there are plenty of methods to achieve better sleeping habits. One of the most potent methods is actually nutritional. A healthy diet can mean the difference between peaceful slumber and sleepless nights.

We mentioned earlier that lack of sleep can prompt you to start making bad dietary decisions. This relationship works in reverse. Having a proper intake of a wide variety of vitamins and minerals has been shown to improve sleep quality. If you’re missing a key vitamin or other nutrients, you may start to have issues sleeping.

Why is this? Studies are still being done on this, but we do know that sleep is closely related to the complex chemistry in our brain. We also know that getting the right vitamins and minerals improves the function of that brain chemistry – this is why a bad diet can lead to you feeling gross not just physically, but mentally. Our brain releases certain chemicals when it’s time to sleep to help us drift off. If we’re missing the important components of those chemicals, our brain is going to struggle to properly turn itself off and rest. And a brain without rest is going to be an unhappy brain.

Conversely, diets that are too high in carbs may make you feel drowsy during the day but can ruin your sleep when night rolls around. And we all know what diets that are too heavy in sugar and caffeine can do to you – these substances are some of the worst offenders when it comes to ruining sleep schedules.

This is why blended juice cleanses tend to be so great for helping sleep. Firstly, the best diets for sleep are those that are filled with fruits and vegetables (and all those amazing vitamins contained within). Not only does a blended juice cleanse make sure you’re getting a wide range of veggies, but the fact that they are raw means that fewer of those key sleep vitamins have been removed in the prep process. This means your brain is getting everything it needs for a proper shutdown.

Blended juice cleanses are also a great way to give your body a break from carbs, sugar, and caffeine, so you don’t need to worry about any of these substances playing havoc with your ability to get some shuteye. Blended juice cleanses are a great way to feel energetic and focused during the day, and still get plenty of sleep at night.

Want to start to improve your sleep duration and feel amazing during the day? Then give our Chef V blended juice cleanses a spin. With even just a few days you’ll be feeling significantly better – rocking your days, and sleeping sounding during your nights.

What Makes Chef V’s Soups So Great

November 17, 2021 Chef V

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Green drinks and blended juices always tend to hog the spotlight when it comes to cleanses. While it is true that they play a starring role, you can’t make it through an extended cleanse on juice alone. Enter our signature healthy detox soups.

Flavors
When it comes to soups, we have a truly fantastic pair ready to serve up with every cleanse package. While you might notice that some of the most important ingredients for healthy detox soups show up in both, we’ve also made sure that each has a special flair all its own.

The Ginger Carrot-Zing Soup more than lives up to its flashy name. As expected, this carrot ginger detox soup starts off with (you guessed it!) ginger and carrot. It then adds some nutritious veggies in yams and onions, and some healthy spices with garlic and turmeric – with a splash of sea salt and filtered water for flavor.

The Sweet Potato Curry Soup is pretty close to the same. It just does a little shuffling on the vegetable front – the carrots and yams are traded for sweet potato and leeks, with a little special curry powder added in for extra deliciousness.

The Super Ingredients
By design, a lot of ingredients are found in both of our healthy detox soups. These detox vegetable soups have been designed specifically for getting the most out of a juice cleanse, and pair perfectly with our other products. Our healthy detox soups will fuel you to roll right through our 21-day cleanse.

Two bowls of soup with pumpkin seeds on top.

Carrots
While carrots being good for your eyesight might be a really interesting myth, they do contain a ton of vitamin A and C. This means that they’re great for your immune system and even better for the health of your hair and skin. In other words, carrot-based soups won’t just make you feel great, they’ll also help you look great too!

Yams
Yams are a real powerhouse of a fruit, which is why we’ve given them a starring role in our carrot ginger detox soup. Being packed full of great vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C, vitamin D5, potassium, and manganese is one thing. But they’re also great for digestive health due to the particular starches found within them – perfect for a detox cleanse.

Sweet Potato
Just like yams (which they are often confused with), sweet potatoes are crazy good for your digestion, and so crazy good to include in your healthy detox soups. Their heavy doses of vitamin C and choline help boost your immune system and reduce inflammation, keeping you at your healthiest throughout your cleansing period.

Leeks
Leeks are first cousins with onions and garlic. This family of vegetables is known to regulate cholesterol and improve heart health – perfect for someone trying to cut back on dangerous cholesterol levels with a cleanse.

Onions
Aromatic onions should be the base of all great soups. Onions contain quercetin, an antibacterial that perfectly complements a detox juice cleanse.

Garlic
Like onions, garlic wards off bad bacterias, toxins, and vampires the common cold.

Ginger
It wouldn’t be our famous carrot ginger detox soup without the ginger. And it wouldn’t be nearly as good for you either. A good cleanse means a healthy digestive system, and there are few things better for a digestive system than ginger. Ginger is packed with digestive boosting and anti-inflammatory properties.

Turmeric
Last but far from least, turmeric is known to aid in digestion, as well as improve heart and liver health. In fact, it’s often noted as one of the world’s new superfoods.

Try our 21-Day Detox
If you’re looking to lose weight and develop healthy lifelong eating habits, try our 21-day detox.

On this easy-to-follow cleanse you can lose between 30–40 pounds, all while removing harmful toxins from your body and refocusing yourself on a healthier you.

Learn more about our 21-day detox today.

You, Your Liver, and Chef V

November 15, 2021 Chef V

Veronica working from home

Do you ever stop and think “where would I be without my liver?”. If you answered yes- well, you certainly have some weird thoughts! However, you also have a train of thought that is very relevant to this blog. Liver health is super important, but it often gets overlooked in favor of organs with better public relations, such as the heart, brain, and stomach. Understanding good liver health is key to good health overall. And good liver health can be improved through detox juice – as we’ll explain here.

What Does the Liver Do?

You’ve probably heard people joke about their livers when referring to their ability to take in alcohol. That’s actually pretty close to the mark on what livers do – but only the start. Did you know that scientists have identified over 500 vital functions that a liver performs? Some of the most important functions include:
* Regulating the breakdown of fats into useful forms
* Storing and managing excess glucose
* Regulating and producing proteins
* Storing iron for the blood
* Handling Blood clotting
* Removing bacteria from the bloodstream
* Filtering out toxins and drugs
* Processing waste out of the body

Quite a lot, huh? Basically, your liver is your body’s most powerful filter. However, far too many people take their liver for granted. Even the most powerful filter can get overwhelmed, clogged, or damaged. If you want your liver to take good care of you, you need to make sure you are taking good care of your liver.

How to Take Care Of Your Liver

Just like your liver has a ton of different functions, there are also a myriad of risks that it can face if you’re not careful. The following is just a brief list of the ways that you can make sure that you have a healthy, happy liver that is busy doing its job of flushing out toxins.

Eat a Balanced Diet: When it comes to good liver health, nothing is better than getting a variety of fruits and veggies. The green veggies (like you’ll find in our green drink) are particularly good at promoting good liver health.

Exercise: Getting enough exercise is good for pretty much every part of your body, including your liver. Exercising helps burn not just the fat on your body, but the fat in your blood as well, leading to a healthier liver.

Maintain a Healthy Weight: Maintaining levels of fat in the body is one of your liver’s key jobs. If you are over your healthy body weight, it can start to damage your liver. Exercise and healthy eating, mentioned above, are good ways to maintain a healthy weight, as are Chef V’s cleanse programs, like our 21 day detox.

Moderate Your Alcohol Intake: One of the things your liver is most famed for is helping your body process alcohol. It’s only good manners that you try not to overload the poor organ with too much of the stuff. Drinking more than one or two glasses of alcohol a day can start to have serious impacts on your organs.

Be Careful of Medication…: If you’ve looked closely, you’ve probably noticed that some medications come with warnings about liver damage if you take too much. Always do your best to heed these warnings. Your liver is what helps spread drugs throughout your body, both useful and harmful, and you don’t want to overload it.

…. and Supplements: Nutritional supplements seem like a great way to “cheat the system”. You get nutrition, but without having to bother trying to meal plan for it. However, getting your supplements in an inorganic way can often be dangerous for your liver, putting too much of certain vitamins and minerals through it. If you’re looking for a nutritional boost, it’s better to look into food products that pack a lot in – like our detox juices and green drinks, of course.

If you’re interested in giving your liver some extra love, why not look into our 21 day detox? You’ll flush those toxins out of your body, let your liver get ahead on its own toxin-filtering, and give it the nutrients it needs to be in fighting form.

Cholesterol Management With Chef V’s Detox Juice Diet

November 8, 2021 Chef V

Veronica working from home

We know that Cholesterol is bad from countless pieces of dieting advice – but what actually is cholesterol? Is there any way to save ourselves from it? What are the foundations of cholesterol management? With all these pressing questions, Cholesterol can seem like a real nutritional boogeyman. Chef V is here to help give a simple explanation of what Cholesterol is, and how you can deal with it.

What Is Cholesterol?

Here’s a fact. You have cholesterol right now in your body – and that’s not something you should be panicking over. Everyone has cholesterol and it’s an important substance (if you want to get technical, a “lipid”) inside your body. In fact, all animals have cholesterol, and it’s important in helping your cells make hormones, vitamin D, and substances that help you digest food. So why all the worry?

As is usual, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. In particular, cholesterol can be dangerous if too much of it ends up in your blood. Cholesterol can start to combine with other substances in arteries, creating a plaque-like substance. This can end up making your arteries difficult for your blood to get through. At worst, it can cause heart attacks, heart disease, and stroke.

Maybe a bit confusingly, not all cholesterol has this effect. “Good Cholesterol” (also known as HDL Cholesterol) is referred to as the kind of cholesterol that helps move other cholesterol through to your liver (where it can be safely filtered). Bad cholesterol is the kind that hangs around in your arteries instead of moving on its way. You can consider it somewhat like an unwanted houseguest.

What Makes Bad Cholesterol Hang Around?

There are a few things that can cause that bad cholesterol to start to build up. Lack of exercise and smoking, for example, will lower the “good cholesterol” that is supposed to shuffle that bad cholesterol off to your liver. This makes it harder to get rid of that bad cholesterol.

However, the real key factor in the buildup of bad cholesterol is certainly diet, particularly saturated and trans fats. Eating foods high in these kinds of fats will start to cause a buildup in cholesterol. High-fat foods can include meats and chocolates, as well as foods that are heavily deep-fried or processed. What’s worse is that these high-fat foods tend to make you put on weight – which also increases the dangers of bad cholesterol.

There are, of course, some other risk factors at play here. Men tend to have a more difficult time handling their bad cholesterol than pre-menopause women do. Your genetics can also have an effect on how well your body manifests bad cholesterol. Regardless, making sure to monitor your fat intake is one of the most impactful ways that you can get a handle on cholesterol management.

Fight Bad Cholesterol With a Detox Juice Diet

Diet and weight management are the keys to managing your cholesterol levels in the long term. You want to make sure that you are getting plenty of fruits and veggies, watching your calorie intake, and doing your best to lose weight. Especially useful to look out for are antioxidants, foods that help boost heart health.

If you are looking to kickstart your blood cholesterol management, Chef V’s detox juice diet is here to help. Undergoing blended juice cleanses is a great way to improve your health, and manage high blood pressure. Firstly, our green juice recipe is great for encouraging weight loss, which helps lower your risk of building up high cholesterol.

Secondly, our fresh juices are filled with great antioxidant substances, such as our black and green kale. Our detox juice recipes move you out of the cholesterol risk zone of higher weight and boost your heart health with their great and nutritional ingredients. Want proof of this weight loss? Check out some of our success stories here!

Your Guide to Nutrition and Sleep

November 1, 2021 Chef V

Veronica working from home

Dangers of Sleepless Nights

Tips for Better Sleep

Nutrition and Sleep

This is why blended juice cleanses tend to be so great for helping sleep. Firstly, the best diets for sleep are those that are filled with fruits and vegetables (and all those amazing vitamins contained within). Not only does a blended juice cleanse ensure you’re getting a wide range of veggies, but the fact that they are raw means that fewer of those key sleep vitamins have been removed in the prep process. This means your brain is getting everything it needs for a proper shutdown.

10 Tips For Making Healthy Detox Soups

October 20, 2021 Chef V

When you’re looking to cleanse, lose weight, and keep up a nutritional diet all at once, soup can be a lifesaver. And with colder weather coming, it can be a delicious way to warm up as well.

Here are our top tips on making the most nutritional detox soups at home, as well as making soups suitable for weight loss.

#1 Veggies, Veggies, Veggies

This tip should be no surprise to anyone. Vegetable-based soups are always going to be the healthiest. They’re also excellent for weight loss since they’re naturally low in fat content and high in nutrition.

#2 Use All of the Vegetable

Did you know that the stalks of vegetables like leeks hold amazing nutritional value? Too often we just take all that extra nutrition and throw it right in the trash. Do some research on the ingredients you are using to see how much of it you can include to maximize nutrition and minimize food waste.

#3 Avoid the Fat

If you’re making your own detox soup recipes at home, make sure to avoid stocks and bases that are fat-heavy. This means no cream bases or additions either – you’ll sabotage your entire weight loss plan right then and there.

#4 Embrace Superfoods…

Of course, not all veggies are created equal. For detox soup recipes, you want as much bang for your buck as possible. Aim to include plenty of “superfoods” – vegetables and fruits bursting with vitamins, minerals, and other healthy nutrients like antibacterials. For example, we base one of our Chef V Detox soup recipes around sweet potatoes, which pack a mean nutritious punch.

#5 … and Super Spices

It’s not just the main ingredients that need to be maximized. Additional flavors like garlic, ginger and turmeric add flavor and contribute to the soup’s nutritional value.

#6 Cut the sodium

The dangers of too much sodium are well documented, and you should take this into account when plotting out a detox soup diet plan. Use reduced sodium stocks and try to avoid adding too much table salt.

#7 Boost the fiber

While you should cut sodium, you should add in extra fiber. You can increase fiber in soup by blending in hardy vegetables and fruits like sweet potatoes. This serves two purposes. First, the fiber will help with your digestion and the detox process as a whole. Second, fiber will help you feel satiated and minimize pesky cravings.

#8 Go for organic

Detox soup recipes for weight loss are designed to help you, well, lose weight. But a good detox soup diet should also be helping you flush out toxins as well. Why sabotage this by putting more processed junk back into your system?

#9 Puree

Pureed soups minimize the strain on your digestive system. Keep your soups silky smooth to ensure proper digestion.

#10 Make it delicious!

Detox soups should be delicious, plain and simple. Use high-quality, organic fruits and vegetables as the base of your soups. Then build out the flavor profile with nutritional aromatics and spices like onions, garlic, ginger, and turmeric. You stand the best chance of succeeding in your cleanse if you actually enjoy the food you're eating slurping.

Don’t want to make your own detox soups?

If you’re short on time or hate the cleanup involved in cooking, why not try our pre-planned detoxes and cleanses. We’ll ship you the exact juices, shakes, and soups you need for a healthy and revitalizing cleanse. All of our products are made from fresh, organic ingredients and have been praised for their great flavors. Get in touch today to learn more!

Your Guide to Gluten

April 13, 2021 Chef V

If you’ve been buying Chef V detox juice products, you may have noticed that we mention all our products are gluten-free. You’ve probably also seen gluten-free options appearing in more and more places over the past years. If you’re someone with a gluten allergy or intolerance, buying gluten-free has probably become second nature to you. However, the whole gluten-free diet is somewhat perplexing for many of us. Since we offer gluten-free products, it makes sense that we give a brief overview of what exactly this means for you!

What is Gluten?

Okay, basics first. Before you figure out if there’s gluten in your 3 day juice cleanse or 7 day juice cleanse, you’ll need to know what it is. Gluten is, in simplest terms, a protein. Of course, since proteins make up a ton of food and a good portion of our body, that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.

More specifically, gluten is a protein found in wheat products, like rye and barley. Beyond being naturally found in some foods, gluten is also a very popular food additive. This is because gluten works just like glue. It’s perfect for helping food products stick together and maintain their shape and consistency.

So gluten shows up in plenty of products you’d expect, such as bread, cereals, and pasta. However, it can also sneak into things like sauces and dressings, used as a binding agent.

What’s the Issue?

The primary issue with gluten is that many people have a severe intolerance for it, known as celiac disease.

It’s essential to note that celiac disease is not strictly a wheat allergy. A wheat allergy is a specific, separate, and often severe condition.

Celiac disease is a bit more of a complicated topic. Essentially, the small intestine of someone with celiac disease triggers an immune response whenever it detects gluten, believing that the gluten is harmful. The response has a lot of nasty side effects – lack of nutritional absorption, diarrhea, anemia, bloating, the works.

So you can understand why clearly marking gluten-free products is super important to people with this condition. Providing gluten-free products is a way to be more inclusive in who can enjoy those products.

Other Benefits of Gluten-Free

As you can guess, the general “schtick” of a gluten-free diet involves cutting back on wheat products and avoiding non-organic foods. Hey – that sounds a little bit like an organic diet that’s also low carb!

For this reason, gluten-free or gluten-reduced diets are also taking off among people who are generally health-conscious. Obviously, just because something is gluten-free doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily healthy. You could eat a diet of only red meat and technically be gluten-free.

Still, a standard gluten-free diet will involve lots of fruits and vegetables, leaner meats, and low-fat dairy products. This isn’t just an excellent diet for people worried about gluten – it’s also an ideal diet for losing weight. If you’re between taking our detox juice cleanses, you may want to keep an eye out for gluten-free options.

Proudly Gluten Free

At Chef V, all our products, from 3-day juice cleanses to 7-day juice cleanses to our green drink, are gluten-free. So no matter if you’re protecting your digestive health or simply looking to lose weight, we have a safe and effective product for you. So check out our detox juice, and get your delivery booked today!