‘Just Juice Cleanse’ chefs talk healthy, tasty liquid detox

Christine Cho, a Korea-American raw cook chef from New York City, and Kim Yong-hui, an internationally trained pastry chef, have joined forces with Herald Ecofarm, a sister company of The Korea Herald, to create “Just Juice Cleanse.”

“Just Juice Cleanse” is Korea’s very first brand of detox juices created to promote a healthier lifestyle by naturally ridding the body of unwanted chemicals and waste.

“Detox programs get rid of toxins in your body very quickly,” said Kim. “Compared to just eating salads, which gets rid of around 10 to 15 percent of your body’s toxins, this detox program cleanses up to 80 percent.”

With the rising trend of liquid fasting and juice detoxification, there are many make-at-home recipes that offer people a simple, water-based food substitute beverage. However, many of these recipes are not known for their taste and offer only a single drink option.

“Unlike the other cleansing diet programs out there, like the lemon diet where you’re only permitted to drink the lemon water, we have developed a very tasty and healthy line of juices that offer people a different variety of flavors,” said Cho.

“You may wonder why a pastry chef would have anything to with formulating a juice line,” said Kim. “But as a trained pastry chef, I know and work with fruit every day. I wanted to help create not only a healthy detox juice line, but one that people will actually enjoy drinking.”

“Juice Just Cleanse” consists of six different fruit and vegetable juice blends to consume over a three-day period. The entire juice line was developed through combining the two chefs’ personal recipes and taste formulas.

“The whole process of creating this juice cleanse was very intense. It was all about trial and error and trial and error,” said Cho. “Within a week we must have created more than 40 samples before we finally narrowed it down to the final selections.”

The juice line includes: “Green Up,” a breakfast drink made of celery, spinach, cucumber, ginger and melon (7 a.m.); “Booster C,” an energizing vitamin drink with oranges, apples and freshly squeezed citron juice (10 a.m.); “Skinny Lemon,” a lemon, apple, cayenne pepper and fresh water drink to promote healthy digestion (1 p.m.); “Root Power,” a yam, apple and carrot juice mix chock full of fiber (4 p.m.); “Refresher,” a light and fresh parsley, cucumber, pear and lemon drink to cool down the body (7 p.m.); and last but not least “Milky Way,” a smooth and sweet nighttime drink made from almond, fresh water, cinnamon powder, vanilla bean and honey to promote relaxation (10 p.m.).

By Julie Jackson (juliejackson@heraldcorp.com)