The Juice Movie: Psyche and Skepticism

This looks like a nice, inspiring film that will probably create a very minor juice fast craze. And that’s great. People should juice veggies at home. I do it all the time. I also hang out at a juice bar/coffee/bike shop so much that I could get mail there and no one would bat an eye (that incidentally bought their juicer from Whole Foods who now uses concentrates in their smoothies, so don’t buy them). The star seems like a funny guy, the show is filled with information that everyone should know, and I love the angle that it’s how you feel, not how you look, that ultimately matters. I’ll give it a thumb’s up based only on a preview. So where’s the skepticism?

I can see the excuses already. I can’t afford a juicer. I can’t juice fast with my job. All liquids but soda make me sick (an actual Message Board excuse), etc. The lesson many people are going to take away from this film is going to be that you must either juice fast or be fat. We are a country that, for some strange reason, sees the world in black and white terms. And nothing could be less black and white than nutrition because there are many different healthy ways to eat.

Somebody mentioned to me recently that Beachbody had a lot of different diet plans. While this is true, as each diet plan uses a slightly different psychological tool for motivation, all of our “different” plans end up doing the exact same thing; transition you away from junk food so that your diet consists mainly of whole natural foods. It’s all very simple and we have millions of success stories to show it works. You don’t need juice. You don’t need eat like a caveman, a French woman, Aphrodite or Dr. Phil. You don’t need to stay in a zone or pretend you live on The Riviera.

The only black and white thing about nutrition is the cause of the obesity epidemic. We eat too much crap. And we don’t exercise very much. If you change those two things you will stop being fat, you’ll get sick less, and you’ll feel good most of the time. The real solution is a lot simpler than even dumping veggies into a blender. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.