I don’t know about you but I love drinking natural juices and smoothies. My diet is pretty healthy although depending upon your perspective you might say it is somewhat extreme. I am a vegetarian, I don’t drink or smoke, I exercise regularly and tend to avoid much of the “crap” thrown at us by the food industry. It is my choice, I don’t ram it down anyone’s throat and I certainly don’t try and defend it because for every reason I give, some smart Alec can find some sort of justification to counter it. 

 

Interestingly enough if I went in the complete opposite direction as a lifestyle choice, some smart Alec could find some sort of justification to counter that too. Who is right?  – who cares as long as your choice makes you happy and you are willing to be responsible for the consequences (positive or negative) of the choice you have made.

 

Just recently, a study identified that those people who drink fresh juices three or more times a week are 75% less likely to suffer from Alzheimers disease.

 

Anyway enough of the veggie-politics….

 

A big part of my diet is freshly made vegetable juice or a fresh fruit smoothie. I absolutely love my juice cocktail of apples, carrots, celery, cucumber, ginger and spinach in the morning.  In the summer I also like knocking up a banana, blackberry, kiwi fruit and orange smoothie – Yum.

 

So what is the difference between a juice and a smoothie?

 

Good question and the answer is that when you juice, the fluid extracted from the fruit or vegetable leaving a pulp that is usually discarded (unless you want to make some muffins J). With a smoothie, the fruit is blended together which is why most smoothies are made up of soft fruit like bananas or berries.

 

Now I travel quite speaking to groups and organisations about how they can read faster and deal with information overwhelm which means I am often away from my trusty juicer and blender. That usually means no fresh juice for me to gorge on in the morning (just after my sunrise Tai Chi and Meditation – remember before you judge it is a choice I have made J).

 

So I have to rely on the next best thing which is either juices or smoothies bought from the shop. However the trouble with many juices and smoothies on the shelves of supermarkets is that they often contain lots of sugar or plenty of additives. So it was a delight when I discovered The “Innocent Pure Fruit Smoothie©” from www.innocentdrinks.com.  These contain only fresh produce and are gorgeous.

 

The people who produce them are committed to producing fresh juices, support the environment and have a great sense of humour. One of the first things I always do when I buy one of their drinks is to read the label on the side because there is usually something to snigger at. For example there might be something along the lines of:

 

 

 

And the messages on their products are constantly changing. On their larger cartons they have pictures of the fruit that they have used and occasionally will have a picture of something not in the drink – like a tractor or an armchair! So I really do recommend that you buy their drinks for two reasons:

 

 

So Just recently I was reading the side of one of their bottles (orange, bananas and pineapple it was) when I came across this:

 

 

You might have received one of those circular e mails last year that gave another example of this phenomenon at work. I lost the original e mail but I believe that it was the result of some research by more clever guys and gals in white coats.

 

So even with most of the letters in the wrong order, we can still understand the meaning of the paragraph. This is because it is the brain that does the reading and not the eye (which is merely the camera that picks up the letters and words).

 

The most important concept that this illustrates for me is that the brain takes in things in meaningful chunks and that reading things one word at a time can lead to all sorts of problems. Sadly our reading instruction as children stops short of what is really necessary to make us effective readers, particular in this day and age when there is so much that we have to process. We are taught to read single words as young children and once we have mastered that we just start reading longer words and more difficult words and more of them.

 

So using this example if I show you this:

 

 

You might wander what on earth does this word mean. However when you see it in this context:

 

 

It is much easier to understand what it means when you have got the bigger picture and the context of the individual word.

 

That is why you are learning to read more effectively, one of the ways of doing that is to read words in chunks. The brain likes information in that form, it can handle information in that form, you will start to read faster and you will understand it better.

 

So now you konw waht you have to do to bgein radineg mcuh more ectviffely and taht is to srtat gopnirug wdros tgoetehr. Smeoohw I do not tnihk this psot wlil rnak hgih in the sraech egniens.

 

And big thanks to the guys at www.innocentdrinks.com