Being Swedish means you have got an upper hand on the sweet stuff. As a nation, we consume more sweets per capita than any other country in the world. That’s saying something. Eating pick n’ mix, or smågodis as we call it, is a national past time and we are the connoisseurs. Every grocery shop has a section for pick n’ mix and parents and children alike happily fill their bags with the sweet stuff. But it can be a slippery slope and the innocent bags of lördagsgodis (saturday candy) we buy for our kids sets them up with a serious sugar habit that can be as addictive as a Class A drug and equally difficult to kick.

Kris Carr, the green juice doyenne and author of Crazy Sexy Diet, urges us to “dump the crack!”. She says that “sugar taxes your immune system and is highly addictive” and continues that “excess sugar….robs your bod of minerals, lowers your precious PH, rots your teeth, wigs out your pancreas, feeds candida, fires up inflammation, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer, stresses your nervous system and adrenals, and screws with normal hormone functions.”

Elizabeth Peyton-Jones, the author of Eat Yourself Young and a British stalwart of all things ‘youthing’ claims that sugar is one of her five most ageing foods. She confirms Carr’s point that “Sugar is involved in three of the ageing processes; it can create acidity, cause inflammation and disturb the hormonal balance of the body”. So far not so good.

Ditching sugar is becoming increasingly popular as we move away from fearing fats and instead start to focus on the white stuff. Nicole Mowbray, author of Sweet Nothing, even goes as far as talking about “sugar faces” that displays signs of sugar indulgence such as acne, wrinkles, red eyes and dull skin. Not only does sugar make us fat and ill – it can also makes us look prematurely old.

Here at the Green Swede HQ we have banged on about the health and the beautifying attributes of vegetable juice for some time and our customers are now asking us to supply them with sugar free (i.e. free from any fruit) juices in their weekly deliveries and juice cleanses. As a consequence we are about to launch a brand new cleanse which includes no added fruit at all (lemons does not count as they have alkalising properties and is classed as a diabetic superfood). Watch this space!

Today’s recipe is a good example of a juice which injects nutrients, alkalises and stimulate the body’s own detoxification process without added fruit. Try it every morning for a week and try to make a conscious effort to reduce sugar intake where you can. Up your intake of green leafy vegetables, pulses, nuts, seeds and good fats. Skip the dessert, the booze, the sweets and the sugary juices and see what happens. At the very worst you may lose a few pounds and get a clearer complexion and who could not benefit from that?!

Mean and Green (Low GI Green Juice)

Handful of kale

Handful of spinach

3 celery sprigs

1/2 cucumber

1 lemon (skin removed but rind left on)

Large piece of ginger root

Parsley

Place all in your juicer (not a blender which would make it a smoothie and you’d have to remove seeds of lemon and skin of ginger) and drink immediately. If too strong dilute with filtered water. Have a great Wednesday and here’s to good health!!

Birgitta x