Busting the Sugar-and-Fiber Myths
The most common objection Calbom hears is that juice is loaded with sugar. Her answer is a ratio, not a restriction: 80 percent vegetables to 20 percent fruit. A cucumber or zucchini base, an apple for sweetness, ginger for spice and its anti-inflammatory benefits, maybe a little lemon or a carrot — she avoids pairing beets and carrots together since both are higher in natural sugar. As for the claim that juice has no fiber, she calls that simply inaccurate: juice retains soluble fiber, while insoluble fiber is what's separated out in the process. “Think of it as a big liquid supplement of nutrients your body can absorb easily,” she says. “Get your insoluble fiber from vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and so forth.”
The Seed Oil Debate
Calbom's newest book, The Truth About Seed Oils, tackles a subject she says has been flattened into 60-second sound bites online. The oils she cautions against are corn, soy, canola, safflower, sunflower, grapeseed, rice bran, cottonseed, and peanut. They undergo, in her account, substantial industrial processing: high heat, solvent extraction, then deodorizing and bleaching to strip color, smell, and taste. She recommends replacing them with olive, avocado, and coconut oil, or ghee. “As consumers vote with their wallets, manufacturers will offer more choices,” she says, pointing to olive-oil mayonnaise and avocado-oil chips now showing up on mainstream shelves. Her broader argument is about balance: many Western diets deliver far more omega-6 fat than omega-3, and she'd like to see that ratio corrected by trimming processed seed oils and adding fish like salmon, trout, sardines, and mackerel, along with walnuts, ground flaxseed, hemp seeds, and pasture- raised egg yolks. “What we want are foods, oils, and fats that support lower inflammation in the body,” she says.
“It bothers me when people say you have to be perfect and make it right now and drink it immediately. It's better to use the next- best option and still get nutrients you might not otherwise get.”
— Cherie Calbom
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