New favorite thing: Odwalla Superfood

I'm not a juice person.

Truth be told, I'm not a fruit person. I was raised eating vegetables (though generally cooked, Southern style, within an inch of their lives), but not fruit, and I never acquired a taste for it. Any of it, really, with the exception of white nectarines, which I eat every year when they're in season until they make me sick.

So, when Skinny Spice offered me a glass of Odwalla's Superfood quite a while back when I was visiting her, it gave me pause. Not just because it was juice, but also because it was green. Really green. Like, the color of spinach. And Superfood was also super thick -- it sort of glopped out of the jug into our glasses.

I have to admit I agreed to drink it out of politeness, though she'd insisted it wouldn't taste "green" -- it was sweet and fruity. But she was right -- it was wonderful! Sweet and fruity, like she said, but not too much so. It didn't taste a bit like spinach -- or grass clippings or bong water or any of the other things it sure looked like.

Superfood, it turns out, is a blend of apple juice and purees of peach, strawberry and mango. Its color comes from 1,000 mg of spirulina per 8-ounce serving -- spirulina provides tons of nutrients like vitamin C, potassium, iodine and beta carotene -- as well as wheat grass, barley grass and wheat sprouts. It's more filling than regular juice, probably because of the puree and greens, and doesn't give me the blood sugar crashes I get sometimes with regular juice.

That one glass with Skinny Spice was just the beginning. I now buy it by the jug myself every week at the supermarket. For a non-fruit person, it's not a bad substitute.