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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Breville BJE200XL Compact Juice Fountain 700-Watt Juice Extractor




Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase
I juice at least once a day as I primarily eat raw foods.

My Jack LaLane juicer finally wore out after 2.5 years of daily use. I was tempted to buy another - but I liked the way everything including the pulp catcher is all in one unit. So glad I got the Breville.

This thing is POWERFUL, especially compared to "Jack LaLanne". It is so powerful I usually don't even use the pusher except to cover the top so your ceiling doesn't get covered with stuff. Other reviewers have mentioned that tendency. What wasn't mentioned is that the reason it does that is because the motor is so beefy that stuff will shoot straight up.

When juicing soft stuff I immediately cover the top with my hand.

The design of this thing is absolutely first rate. Even down to the plug, which has a moulded loop so that it is easy to unplug and plug in! No tool is required to remove the basket, as in most other juicers. Breville uses a combo of ingenious design and magnets to hold it in place!

Ease of use and fit and finish is perfect.

Clean up is really a 2 minute operation and I don't even own a dishwasher. It will stain eventually, as every juicer I have ever owned does. Carrot juice would make a great dye :-)

The pulp on this juicer is a bit wetter than the Jack LaLanne. The "Jack" had a much larger basket and a much slower rotation. I believe that may account for it. But it isn't much wetter - just very slightly.

This juicer makes much smaller pieces of pulp though - and my experience so far has been that it gets just as much juice from a pound of carrots.

Bottom line - I can't imagine anyone not loving this unit.
This is my third juicing machine. My first was a Champion which served without problems for years. On the plus side it was powerful and durable. On the down side it was rather noisy, vibrated a lot and left a lot of juice in the pulp and was hard to clean. My second juicer was the omega screw machine which I still have. I bought it because it also did wheat grass. On the plus side it is quiet and juices anything, makes nut butter and extracts a lot of juice leaving very dry pulp. On the down side it is slow and worst of all the feed tube is really small. You have to do a lot of cutting to get things small enough to get into the feed tube. I pretty much only use it for wheatgrass now. The Breville is the best juicer I have had. It is an example of good product design in that it is simple, practical and attractive. It is powerful, has a feed tube large enough to take large whole carrots, beets and small apples. It is quiet, comes apart easy and cleans up quickly. The capture pitcher which nests into the machine has a nice cover so you can store the juice for later. If making juice is a hassle you're going to put off doing it. This juicer makes juicing easy and not a hassle. 
 

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Yoga and Sports: Skiing

It is incredible what yoga does for skiing. People can ski all day long and much better.

Conditioning before hitting the slopes can increase the safety and enjoyment of the sport. Most ski injuries occur early in the day when muscles are tight and enthusiasm is high, and late in the day when muscles are weakened and technique is poor.

A simple yoga exercise called the awkward pose, can increase your strength, balance and concentration which will make the ski season more rewarding.

It consists of three variations which are done sequentially.

To begin, stand with the feet apart, about shoulder width, an even distance (approximately six inches) between your heels and toes. Extend the arms out in front of you parallel to the floor with the shoulders pressed down and away from the head. Keep the upper body strong and firm in this position.
Yoga For Beginners

Bend your knees and shift the weight back into the heels, pushing the buttocks out behind you. When the top of the thighs are parallel to the floor and arms, hold your pose. The feet should be held parallel and the knees should only be shoulder width apart.

One good way to think of getting into this pose is to imagine that you are sitting in an invisible chair leaning back to bring the spine and shoulders against the back of the chair. The arm muscles are contracted, the abdomen is held tight and your breathing should be normal. Hold the pose for 20 seconds. Stand up.

The second part of this series is similar to the first. Keep the upper body the same as before and stand straight up onto the balls of the feet, standing as high as possible with the arches pressed forward. To keep the ankles strong and straight, press down with each big toe. Now, bend the knees again keeping the spine straight and stop when the quadriceps are parallel to the floor. Hold this pose for 20 seconds. Stand up. You will find this second pose a bit more difficult.
Power Yoga - Total Body Workout

Third, assume the same basic pose with upper body firm and strong. Again, slowly bend the knees and this time sit all the way down lightly onto the heels. Now press the knees together and hold the body still. The quadriceps are again level with the floor and the spine is straight. Hold again for 20 seconds. Stand up out of the pose slowly, bring the heels down and relax. Don't forget to do a second set of all three poses.
Yoga Anatomy

Parkinson’s Disease

First described as ``shaking palsy'' the disease that now bears his name, medical science has thus far been unable to unravel the cause or causes of most Parkinson's cases or to devise a cure. Nonetheless, dramatic progress has been made in treating the disease, which is known to afflict about half a million older Americans, or one person in 100 over age 50. This figure does not include the untold thousands with symptoms of the disease that are not severe enough to prompt them to seek a diagnosis. But early diagnosis is important.

Diagnosis of Parkinson's disease is based on the patient's symptoms and performance on certain neurological and neuropsychological tests, along with ruling out other possible causes of those symptoms. Some cases of what doctors call Parkinsonism are caused by potent drugs used in the treatment of schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses or they are a result of poisoning by manganese.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

ALCOHOL HAS NO FOOD VALUE

 Alcohol has no food value and is exceedingly limited in its action as a remedial agent. Dr. Henry Monroe says, "every kind of substance employed by man as food consists of sugar, starch, oil and glutinous matter mingled together in various proportions. These are designed for the support of the animal frame. The glutinous principles of food fibrine, albumen and casein are employed to build up the structure while the oil, starch and sugar are chiefly used to generate heat in the body".

Now it is clear that if alcohol is a food, it will be found to contain one or more of these substances. There must be in it either the nitrogenous elements found chiefly in meats, eggs, milk, vegetables and seeds, out of which animal tissue is built and waste repaired or the carbonaceous elements found in fat, starch and sugar, in the consumption of which heat and force are evolved.

"The distinctness of these groups of foods," says Dr. Hunt, "and their relations to the tissue-producing and heat-evolving capacities of man, are so definite and so confirmed by experiments on animals and by manifold tests of scientific, physiological and clinical experience, that no attempt to discard the classification has prevailed. To draw so straight a line of demarcation as to limit the one entirely to tissue or cell production and the other to heat and force production through ordinary combustion and to deny any power of interchangeability under special demands or amid defective supply of one variety is, indeed, untenable. This does not in the least invalidate the fact that we are able to use these as ascertained landmarks".

Exercise and Cellulite

When Mike turned 65, he was 25 pounds overweight. By strict dieting, he shed the extra pounds, but he lost more weight; he also lost his energy and vitality. He was always exhausted, and his friends, seeing his gaunt, drawn face, worried about his health.

By the time volunteered for a particular fitness program two years later, he had put 25 extra pounds back on. After 6 months of exercise and some willpower at the dinner table, Mike slimmed down again. This time he felt better than he ever had, brimming with energy and glowing with good health.

What made the difference? The first time Mike lost weight; the second time he lost fat. The distinction is important. According to research, a large portion of the weight lost by dieting alone is active tissue, such as muscle and connective tissue, while a smaller fraction is excess fat. Exercise has the opposite effect. It increased his lean body mass and decreased his excess fat.