Eats Shoots and Leaves

Fight fire with fire

The Redner: this is for the morning after that night you thought you were a backing dancer for Beyonce’s world tour. And now need a defibrillator for your liver and your head. No greens in sight. Fight fire with fire.

Let’s get some life pumping through your veins again. If Judy Garland were to be reincarnated, she might return as this juice. You’ll find a symphony of lively antioxidants to tap dance through your system and jazz up your bloodstream.

Antioxidants are important little buggers for recovery. They work by disarming those thieving free radicals loitering in our system. Without disarmament, free radicals can wreak havoc to our health — like a game of Space Invaders gone horribly wrong.

This is achieved through a process called oxidation. Don’t worry — it’s not an overnight process. We simply want to slow down oxidation in our cells and our body. After all, oxidative stress appears to have a leading role in the theatre of ageing and degenerative diseases.

Antioxidants are like our personal ninja army. Add to this a suite of anti-inflammatories found in fresh ginger, and its anti-nausea prowess: you’ve found yourself a Sunday-morning lovebug.

We want to keep the citrus skins on the blood oranges to capture an extra net of antioxidants such as limonoids, flavonoids and polyphenols. There’s all sorts of goodness in those fleshy white pithy bits. Hesperidin, for example, holds a great deal of promise for its anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogennic and vaso-protective actions.

Good news for varicose veins and haemorrhoids, my friends! Hesperidin also works well with an orange’s vitamin C content to reduce the risk of stroke, lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and tickle our heart health.

“Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live” — Ray Brown. I think this recipe should help.