No, polishing up your apple with the use of your t-shirt doesn’t count as properly washing your fruits and veggies. And running them under the faucet for about half a second might not do much good either. To get rid of highly undesirable stuff like pesticides and wax and handling residue, thedelicious insists on using Fit Fruit and Vegetable Wash. Here, she gives us the lowdown on why clean fruits and veggies are “serious business”:

“I am no freaky weird girl-in-a-bubble germaphobe, but I use FIT fruit and vegetable wash on EVERY fruit and vegetable that comes into my house, even if it’s labeled as organic, even if I bought it from the farmers’ market from the hot son of the farmer from whom I’ve been buying fresh figs for five years. It not only dissolves those disgusting waxes and preservatives that the grocery store sprays on (which can trap bacteria and other weird stuff), but it washes away excess dirt and human germs that are everywhere, no matter your source.”

And don’t be skeeved out by the idea of spraying a cleaning product onto something you’re going to eat: Fit uses natural cleansers like purified water, vegetable-derived glycerol, baking soda, and grapefruit oil, all of which rinse away completely before reaching your lips.

While I was home for Thanksgiving, my mom asked if I knew anything about Monavie, some new miracle juice her friend had just discovered with a little help from Oprah. And even though I’m in the business of constantly researching and writing about natural products like miracle juice, Monavie was a total mystery to me till I tracked it down on ThisNext. There I found thedelicious’s Monavie Active Acai product pick, in which our shopcaster shares that “acai extract + pomegranate juice = extreme jungle juice that is scary high energy…but scary in a good way.” Meant to be downed in just a one- or two-ounce shot twice a day, Monavie gets a good deal of its health-enhancing superpower from the antioxidants, amino acids, and omega-3s found in acai (the chocolate- and berry-flavored fruit of Amazon palmberries). Those energizing, disease-fighting components can also be accessed by drinking a cup of Sambazon Acai with Mango Juice, another recommendation from thedelicious: An “all natural super energy from the Amazon, Sambazon Acai Juice will have you swinging through the corporate jungle vines at top speed,” she promises.

Although Sambazon’s blend should be sweetly sipped like a morning glass of OJ, most of the new superjuices pouring into the natural foods markets are taken like a supplement — just one quick hit a day, usually no more than a couple of ounces, and we’re good to go (a good thing, since most bottles cost at least 30 bucks).

...continued: Strange fruit

We love Zara at weight-maintenance blog Yo Heave Ho not just for her fluency in piratespeak, but for her willingness to share new discoveries such as the very adorable, cantaloupe-sized Pure Heart watermelon from Dulcinea Farms. Says Zara:

“I learned that the little individual Dulcinea watermelons are sweeter and easier to manage than the original full-size seedless watermelon I butchered. And they are so darn cute! But the best thing that has come out of this is that when I want something crunchy and/or sweet, mindless munching on watermelon does much less damage than, say, 0reos. I wish I could say I liked watermelon better than 0reos, but who am I kidding here? It’s just a purposeful choice to substitute something healthy and so far, it’s helping.”

Life is far too short to waste valuable calorie intake on bad candy. So when a sweet treat gets a coveted rating of 10 - Superb on Candy Blog, you know it’s worthy of your sweet tooth’s attention. Unfortunately, these Pink Grapefruit Mentos, already popular with Europeans and Canadians, are not available in stores in the good old U. S. of A. (Don’t fret: they are available online stateside.) With the help of bloggers like Candy Blog, we can all make the world a sweeter place. (Photo credit: Cybele May)

In the south, iced tea is usually served sweet, and it’s generally pronounced as one word: Sweetea. On a hot, muggy day a nice glass of sweetea on ice, beads of water sweating on the sides of the glass, is pure tonic. So our taste buds are tingling since A Nice Cuppa turned us on to a pre-made, peach-flavored tea that actually tastes good — and it’s diet, no less. Ready-made sweetea that even a Southern boy could love. I do declare!

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as they say. That’s why we love the new V8 V.Fusion drinks. They fool you into thinking you’re drinking sweet, yummy fruit juice while sneaking a full serving of vegetables in as well. The Peach Mango version somehow conceals sweet potato, yellow tomato and squash under its fruity cloak. (Mind you, tomatoes and squash are, technically, fruit, but that’s splitting hairs.) A Knowledge for Thirst tipped us off to this tasty tippler — as well as hundreds of other juices, sodas and other soft drinks. We definitely appreciate their honest ratings and glib, off-the-cuff reviews of a wide variety of ready-made beverages. We’ll drink to that!

The supermarket is chock-full of produce, all shiny and bright, colors like nail polish. Unfortunately, especially when it comes to fruit, most of it tastes like cardboard. Over in the UK, i was just really very hungry noticed a burgeoning trend: Ugly fruit. By buying less-than-picture-perfect fruit for cooking (it’s just going to get cut up and cooked down anyway), you’ll save yourself a few bucks, and probably end up with superior produce. We, too, appreciate inner beauty.