1. The best juice for Healthy Skin: Cucumber: "Fruit and vegetable juices, prepared in the right combinations, can help you to remove crud from your blood and tissues and restore alkalinity and balance to your system," says Noelle Swatland of GreenLemonade.com. "You see the benefits of this crud removal in younger looking skin and greater energy." Swat land's favorite skin booster? Cucumber. "Consisting of over 90-percent water, cucumbers are a naturally cooling and hydrating food," she says. Plus, they're rich in minerals such as potassium, magnesium, and silica, which is believed to improve complexion and youthful radiance of your skin . Ingredients: 1-2 Cucumbers, For a touch of sweetness, add a small piece of apple. 2. The best juice for Anti-Aging: Blueberries, Strawberries, & Kale When stress, free-radicals, and lack of exercise and sleep attempt to age your skin, Patty James, certified natural chef and author of More Vegetables Please!, recommends fighting off Mother Nature with antioxidant -packed fruits and veggies that can easily be juiced. Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups liquid of your choice (water or any kind of milk), 1 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup strawberries, 1 large leaf kale (thick stem removed), 1/2 medium beet. 3. The best juice to boost your $ex Drive: Celery, While oysters and chocolate are a delicious way to get you and your partner in the mood, they're not so appealing juiced. Thankfully, James' top libido-boosting foods are also delicious in liquid form. "Celery contains an ingredient that increases those well-known pheromones in men that send out signals to women saying 'here I am'," James says. "Watermelon helps to relax the blood vessels that increase $ex drive, and avocados contain a B vitamin said to boost male hormone production." Ingredients: 2 cups coconut water, 2 stalks celery, 1/2 banana, Ginger (a small piece), 1/2 Avocado, Basil (a handful) 3 figs, 4. The best juice to boost your immune system: Broccoli, Sip on this to stay well all year! "Broccoli is very high in vitamin C , which increases the production of infection-fighting white blood cells," Judita Wignall, author of Going Raw says. "Garlic contains sulfur-containing compounds that have powerful immune-boosting antimicrobial properties." Ingredients: 1 small beet, 3 carrots, 8 stalks celery, 1 stalk broccoli, 2 cloves garlic, The best foods to boost your Immunity: Monsoon can be a hugely vulnerable time for the body, with pesky germs thriving on the warmth of well-incubated office blocks, houses and shops. With so much illness about, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll feel a slight twinge in your throat at some point. But thankfully there are easy ways to combat the onset of germs. Indeed, you can save yourself a lot time and money by avoiding the pharmacy altogether and simply eating your way towards better immunity. White blood cells in the body work to fight bacteria and harmful toxins. However, to perform effectively, these cells need to regenerate in an effort to defend you from feeling ill. There are a number of key foods we can consume to feed our white blood cells with the nutrients they need to thrive and these may include the following: 5. The best juice for stress relief: Carrots, When Eat Naked author Margaret Floyd needs to wind down after a long day, she turns to spinach . "Spinach is high in the amino acid tryptophan, which helps elevate your mood and promotes better sleep," Floyd says. "It's also high in magnesium, which helps to relax nerves and muscles." Ingredients: 2 big handfuls Spinach, 3-4 stalks Broccoli, 3-4 stalks Celery, 1 large or 2 small carrots. Source: icePice
For children who turn up their noses at fruits and vegetables, slapping a cartoon face on a healthy snack may make those choices more appealing, according to a U.S. study. Researchers, whose findings appeared in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, discovered that when elementary school students were offered apples and cookies with lunch, children were more likely to opt for an apple when it was branded with a cartoon sticker - such as one of the "Sesame Street" character Elmo. "If we're trying to promote healthier foods, we need to be as smart as the companies that are selling the less-healthy foods," said David Just, co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Program, who worked on the study. Noting that cartoon characters and flashy advertising often don cookie and candy packaging, he added, "The message should be: fight fire with fire." Just and his colleagues offered cookies and apples to 208 eight- to 11-year-olds at suburban and rural schools every day at lunch for a week. Children were allowed to choose an apple, a cookie or both, along with their normal meal. Some days, the snacks were offered without cartoon stickers or other branding. On other days, either the cookie or the apple was branded with a familiar cartoon character. When the snacks weren't specially marked, 91 percent of children took a cookie and just under one-quarter took an apple. But when an Elmo sticker was slapped on the apples, 37 percent of children took fruit, the researchers reported. Stickers on cookies didn't affect children's choice of the sweet snack. "There are so many foods that are of poor nutritional quality and they are being marketed to children," said Christina Roberto, who studies food choices at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and did not take part in the study. Kid-friendly characters used for this marketing "aren't popping up on the carrots and apples as much as they are on a wide range of foods that aren't good for kids," she added. Using stickers on fruits and vegetables could be one cheap option to help improve students' diets, she said, as well as something parents can try at home. "It's not a bad idea to create these positive associations, especially if you're struggling to get kids to eat healthy foods," she added. 
