How does a
simple piece of produce become the next fitness craze? Joanne Chen hunts down
the next big workout cocktail.
There was a
time I would reward myself, aglow from the rigors of a Jane Fonda workout, with
a healthy cocktail consisting of bananas, vanilla ice cream and heaps of Peter
Pan peanut butter. But when it hit me that my fitness drink of choice was in
fact 300 calories more than I had just burned, I switched to a seemingly
healthier option, the no-calorie diet Coke. As yoga, kickboxing and Spinning
came, went and came back again, I sipped Yogi tea, downed shots of wheat grass,
collected recipes for whey protein, and ultimately became fixated on blueberries
blended with ice, a trick I learned from David Kirsh at his tony boutique gym in
New York, where he trains clients like Heidi Klum.
I was
feeling a bit bored with my fitness regimen, still scraping the blue stains from
my sink, when a well-connected colleague informed me that blueberries were over
and it’s all about pomegranates now. I promptly called Lynda Resnick, the
Beverly Hills billionairess behind the pomegranate crusade. “People love the
fruit,” she says. “You only have to have eight ounces a day for two weeks to
see the effects. My God, even Cleopatra knew about it!” It all started when Resnick happened upon some pomegranates on her pistachio farm; enchanted, she
planted 6,000 more acres of them. She and her husband, Steward, then packed the
fruit into a bottle as a pure juice, called POM Wonderful, and soon enough, the
magic potion was tucked into goody bags at the Vanity Fair Golden Globes party,
with word getting around that the ferociously well-toned Charlie’s Angels cast
were fueling up on the stuff between cuts.
“I believe
the medicine chest of the twenty-first century is in the produce department!”
Resnick proclaims. And indeed, scientists have been obsessing over fruit more
than ever, mostly because of its newfound disease-prevention powers. Thanks to
funding from Resnick, labs have discovered pomegranates to be good for the
heart.
But science
isn’t enough to give a drink a cachet. It has to possess an air of exclusivity,
like the limited-edition running shoe. Pomegranate juice makes the cut because
the fruit is a mess to eat; the delicate, berry-like açaí, which is cultivated
only in the Amazon forest, just might follow suit.
. . . [Açaí] is blended
with guaraná, a Brazilian plant that’s said to boost energy, and packaged
as a slush. A Belgian scientist also found that the fruit itself is rich in essential fatty acid, calcium, and of course, vitamins. When I asked
American doctors about it, they had no idea what I was talking about, but that
hasn’t prevented it from finding a fan base that includes the likes of Gisele
Bundchen, Sting and Andre Agassi. Already it’s a staple at Ian Schrager’s Sky
Bar, and a favorite among the tan and trim in Miami, where it’s found in the
Purple Label smoothie, sold (where else?) at the Ralph Lauren shop.
Back in
New York, at the juice bar in Equinox, where they serve [açaí] in their energy
shake, I dig in and taste something that’s neither tart nor sweet. A flavor so
unfamiliar, it’s desirable. . . [a]nd soon, I
am off with some samples and a recipe – just what was needed, perhaps, to rescue
me from my workout rut.