My pal Jeff Brazill is wondering if he should change the name of his blog to "Conservative With A Ponytail," as that aptly describes him. Looks like that's not gonna happen. But it has got me to thinking. Can I call myself a "Kefir-Quaffing Conservative" instead of "Crunchy Conservative"?

It'd sure give me an excuse to tell you about what may be the healthiest drink in the world, a deceptively simple, stir-it-up "smoothie" (no blender required) made of a fermented milk drink called kefir, and pomegranate juice.

Let me give credit (sort of) to Dr. Nicholas Perricone, whose new book, "The Perricone Promise," I was browsing through recently in a Chicago bookstore. He alerted me to this elixer for long life (a fair label assuming you also have no unhealthy habits or life-threatening genetic defects; plus you DO have several healthy habits apart from diet, such as exercise and oh, say, a good approach to stress management).

The kefir-pomegranate juice blend tastes great (albeit a bit tart) and here's the kicker: kefir's a real kick in the pants, health-wise. More here on kefir from Wikipedia. You may not find kefir in your national or local grocery chain store, but any halfway decent health food grocery that carries dairy products oughtta have it. There are flavored varieties, but for this, stick with the plain.

Because what you mix into it - pomegranate juice - is thought to be one super antioxidant. Meaning it helps your body guard against free radicals, the nasty molecules that contribute to accelerated aging, cancer, Alzheimers, cancer and heart disease.

And so I have begun the new year with a new routine of a kefir-pomegranate smoothie every morning. The only catch is that pomegranate juice can be a bit pricey. If you've ever eaten a pomegranate you may recall all the work required to get the seeds out, and you can probably imagine how labor-intensive it would be for a machine to get juice off the thin blanket of flesh surrounding each seed.

Now, it just so happens there's a tasty new pomegranate juice product line out, enjoying a marketing push, called Pom Wonderful. Perricone mentions it by name in his new book, saying it's the brand he uses to mix with his kefir each morning. Dunno if he's got some arrangement with these guys or not. Anyway, you may have seen the POM billboards, and the unique, double bulb-shaped 16-ounce plastic bottles in the cooler section of your grocery. As a stand-alone, snacky, thirst-quenching indulgence, I would buy this stuff instead of an Odwalla juice 3 or 4 times out of 5, now that I've tried it. It's frickin' delicious: light, tart and untainted with crud like corn sweeteners.

But. Two things. First, recently at least, the only bottles available in two local stores in West Seattle (one a major local mainstream grocery chain, and the other a major local health food grocery chain) were Pom varieties blended with other fruit juices. They make a pomegranate-only version, but I haven't been able to find it yet. No surprise there, as their own web site shows four of the five varieties are blends. Based on their pomegranate-cherry, I'm sure they all taste great. But using blends, you get less of the super-healthy pomegranate juice than when you buy it pure, whether from Pom or another maker.

And the blend I tried was, in fact, more blended than the front label led one to believe. The (very empty) Pom pomegranate-cherry bottle I've got right here reveals only in small print at the bottom front and rear that it's actually a THREE juice blend: pomegranate, cherry and pineapple.

Plus, at $3 to $4 for 16 oz., Pom's just not gonna work for me on a large-consumption scale. If their prices are better for their 24 oz. bottles, I'm interested, but the stores I shop only have the 16 oz., and only the blends.

As far as I'm concerned, Pom's falling short on distribution and pricing so far. But it took me a little more field research to come to that conclusion. First, I went to my local health food grocery - where I get my kefir - and blithely plucked a 32 oz. bottle of some organic pomegranate juice off the shelf, only to discover later I'd paid $7.29 for it. Ouch. Not very good price-wise either.

Then I called Trader Joe's, which has 32 oz. bottles for $3.99. You can guess where I'm headed next. If there are any commercial sweeteners or other fillers in it, I'll pass, and let you know - but I believe they said not, on the phone.

The quest for affordable pomegranate juice continues. If anyone in Puget Sound wants to start a pomegranate juice bulk-purchasing collective, or if one already exists, let me know. We need some greater economies of scale here.

And FYI, there's another miracle juice coming, this one from berries grown deep in The Amazon forest.

UPDATE, 1/06/05: Yes, the Trader Joe's "Just Pomegranate" ($3.99 for 32 oz.) is all that, no filler at all. And a nutritionist/buyer at a big-time, upscale Seattle grocery, whom I spoke to on the phone today, says TJ's is what she always gets, because a) it's the real deal, and b) no other brand can even come close to competing on price, due to TJ's buying power.

She recommends blending pomegranate juice with blueberry and cherry (100 % only) to stretch it......as even at TJ's price of $3.99, it's still not cheap. Point taken. I bought 8 bottles of "Just Pomegranate" plus some of TJ's "Just Cherry" and pure blueberry juices, which are also quite high in antioxidants. The "Pom" brand has the same idea with their blends, but the prices of the indv. components are better at TJs, and there's no pineapple juice in the mix - as with the Pom "pomegranate-cherry" juice - to drag down the antioxidant count.

The nutritionist also says Perricone's new book is flying off the shelves, and her customers are abuzz about pomegranate juice, AND Acai - pronounced a-cee-aye - berry juice, as well. That's the other "miracle" juice to which I referred above, made from the Amazon palm tree-derived berry which Perricone also recommends.

It doesn't hurt that Oprah has been promoting all this and has had Perricone on her show. And, it turns out some other brands of Acai berry juice, such as Zola Acai, are already available in stores now.

Finally, be aware that readers have varying views of Perricone's latest book, and some of the everyday reviewers at my amazon.com link for "The Perricone Promise" (in 3rd graf of this post) say that they have no interest at all in some of the expensive supplements he's trying to sell. But others feel he has a lot of other good advice, nonetheless. You'll want to scroll down quite far in the above-mentioned link to get to the reader comments, but they're there in abundance, and worth a scan if you're thinking of buying the book.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 5, 2005 10:16 PM

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