Beet and Berry Detox Popsicles

Who said detoxing has to be boring? With these beet and berry detox popsicles you’ll feel like a kid again while providing healing antioxidants to your body.

With summer being just around the corner, there are a ton of available fruits and vegetables, fresh and pulsing with energy. So go ahead and grab what your soul and body are craving from the farmers market stalls and turn them into beautiful, colorful, and nourishing dishes to brighten your day.

There are so many fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds to use in your cooking, so many colors and nutrients that boost your mood, cleanse your body, nourish your cells and energize you, that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to make all the wonderful combinations available. That’s why spring can be a bit overwhelming, with so many foods ripe and ready at the same time. But we do our best and try to make the most of what we have available.

When Mother Nature starts cranking up the heat it’s time to help the body stay cool with some delicious frozen treats. Most of the time people think that detoxing involves starving yourself, or going through some extreme cleanse. But it’s really a matter of helping the body cope with its environment, both in terms of releasing toxins, and helping it out with cooling foods in the summer and warming foods in the winter.

I’m sure I’m not the only one around here simply in love with ice cream. While its creamy texture and addictive flavor are one of my favorites during winter, fruity and colorful sorbets and ices are the hits of my summer. Who needs dense, heavy, fat ice cream when it’s so hot out there? Instead I love to make lighter ice creams and frozen popsicles using fresh fruit purees, agave-sweetened lemonade popsicles and detox juice ice pops.

I just bought a large box of organic beetroot and wanted to use them up while they were fresh. I’ll add them raw in salads, ferment them, and even turn them into delicious ice pops. You don’t need any special skills to make healthy, detoxifying popsicles for the whole family. It’s just a matter of tinkering with the ingredients to add flavor and sweetness, and the rest of the work is done by the freezer.

Beetroot is potentially the most potent among vegetables when it comes to a detox. Their unique phytonutrients called betalains give it the intense pink color and have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and detoxifying properties. They are especially important for the second phase of your liver’s detox abilities because they activate glutathione S-transferase enzymes. The toxins hook onto these enzymes and transfer them into the colon, where the fiber helps to eliminate them safely.

Combine the excellent detox properties of the beetroot juice with the antioxidants from berries, freeze the mix, and you’ll have a delicious summer dessert that will please your taste buds and detox your body at the same time.

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