Healthy is in. With staying fit and eating right being an important concern for many students, we are always on the lookout for delicious ,yet healthy, places to go to with friends. Luckily, it turns out that there are quite a few organic restaurants and shops dedicated to delivering fresh food around DBHS. And now, with the kale and acai hypes, I decided to try out some well-known healthy goodies.

When I ordered Julie’s Cafe’s (Diamond Bar) famous kale smoothie, my first thought was, “This is so green… a bit too green.” But after the first taste, I knew there was nothing to worry about. The smoothie didn’t taste like vegetables at all; it didn’t even taste remotely like kale, which made me wonder if anything unhealthy was added to make the drink taste so good. Sweet and tangy all at once, the smoothie had a very creamy texture. The most overpowering flavors were apple and pineapple; I saw a few small chunks of the former in my drink. Overall, the kale smoothie was delicious — definitely better than expected.

Right off the bat, I thought that Nature’s Juice’s (Walnut Village) the acai power bowl did not look very appetizing. With bland oats and chopped banana pieces on top, the bowl looked like microwaved morning oatmeal. There was only a meager amount of granola, so I couldn’t even get a decent portion of it in every spoonful.

Also, the blended acai at the bottom of the bowl had an almost graham cracker-like taste. The consistency was very sticky and didn’t have a very pungent flavor. Additionally, something else that I wasn’t very fond of was the huge chunks of frozen fruit in the acai blend. Let me just say that whole frozen strawberries are hard to chew — it’s just asking for a brain freeze! Altogether, the bowl didn’t meet my expectations, and I am positive that I will not be going back anytime soon for another.

One of the most popular juices at Nature’s Juice is the Green Works drink, containing apple, celery, cucumber, kale, ginger, and lemon. I’m not a huge fan of ginger, so I hoped that this juice would make drinking ginger a bit more pleasurable. The ingredients that really stood out in the juice were celery and ginger, but I thought that the root was too strong for my liking. Every sip tasted almost like a shot of juiced ginger. Although I saw the workers squeeze fresh ingredients, which made the juice taste very organic, the combination of ingredients proved to be subpar.