I should never have bought carrot juice. There’s something about its flavor that makes my stomach revolt. Honestly, I find it a foul liquid that is better suited as a solidified baby food. Someone offered me carrot juice before, homemade, and I liked it then, but it was in a small glass and had other vegetable flavors mixed in so that it tasted more like V-8 and not so much like rabbit fodder and horse treats.
But this carrot juice, that came in a plastic bottle, tastes like liquid carrots, and I do not like carrots. There is something not very kosher about sweet vegetables. Fruits can be sugary, but vegetables should be salted and in soups—rich soups with animal broths and pastas—or cooked in some kind of casserole. Also, if one must eat carrots at all, they ought to be in the raw, “stick” form and served with ranch dressing. Otherwise, you’re left with mushy sweetness in a veggie side-dish.
Now about this juice—I can’t believe I’m still drinking it. It’s a muddy orange color, almost with a pinkish undertone. It looks like a mixture between Crayola vividness and sewage, especially inside a white plastic cup. Around the edges are little air bubbles—even oxygen wants to escape this stuff! Also, the color lightens on this outer rim to a dull pumpkin hue. I think if the color were different, it might be more appetizing. Then again, it’s still carrot juice.
I feel like I should be hopping across a meadow and wiggling my long ears and fluffy tail, but I don’t have either. Or maybe I should be prancing in my stall, tossing back my wild mane and whinnying for attention from the farmhands, but I don’t have hooves or a mane, and I certainly don’t want calloused men patting my velvet nose—also something I do not possess. But wait: oh yeah…I’m a human, and I should not be eating carrots at all, let alone any of its side products.
I suppose in its defense, the carrot juice would like to speak for itself. After all, since this is a metaphysical presentation on “how very much I despise carrot juice,” it should be able to voice its disgruntled self quite loquaciously. In one serving of eight fluid ounces, it contains seventy calories—that’s seventy more calories than its equivalent in water. Furthermore, there are one hundred and sixty milligrams of sodium and five hundred and twenty milligrams of potassium. The writer—that would be me—would like to point out that your body needs equal amounts of sodium and potassium for proper nerve firing.
There are fifteen grams of carbohydrates, only one gram of dietary fiber, and thirteen grams of sugar. Aha! Sugar is bad for you, and this explains its yucky taste. Only two grams of protein don’t make this a balanced juice at all. There is no vitamin C, only four percent of the calcium and iron required for a daily diet, but seven hundred percent of the daily recommended intake of vitamin A. Basically, after drinking this sludge, I will be able to see through walls, but at least it will not be a result of genetically modified vegetables—as this particular juice does not come from mutant plants.
Why do health nuts drink carrot juice? Honesly, I don’t know. I think their title speaks plainly enough. They’re cannibals. (Nuts and carrots are roughly similar, aren’t they?) And let’s face the music, folks: if you’re a cannibal, you’re crazy enough to consume carrot juice. Everything about it—from its unnatural color to its excessive vitamin content—screams “UNHEALTHY!” and “I will kill you slowly from the inside out but you will be so enthralled by your new powers of vision that you will never notice that your nerves are misfiring and you’re throwing yourself into an epileptic fit, powered by my excessive sugar!”
And yet, I’m still drinking it. Why oh why, my readers are probably wondering. Why is she drinking something that is so blatantly bad for her health? I’ll tell you why: I paid for it, and I can’t bear to have wasted my money on something that should have been good for my body. Instead, I will continue to drink it until it is gone. I refuse to buy it again. (I do, as you can see, still maintain a certain standard when it comes to beverages.) However, if you’re ever alone outside on a dark night and you see two eyes glowing in the darkness, do not fear: it is only my superpowered carrot nightvision.
