Cori Busby helps you get healthy locally.
photos by Heath Cajandig
That time of year is here again: resolution season. If you’re like forty percent of America, your resolution has something to do with health. Whether you are trying to lose weight, eat better, or generally improve your wellness, there is now a local product to help you achieve your goal(s). As a bonus, it’s delicious.
“The biggest pitfall of healthy eating is convenience,” says Cori Busby.
Enter MO Juice, Busby’s healthy and accessible new product. “Health has been a constant in my life,” she says. “It’s always been something I am passionate about.” As a young adult, Busby was a raw vegan, eating no processed food, food from animal origins, or food cooked above 118 degrees.
“Fast forward a few years, I started working at a law firm in Columbia,” says Busby. “I drank too much coffee and ate too much fast food. I started thinking that I needed to go back to meal prep.”
With that thought on her mind as she was traveling to see family, Busby discovered a health juice store that sold bottled, cold-pressed juice. “I was smitten by the idea of it,” she says. “I loved the way the juices made me feel. And I love a challenge, so I started researching more.”
That research lead her to buy a Norwalk cold-press juicer. This juicer uses a mastication process that keeps more of the nutritional value from the ingredients and creates a longer shelf life than a centrifugal juicer, which extracts juice by rapidly spinning the food rather than pressing it.
With the right tools and information at her disposal, Busby and a friend started creating juice and started selling it at cost to test the market. “We juiced for sixteen hours to get 35 gallons and delivered all through the night,” Busby says of her early schedule.
Each bottle of MO Juice contains three pounds of raw, organic fruits and vegetables with nutrient-dense supplements. There are also several flavors to choose from, plus seasonal options. Each option serves a different purpose and suits different tastes. You can use the juices to help with weight loss, by using them as a meal supplement, or as a healthy snack.
MO Juice sells the juices separately, but customers can also join the MO Juice Club to receive juices weekly. Or you can buy the 3 Day Juice Jumpstart. “The juice jumpstart is designed to give your digestive system rest by providing it with all natural fruits and vegetables in liquid form,” says Busby on her website. “By allowing your digestive system the rest it deserves, your other organs such as your liver, kidneys, and colon are able to focus the attention onto themselves so that they are enabled to do their filtering job without the burden of processed foods.”
While you won’t find MO Juice in many stores (you can buy them at Root Cellar, if you’d like), the web has played a big role in the company’s growth. The first customers could not get enough and recommended their favorites to friends. By visiting mojuicejc.com, you can buy the juices you crave to pick-up or have delivered.
“Rather than opening a storefront, it made more sense to me to partner with businesses like Cork (Jamie Wade, of Cork, sells MO Juice during Fresh Fridays) and Root Cellar and use their customer base to sell the product,” says Busby. “It is possible that a juice truck may happen in the future.”
Don’t let another year go by with failed resolutions. MO Juice is an easy, affordable (although no longer dirt cheap), tasty way to help meet your health-related goals in 2017 — and support local business.