Starting the day with a glass of orange juice is a common experience for a lot of us, but there are many different flavour combinations and varieties of fruit juice. Sandrine Jacques Michaud is currently running a fresh, cold-pressed juice store in Valleyfield, and is hoping to share the benefits of fresh juice with members of the community.
A few years ago, Michaud took a trip to Hawaii. There, she was learning about fruit picking and food cultivating and really immersed herself into it. “I learned a lot about fruit, and I saw how people can take care of food,” she says. At the time, she was experiencing some health issues and was living in some discomfort. When she returned from Hawaii, she decided to buy a juicer and see if she could benefit from making her own juices at home.
Michaud shares that she felt the impact of the change in her diet in major ways. “Having a constant in how I consume fruit helped me lose weight and have better digestion. But I wasn’t doing it to change my physical appearance; it was to make me feel better. It helped me with things like brain fog and fatigue.” Being a student, she had a very hectic schedule and finding time for a meal was often tricky. But always having a juice to drink meant that she could get the nutrients she needed.
Michaud’s store, Fruity Sandy, offers a variety of products, like her Life Salad (a fruit salad), various juices, custom juice cleanses, and desserts like chia seed pudding. She is excited to be able to offer juice cleanses that help clients with specific health needs. Cleanses are taken for three to five days and are made after she consults with the client about what they are hoping to achieve.
The juices Michaud makes vary – from simple, domestic flavours like apple and berry, to more exotic flavours like mango and dragon fruit. This way, she provides people with flavours they may not have every day, but still gets to work with local farms in order to get fresh produce. “I try to encourage getting local products as much as possible … I really want to prioritize local products from local farmers,” she says. She tries to highlight juices with whatever fruits are in season.
The number-one thing for Michaud is that the juice she’s serving be as fresh as possible. “The difference between me and other pressed-juice companies is that with me, everything is pressed the day that we sell it,” she says. Some cold-pressed juices in grocery stores have been treated so they last longer and lose some of their nutrients in the process. At Fruity Sandy, there is “no treatment in the juice, so the investment in the juice comes back 100 per cent in your health.”
Michaud is proud to say that “People really feel like they are biting right into a new fruit,” when they take a sip of one of her juices.