My Kingdom for Smoothie! Students Learn Pluses of Raw, Organic Diet

Throughout one Middletown elementary school there are bowls of fresh fruit and every Friday, students can bring home a bag of oranges, apples, bananas and other fruits for the weekend.

So it was a natural fit for the founders of Middletown-based Raw Youniverse, Bill and Megan Paglua-Scheff, to inaugurate their first of hopefully many visits throughout city schools at Macdonough Elementary. Kids learn about the benefits of healthy, raw foods in an energetic, hands-on program that ends with an assortment of smoothies to sample.

The couple, authors of 30 Days of Raw Smoothies – Enough To Change Your Life, visited the school courtesy of a grant from NFL Fuel Up to Play 60, a program founded by the National Dairy Council and NFL, in collaboration with USDA, that empowers students to take charge in making small, everyday changes at school.

They encourage raw foodism, a diet comprising uncooked, unprocessed and  organic or wild foods. Green and fruit smoothies are their trademark, as many who've frequented the North End Farmers Market in Middletown and others, like the Coventry Farmers Market. 

Last Friday, students in each grade level entered the library to meet the Paglua-Scheffs, including their youngest son Jasper, who worked the blender as his mother circulated throughout, explaining the fundamentals of a healthy, organic lifestyle.

In one group, fifth-graders were encouraged to think of "good" fats, like avocados, cashews, peanuts, pecans and sesame seeds. Bill Paglua-Scheff then told students it takes 100 hours for the human body to process or digest meat. In comparison, he said, "when you eat fruits and vegetables, you get pure, streaming energy out of it."

As Megan Paglua-Scheff talked to fifth-graders about agave, a natural sweetener they prefer instead of processed sugar, Bill and Jasper began blending ingredients like kale, agave, strawberries, peaches, ice and water.
Raw You-niverse smoothies have no milk, yogurt or other dairy, and are ice-based.

"When we get frozen food, they pick it before it's really juicy ripe," Megan Paglua-Scheff said. 

Bill Paglua-Scheff continued. "What they do is, in order to put them in a bag and freeze them, they pick them when they're a little bit red and not ripe and mushy so they can hold their shape as they get frozen and into bags so you can use them." 

Agave, which comes from a cactus plant and similar in intensity to maple syrup, Megan told the children, is used because frozen fruit lacks enough sugar content to taste ripe. 

Particularly enjoyable for the younger grades, the Paglua-Sheff's presentation included a short exercise in which the students were assigned "roles" — each an ingredient in the smoothie — and asked to mill around the room just as the smoothie ingredients were in the blender.

When taste time arrived, students were given samples of the slushy green drink, and every single one gamely gave it a taste. Most enjoyed the smoothie.

Other Raw You-niverse frozen drinks include the almond joyous, banana, ground almonds, cacao, shredded coconut and agave; pineapple ginger lime; and orange Dreamsicle with fresh-squeezed orange juice, banana and vanilla.

Besides Raw You-niverse, Bill has a coaching company called Big Bang Coaching and Megan has Naked Sophia, a raw food counseling service. The couple live in Middletown with their five children nearby and five grandchildren.