Juicy News -- Newest Health Phenomenon Has Americans Wild Over Fruits And Vegetables

For decades he slogged along on the fringes of the nutrition business, making barely enough money to keep carrots going into his juice-making machine.

But for Jay "The Juiceman" Kordich, the tide finally has turned. His just-published book on juicing has hit the New York Times bestseller list. His juice machines are flying off store shelves. And the 69-year-old Kordich is swimming in big bucks.

"I became at millionaire at age 68," he says with amazement.

Kordich's fortunes picked up when he began pitching his Juiceman juicer - and juicing's alleged health benefits - in TV "infomercials," those half-hour commercials that air at odd hours.

That move, launched while Kordich still lived in the Seattle area, has helped turn juicing into this year's food phenomenon. Sales of home juice-making machines - all brands, not just Kordich's - are at an all-time high nationally, and juicing books are pouring off the presses.

"This boggles my mind. My greatest fantasy in the world doesn't match what's happening," Kordich says by phone from his Las Vegas home, where he moved in 1989 after four years in Bellevue and Redmond. A swimming pool, a Mercedes and a fleet of race horses mark his financial arrival via juicing.

Americans are getting juiced - both at home and at juice joints such as Seattle's Gravity Bar (two locations), Green Lake's little Juice and Java shop and several supermarket juice bars.

"It's booming," says Juice and Java owner Ed Ives, a 1984 Olympic silver medalist in rowing who radiates the good health that is every juicer's goal.

Opening his shop in the heart of latte land, Ives saw the wisdom of selling java alongside the juice. At first, his customers chose coffee over juice about 80 percent of the time. Now, he says, it's the other way around.

Patrons can tank up on just about any mix of fruit or vegetable juices they like. Some of the favorites: plain carrot; carrot, beet and celery; orange, banana and strawberry; pineapple, banana and strawberry; and apple, lemon and ginger (hot or cold).

At the downtown Gravity Bar, meanwhile, customers go for such concoctions as the Mama Hopper - ginger, banana, apple and wheatgrass; the Pineapple Hopper - pineapple, mint and wheatgrass; and the Dennis Hopper - beet, carrot, garlic and wheatgrass - named after the actor, who repeatedly requested that combo while visiting Seattle.

Then there are those who order a straight shot of wheatgrass juice - an eye-popping experience for first-timers, who may find wheatgrass's strange pairing of sweet and heat either exhilarating or slightly nauseating.

But the biggest surge is in home juicing. Americans are expected to buy 3 million electric juice extractors this year - more than three times the number in 1989 - according to Linda Purpura of the trade journal Home Furnishings Daily.

Seattle-area stores say suppliers can't keep up with demand for the machines. Prices for the many brands - including such names as Hamilton Beach, Oster, Champion and Braun - range from about $50 to $300.

Two books with Seattle connections are helping fuel the juice craze: Kordich's "The Juiceman's Power of Juicing" (William Morrow and Company, $15); and "Juicing for Life" (Avery Publishing Group, $12.95), by Cherie Calbom and Maureen Keane, both Seattle-area residents.

Although their books are competing, Calbom, like Kordich, promotes Juiceman juicers. Her book also is selling well, with 500,000 copies in print. An exception among such books, hers cites medical research tending to back health claims for various fruits and vegetables.

Seattle also is the home of Trillium Health Products and the affiliated JM Marketing, which supply and promote The Juiceman. JM Marketing bought The Juiceman name and marketing rights from Kordich, and produces his infomercials.

The arrangement appears to be working fabulously, if Kordich's new wealth is any indication.

It wasn't always so. Kordich took to juicing when he was around 25, after doctors told him he had inoperable bladder cancer and gave him little hope of complete recovery. Declining standard treatments, Kordich came across some juicing literature and launched a self-treatment program that included making and drinking 13 glasses of carrot-apple juice a day.

"Two and a half years later I was a well man," he writes, although elsewhere in his book he stresses prevention and says he doesn't claim juicing cures cancer.

Many studies do point toward a cancer-fighting ability in carrots' beta carotene. Some mainstream medical people worry, though, that a sick person might forego needed medical treatment in favor of juices, or go overboard on a juice whose effects in huge quantities aren't known.

From his recovery on, Kordich devoted his life to spreading the gospel of juicing. For years it was a bleak existence - driving from town to town around the country, demonstrating juice machines at fairs and seminars. There were lean times when he slept in his camper.

Eventually, he began appearing on local and network TV talk shows. But it was the infomercials that apparently inspired the huge national clamor for juice. Others now are doing the same thing, including exercise guru Jack LaLanne, who promotes the Juice Tiger machine.

Kordich says that through the lean years, "I never saw the financial potential. I only saw the teaching potential."

Married and divorced while a young man - with two sons now aged 45 and 50 - the remarried Kordich has a new, young family: wife Linda, 36, and two sons, ages 5 and 8.

He's still juicing up a storm, drinking about 2 quarts of juice a day - all kinds, but especially carrots. Besides juice, he eats mostly raw foods, and he claims, at nearly 70, to have the same energy he had in his 30s and 40s.

Kordich is thrilled to see the public - and some medical people - starting to support juicing.

"I love it," he says, excitement in his voice. "You see the way it's coming around? I love it."