Saturday, June 18, 2016

Lifehouse Tonics & Elixir: Taking Smoothies Up a Notch

Los Angeles loves their juices and their healthy foods, but at Lifehouse Tonics and Elixir, they take juices and smoothies a step further in terms of their health benefits. They mix smoothies and juices with healthy and medicinal tonics - but don't worry, they still keep the taste sweet and delicious like the treats smoothies should be. Oh, and it's all vegan.
Lifehouse Tonics
Lifehouse opened a cool little shop on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, blending tonic-infused smoothies and elixirs. You may find ingredients you have never heard of or cannot pronounce, but everything is natural, including the sugar substitute that they use, like erythritol and stevia.
Lifehouse Tonics
The menu board describes the drink with its main health benefits and the main flavor component. For example, the Greenhouse Chip is described as "energizing", "alkalizing", with mint as the main flavor component.

Greenhouse Chip (almond milk, cashew milk, mint extract, cacao nibs, barley grass juice, wheat grass juice, oat grass juice, maca, eleuthero, astragalus, cordyceps, tocos, cacao butter, almond butter, coconut oil, erythritol, stevia, $14)
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This is perhaps their most popular drink, and it's easy to see why. It tastes like mint chocolate chip shake! I haven't heard of a lot of the ingredients, so I googled some of them. Maca, for example, is a Peruvian plant from the Andes region. People use the root of maca plant for medicinal purposes, including increasing stamina and also for hormonal imbalance in women.
Strawberry wild orange kefir ($12) - for stamina
Lifehouse Tonics
I didn't get the whole description for this drink, but it's a refreshing and fruity one that's only lightly sweet - perfect for those who want something less sugary.

Other than the smoothies, Lifehouse also offers pressed juices, also with medicinal tonics added. They call them "elixirs". There are three of them being offered when I came: Fungi Palmer (cognitive, refreshing, citrus), Agua de Jamaica (vitamin C, hydrating, tropical), The Bunker (detoxifying, restorative, charcoal). The elixirs are $8 each.
Lifehouse Tonics

Need some caffeine? There's the Filthy Hippie (coffee, chai, banana, almond milk, cashew milk, vanilla, pumpkin spice, maca, muira pauma, epimedium, damiana, mucuna, eleuthero, cacao butter, almond butter, coconut oil, erythritol, stevia, $12)
Lifehouse Tonics
I'm a big fan of chai, so of course I had to try this. Think of a coffee banana shake with chai spices. Described as "uplifting", this has herbs like damiana, a Mexican shrub that is supposedly an aphrodisiac, and epidemium, which also has another name: horny goat weed. I'll leave that at that. Anyway, it's tasty.

There's also an off-menu coffee drink you should know about: Lifeproof Cold Brew
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The off-menu drink is made with cold brew coffee, chaga (a mushroom known to be an immune booster), almond milk, cacao butter, almond buter, coconut oil, monk fruit, erythritol, vanilla.

Lifehouse Tonics and Elixir offers something different in LA's saturated juice and smoothies market. As much as I love drinking juices and smoothies, it's usually a lot of sugar for what may not be as much vitamins. At least with Lifehouse's tonics, which uses sugar substitutes and has medicinal benefits, there's an extra added health value, right?

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