Cold Pressed Juice is a Hot Trend

Mohamed says the JuiceBot offers the capability for customers to select a combination of juices or smoothies in one serving.

The JuiceBot’s robotic capabilities include automatic shut off for temperature control, Mohamed notes. And it has the ability to be monitored remotely.

“There is even a button that customers can click on for live help,” Mohamed adds. “We maintain a customer service call center at our office in downtown Los Angeles.”

Cold pressed juice has a typical shelf life of three to five days when it’s fresh and unpasteurized, Mohamed says. “We replace our product every 48 hours for optimum nutrients and freshness,” he relates.

According to Mohamed, the JuiceBot is the only device approved for unpasteurized beverages to be dispensed through an unattended retail format under California legislation and the National Automatic Merchandising Association, an organization that certifies vending machines under FDA code standards.

CANARY Pathogen Detection

To help ensure the safety of its products, JuiceBot utilizes a technology called CANARY, which stands for Cellular Analysis and Notification of Antigen Risks and Yields. CANARY is available commercially through PathSensors, Inc., Baltimore, Md., a biotech company that creates pathogen detection instruments.

“CANARY is a cell-based biosensor technology that delivers rapid detection of pathogens at high levels of sensitivity and specificity,” says Ted Olsen, PathSensors president. “CANARY incorporates pathogen-specific antibodies expressed on the biosensor surface which, in the presence of a pathogen, trigger an intracellular calcium release that, in turn, activates bioluminescent proteins whose light output can be measured and analyzed. CANARY technology detects down to 1 colony forming unit of target pathogens in less than five minutes.”

For JuiceBot, CANARY is delivered through PathSensors’s Zephyr Pathogen Identifier. The Zephyr kit includes a touch screen laptop complete with the CANARY detection technology, bench mount box, luminometer, centrifuge, and barcode scanner.

“The Zephyr platform is best suited for users who test lower volumes of samples, less than 40 tests per day,” Olsen relates. “Results are available in less than five minutes, with PCR (polymerase chain reaction) levels of sensitivity and specificity.”

According to Olsen, PathSensors holds the exclusive license to CANARY technology from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Mass.

“CANARY was originally created as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract to test for anthrax extremely quickly and rapidly following the 2001 anthrax attacks,” Olsen relates. “Now we’ve expanded to work not only in the biodefense sector to test for pathogens like anthrax, ricin, small pox, etc. for different agencies, including the Department of Defense, but also to work in the agriculture and food safety industries. To that end, the technology is capable of detecting foodborne pathogens, including Listeria, Salmonella, and Campylobacter.

“With fresh juices, Listeria and other pathogens are a particular concern,” Olsen continues. “Since the juice market is one of the most competitive segments of the beverage industry, and since juice is only growing in popularity, safe kitchen practices and food testing have never been as important as they are right now. As players like JuiceBot continue to become more and more innovative, we believe CANARY technology for rapid pathogen detection is a viable tool that can help them stay on the cutting edge of food safety.”

“The PathSensors system helps verify that our current food safety inspections, logs, and process of critical control points are working together,” Mohamed says. “It’s our last line of defense and a great verification tool for specific pathogens that we deal with in the fresh raw food beverage industry.”

A Hot Cold Juice Trend

Functional beverages, those marketed with natural health benefits from their ingredients, along with minimum fortification, are arguably one of the hottest trends in the industry, according to food scientist Alvin Lee, PhD, director of the Center for Processing Innovation at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s (IIT) Institute for Food Safety and Health (IFSH), Chicago, Ill.