It’s Back to School for all five of our boys after summer days filled with working jobs, trips to the beach, skateboarding with friends, attending sporting events, hockey practice and taking a break from the regular scene.

Coordinating schedules, providing transportation and making sure everyone eats healthy meals is a full time job for my wife – and I suspect for a lot of parents.

Keeping tabs on our children’s physical and emotional health is an important parental responsibility.

FruitFast Fruit Supplement Bars

Case in point:  American parents rated childhood obesity as the No. 1 health problem for kids in this country in a 2009 poll conducted by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.   All ethnicities – Caucasians, Hispanics and African-Americans – ranked child obesity at the top of the list.

Concern for overweight kids and poor diets are not new issues.  And I believe that as parents, we need to set the example.

In the deTar household, we make sure our kids have balanced meals, limiting their intake of fast and processed foods.  We make it a point to have fresh fruit and vegetables on hand for snacks.  You can always find FruitFast juice concentrates in the refrig instead of pop and a handy jar on the counter filled with FruitFast bars – the favorite of the neighborhood.  They’ll be packed into their gym bags and lunch boxes as they head back to the classroom.

These are healthy childhood eating patterns that we think will stick with them, through their lives and will be passed down to their kids. It’s all about creating good habits and promoting the right choices.

“Whatever possessed you to do that?” was the question from a longtime friend who heard we have introduced a new product, CherryFlex® for Dogs.

It may surprise some people but the truth is we have been actively planning for this new venture for some time. The idea began 10 years ago when Janet and I retired from farming and closed our retail farm market operation. We seriously searched for a way to capture the health benefits of fruits in a convenient form that would make them available year-round. It took years of trial and error, but the process we have developed is effective and innovative and we are the only company anywhere with this technology.

The concept of fruit being good for animals is not far-fetched. As lifelong fruit growers, our domestic pets and barnyard animals had fruit in their diets, much like their wild counterparts – deer, bear, birds, raccoons – that depend on berries and seeds for sustenance.

My strong desire has always been to improve the quality of life – and not just for people, but for animals as well. Since discovering the way to lock the fruits’ phytonutrients in a softgel, it only made sense to take it a step further and develop a quality product for animals, too.  We call it the “Power of Fruit.”

After all, our CherryFlex customers have been feeding our softgels to their pets for years!   So we took the same human grade fruit, carefully researched, adapted and tested the formula for canines, and added a natural beef flavor coating.

We’re convinced the pet world is going to like CherryFlex for Dogs, too.

And a reminder during August…customers will receive a CherryFlex dog leash FREE with every order of CherryFlex for Dogs!  So order yours soon.

CherryFlex for Dogs with Leash

Our handy CherryFlex pet leash can be your’s for free if you order a bottle of CherryFlex for Dogs.

Simply order one or more bottles of CherryFlex for Dogs, add a leash to your order, then enter FREELEASH in the coupon code to get your leash for free. Limit 1 free leash per order.

Made from whole fruit utilizing our proprietary process, including the skin and pulp, CherryFlex for Dogs Softgels have a great-tasting natural beef flavor without preservatives, by-products or fillers. Designed to help your dog maintain healthy joint function, CherryFlex for Dogs special formulation is available in 60-count bottles.

For generations long distance runners and weekend joggers have had their favorite elixirs — those special mixes that can resemble a potion from a Harry Potter book.

From honey-infused electrolyte replacements to an “eye of newt, bee’s knees and a bat wing,” the tonics are as diverse as the ages of the runners who tout them.

An article in our regional daily newspaper caught my eye, probably because it confirms what we discovered with the recent double blind Winona State University pilot study of our CherryFlex softgel products.

The article appeared in one of Europe’s oldest and most respected daily newspapers: the “London Telegraph,” and touts cherry juice as a way to ease discomfort distance runners frequently experience after training runs and races.

“People who drank the unsweetened cherry juice while training for a long distance relay reported much less duress after exercise than those who did not,” the paper reports.

“Scientists believe cherries’ benefits are likely because of the fruit’s antioxidant compounds called anthocyanins which also give cherries their bright red colour.”

“In the study, 60 healthy adults aged between 18 and 50 years, and who drank 10.5 ounces of cherry juice twice daily in the week before the long distance race, had far less muscle soreness than those who consumed another juice.”

Well there you have it.

And though too many hours on the tractor will probably keep me off the distance running circuit, you might want to tell your running friends about cherry juice and the article in the “London Telegraph.”

In the meantime, keep taking that path less traveled…..

Bob