Healthy holidays: savouring a raw juice camp in Portugal

I never thought I'd drink a cabbage. But here I am, sitting in a sun-cooked garden on the Algarve with a green moustache and an empty pint glass. When I flew to Portugal for this seven-day raw juice camp (run by British company Explore Raw) I was overweight and newly single. I felt rather like the eponymous chronometer of the nursery rhyme My Grandfather's Clock: too large for the shelf. But I had heard impressive stories about the benefits of juicing, and if the alternative was "90 years on the floor", it had to be worth a try.

If the tabloids are to be believed, raw juicing is the method du jour for celebrity weight loss, with acolytes including Beyoncé, Woody Harrelson and Jennifer Aniston. The science is simple: raw foods contain more vitamins and minerals than their cooked counterparts, and juicing them (skin and all: that's where a lot of the good stuff hides) is the fastest, most efficient way to inject those benefits straight into your system. If you shove the correct ingredients into your juicer, you'll have all the nourishment you need and more – within seconds.