The pink t-shirt is getting expensive. The charity auction currently stands at £212.89, but there's still time to have a final bid. All proceeds go to WellChild. You'll never get another chance.

Another new recipe

Just like we promised, here's another smoothie of the month, just in time for February. Who knows, if we keep going at this rate we'll end up having made twelve of the little blighters by the end of the year.
This time we'd like to introduce you to blackcurrants, raspberries & redcurrants, which is notable not only for having a refreshingly zingy taste, but also because it's the first time we've used redcurrants...

Please tell us more about redcurrants

OK then. Here's some more about redcurrants.

Steve - he did it

Our Steve has just become a chartered accountant. We didn't know what that meant, so we asked Steve how he did it and what it means:

Send a cow

We've been working with Send a Cow (via the innocent foundation) since 2004. Specifically, we've been funding a project in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho - a pretty harsh environment if ever there was one.
One of the ways in which your money has helped is in training farmers to build 'keyhole gardens' - raised vegetable beds with an inner column of compost, designed to yield the most crops in the least amount of space. Their ‘stacked up’ nature ensures that any water they receive is retained for much longer. Smart. Read more here.
 
And if you're bored, play Udder Madness - a game on the Send a Cow site
where you have to catch parachuting cows and avoid getting hit by flying cow dung. Oh yes. Right here.

And finally...

We read somewhere that it's the most depressing week ever, or something like that. But never fear, we're here to make things slightly less gloomy.

Touch the cloth

Some of you may have seen our latest TV advert. If you haven't, have a look here. You will notice that it features a man (our Dan) wearing a pink t-shirt. Now, Dan has had it with that t-shirt. He's finished with pink. But his fashion choices are someone else's opportunity. We have put the sacred pink t-shirt up on eBay so that you can bid on it. And even better, 100% of the proceeds of the auction go to the good people at Wellchild. So please, go and bid generously. Meanwhile, we will wash the tshirt in readiness (he only wore it once, but we'd like it to smell fresh for the winner).

Your health

An addendum to the stuff we said the other week about our new breakfast thickie (the one with the oats in it). Dr Shilpee has given us some more nutritional facts that we'd like to share:

An interesting man

Lots of interesting new people have started working here recently, including Simon, our Procurement Manager. We thought we'd ask him what his job's all about:

Hello Simon. What's your job all about? Imagine you go to your local market to buy your fruit. I do the same, only I buy a lot more.

Describe an average day in the life of a procurement manager. I'll start by sifting through emails that have come in overnight.  A supplier might contact me from Central America to say a shipment is late leaving or I might get a response from an Asian contact offering me some super cool new berries. I spend much of the day researching the fruit markets, deciding what fruit to buy and then of course I've got to buy it.

What's the best thing about your job? If my Mum asked me, I'd say, "learning about far away places where our fruit grows".

And the worst? When my colleagues ask me to buy a new fruit that is hard to find and they want it yesterday.

Who's better - Queen or Black Sabbath? I'll say Queen only because I was brought up on them and I haven't a clue who Black Sabbath are.

You won the book

Congratulations to the following ten people, who all won a copy of 'Great Brand Stories - Innocent' by correctly answering that we make smoothies and not assault courses for squirrels (tough question):

James A / Richard R / Sophie L / Mike N / Alasdair M / Rosy P / Sam D / Katherine C / Kim O / Julie S / *

*We will contact each winner very soon by email. All winners were chosen randomly using Michael Daniel's (PhD) random number generator. If you are one of this week's lucky winners you may want to try your lottery numbers with it.

And finally...

Hello there. In this week's news you can win a new book all about us and watch a strange girl stack cups. From this information, you will be able to see that we are maintaining our usual high standards.

Breakfast gets better (and bigger)

This isn't déjà vu and, yes, you're right, we did launch a breakfast drink last week. But this is another one. It's a breakfast smoothie (as opposed to last week's breakfast thickie) and it's in a big carton with a sort of sunrise thing on the front. Most importantly, it's our answer to those of you who have asked us over the years to give you something a bit more breakfasty to have with your corn flakes. Oranges, mandarins & raspberries does a great job of adding zing to your morning, whilst still giving you 2 portions of your daily fruit in every glassful. Can't argue with that.

Available now in Sainsbury's (but not the 'Local' ones), Waitrose from 27th Jan, Tesco from 3rd Feb and Asda from 17th Feb.

Doing good stuff

As you might know, we donate 10% of all profits to chairty, primarily the innocent foundation, a separate registered charity that we set up to support people in countries where we source our fruit. After the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, we diverted 10% of the foundation's resources towards helping people get over this catastrophe. So we were very happy to get a report back from one of our partner NGOs, the Annai Theresa Welfare Trust (ATWT), based in Tamil Nadu in India. They've been replanting trees and vegetation destroyed by the tsunami, and together with the local community have managed to harvest and plant 30,000 mangrove seeds, plus 20,000 local tree saplings, which will help preserve the coastline whilst providing shade and income for local people. They've also been working to clear debris that was blocking the villagers' access to fresh water. All good, all because you buy the drinks.

So we'd like to pass on their thanks. Thanks.

Win some books

2007 has been pretty busy so far. Another new thing we have to tell you about is this book: Great Brand Stories - Innocent .

Written by a very nice man called John Simmons, it tells the story of innocent - how we started the company, how we make the drinks, and all of the stuff we've done since we started.

Seems like a good read to us, but then we would say this. Anyway, we've got ten copies for you to win. Click here (link only available to family members) to answer an extremely simple question and win win win. (Closing date for entries is midnight on Mon 22nd January).

Kylie's got a crush on us

Although Kylie is currently suffering from a touch of the flu, we think we know what she'll be drinking to help her get over it. We got a note from her tour manager the other day saying this:

"I would like to thank you for sending so many lovely bottles of innocent drinks to Kylie while we have been at Wembley ! We love them and try to have them in the dressing room wherever we go ! She loves innocent stuff."

The feeling is mutual.

And finally...

Hello. 2007 going well? Or are you yearning for 2006, when life was more simple and days could be spent fishing by the river in the dappled sunlight? We're preferring 2007 ourselves. Fishing is boring.

The magical disappearing bottle

Excellent news for the start of 2007. We've been working on a biodegradable bottle for a while now, so we're chuffed to announce that it's finally on the shelves. It's made from corn starch (aka Polylactic acid) and is manufactured using a carbon neutral process. Goody two shoes.

To start off with, this revolutionary bottle will be cradling our brand new breakfast thickie (more below), and after we've tested it out for a while, we hope to start using it with more of our drinks. More info on how to compost your corn starch bottles here.

Breakfast made simple

Here's another thing we've been working on for about five years - our breakfast thickie. We make it from low fat probiotic yoghurt, oats, raspberries and blueberries, so it's stuffed full of natural energy and fibre. Definitely a bit healthier than that all-day breakfast 'slice' you were considering, and much kinder on your breath too. It's in the shops today.

The kissing stops here

You may remember our mistletoe kissing competition from way back in December. Now it's time to announce the six winners, who all win a year's supply of smoothies and a big tub of Zovirax. You can see the winning entries of the best three kissers/ best picture/ best group kiss and the most kisses by one person here.

And finally...

Hello. We'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy 2007. May you stay healthy, exercise heartily and avoid splinters all year long.

The gogglebox

Seeing as its New Year, we thought we would do some new stuff. So there's a new advert on the telly, which you can read about and comment on here. We would appreciate any thoughts you might have on our artistic direction - we ummed and aahed for many hours over the colour of the t-shirt, but we're still not sure about pink.

Another new thing has happened - we've started making a Smoothie of the Month. The clever ones amongst you will be able to fathom that we'll be changing the recipe every month, so you'll get lots more new and exciting stuff from us this year. You see, we love messing about in the kitchen, and we're just happy that more of our messing about is going to make it into bottles, and ultimately into your fridges/stomachs. First up is beetroot, apples, pears and ginger - very good for all of that detoxing malarkey.

Dr Shilpee's guide to a healthy January

As you might know, we have our very own in-house nutritional doctor. Her name is Shilpee, but you can call her Dr Shilps. Shilps has come up with some interesting facts about sorting out your health in January:

"The guideline daily amount for calorie consumption is about 2000 kcals, but people can consume up to 7000 kcals on Christmas Day alone (equivalent to 2.2lbs in weight). So if you fancy shifting those holiday pounds, you need to burn off more calories than you consume and eat a healthy, low-fat diet containing plenty of fruit and veg. That's where our smoothies come in. A serving of innocent smoothie provides only 6-9% of the daily calorie allowance and 8-25% of your daily fibre. Fibre is good for you because it contains lots of antioxidants and can help to keep you feeling full. So no need for trips to the biscuit cupboard. At least not until February."

Thank you Doctor.

Some resolutions

We vow to do the following in 2007:

Anthony: stay away from the McDonalds 99p menu
Ailana: swim more than 5 lengths of front crawl without drowning
Fordy: stop burping
Dan: spend more time playing with children's toys
Henk Jan: really fix the plinths at home
Emma H: avoid alloy wheel curb bashing
Craggy: eat more pickled onions
Ops Matt: appear on the innocent blog/newsletter every week (good start)
Mav: spend less time in the dog house
Geoffrey: learn to play the trumpet, ideally like Miles Davis did
Frith: take life less seriously

If you need a bit of help sticking to your resolutions, we've written a little book that might help and there's always our New Year screensaver if you need constant reminders.

And finally...