This week’s news is brought to you by the letter E, the number 5 and the complete unabridged history of the screw.

Ethique, gouvernance et fromage, peut-etre

Exciting times in France – last week we were awarded the Trophée Ethique et Gouvernance by the EDC (one of France’s leading business schools). The award is given to companies who have made a difference via the ethical and sustainable ways in which they run their businesses, with all finalists being nominated by the students. The judges included ex French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and our Philippe went along to collect the award, make a speech and even have a chat with his favourite singer, Line Renaud. Well done everyone.

Extremely austere

Last week’s competition heralded a whole heap of excellent money saving suggestions, many of which involved toilet roll. You can have a read of them all here, but if you’re pushed for time, here are our top 5 favourites:

1. Instead of going to an expensive musical, dress up your cat and put on a CD.
2. Sew all your pockets closed so you’re unable to carry money.
3. Make stuff – Flo made a shoulder bag, make-up bag, three shopping bags and a range of small stuffed toys, all from a Simpsons duvet cover.
4. Visit your local DIY store, tear off large samples of wallpaper and use as wrapping paper.
5. Squeeze your loo roll into an oval shape. Then the paper doesn't roll out so easily.

A very frugal well done to Kylie, Lydia, Flo, Woxi and Layla. Smoothies and shiny pennies on their way to you all very soon. And if you entered our fruit garden give away last week, you can see if you’ve won by clicking here.

Extreme health

4 days to go until January is officially over. Which means that it’s 4 days until you can start ignoring your gym membership for the rest of the year and 4 days till you can stop pretending to like chamomile tea. If you’ve had a less than healthy start to the year, don’t worry – there’s another 11 months to make up for it. And if you need some inspiration, have a look at what the strong willed people of Fruit Towers have been doing here or just glean the latest wisdom from our ever lovely Dr. Shilps.

Et finally...

Hello. Did you know that the first stretch you do when you wake up is known as a pandiculation? Any suggestions for the second and third will be gratefully received.

We go vegan

You ask, we deliver. Take our veg pots for instance. Lots of you wrote to ask us to make them vegan by removing the ingredients that make them not quite vegan (like honey). So we’re pleased to announce that our Moroccan and Winter Seasonal recipes are both now suitable for vegans. It’s worth saying that whenever you have something to say about the stuff we make, good or bad, you can review any of the drinks and veg pots that we make. Just leave your comments at the bottom of each individual drink/pots’ webpage. We check the comments every day, we fix the stuff that needs fixing and we give away a boatload of smoothies every month to the person who leaves the most useful and insightful comment. So it’s well worth putting your two pen’orth in.

Special Guest

Due to some startling efficiency, we’re a little ahead of ourselves for once, which means that our new special guest smoothies are out in public as we type. First up is our pineapples, blueberries and ginger recipe, which is perfect for the days when you need a gentle butterfly kick of ginger to sort out your tastebuds. Our special guest recipes are a new thing and will be around for as long as it takes us to come up with the next one (which may or may not be a while). You’ll be able to recognise them by their striking new blackboard design. Super swish. We sincerely hope you enjoy them all, whenever they appear.

Grow your own

When it’s wet and grey outside, there’s not much that anyone can do to persuade us to stray far from the sofa and a good DVD (Wall-E is a current favourite). Fortunately, the good people at Rocket Gardens aren’t the moping types when it comes to winter and have instead come up with a smart idea to get you out and about with a purpose – planting your own fruit garden. They’ve created these instant garden kits where all the fiddly bits are done for you, so you just have to plant, do a bit of watering and reap the benefits. They’ve very kindly given us a whopping 20 fruit garden kits to give away, so if you fancy growing your own and switching the telly off, just click here.

Extreme saving

According to some survey somewhere, this week is the week that we are all most likely to be more skint than a bloke called Clint. What with the credit crunch, incessant rain and not having two pennies to rub together, some might even say it’s a bleak week. But not us. Simply tell us your most extreme money saving tips right here and we’ll send the top 5 suggestions a box of smoothies and a lucky New Year penny. Or if you want some instant value-for-money right away, click here.

And finally...

Hello. It’s January all over the world, even in Alaska, and people are dancing in the streets because the old times are behind us and a new year stretches out ahead of us, much like many other years. Yahoo.

You need, I need, we all need health

January is traditionally a time of healthy living. Kayaking to work, eating nuts and berries, doing jazz jitsu* in the park – it’s all happening right in front of your very eyes. Our own personal nutritionist, Dr Shilpee, is very much involved too, holding court in her own special area of the website, dispensing wisdom and answering your queries with a flourish. Questions she’s being asked include “Are you single?”, “Who does your hair?” and slightly more pertinent stuff like “Are your smoothies suitable for diabetics?” This week’s special topic is all about our veg pots, talking about fibre, low calories and answering a query about naturally occurring sugar. If you have a health related question for the doctor, please post it here.

All you need to know about beetroot

We don’t use beetroot much in our smoothies, so we thought we’d tell you a little more about this noble root crop, seeing as it’s making a rare appearance in our smoothie of the month. The Romans quite liderally loved it, treating beetroot as an aphrodisiac and all round encourager of hot times – if a man and a woman ate from the same beetroot, they would fall in love (feel free to share a bottle). What’s more, beetroot contains betaine (a substance believed to relax the mind), tryptophan (an essential amino acid), and plenty of iron to boot – very healthy. Our final fact concerns the Prince of Pop, who after consuming a jar of pickled beets on Boxing Day 1981 sat down and penned this hit. What a guy. What a beet. What a root.

Words from the others

Now then, we are always on the hunt for a bit of third party endorsement here at Fruit Towers. It’s fine that we know our stuff tastes great, but always good when others acknowledge these facts too. So it was with a mild episode of Winslettian hyperventilation that we greeted the news that our orange juice won a big fat taste test against Tropicana (“not much flavour”) and Tesco’s own label OJ in Closer. Our OJ was greeted as having “a really sweet taste and lots of bits”, and in other news Posh and Cheryl have fallen out. Not content with that, we then found our Veg Pots in Sainsbury’s magazine, where they were described as being “the best lunch option since the Earl invented the sandwich”. And since Simon Mayo invented egg-based condiments. Probably.

And finally...

*Jazz jitsu is a new fusion of martial arts and jazz tap dancing. Nip round if you need a lesson.

Hello and a very happy 2009 to you. Hope you had a lovely Christmas and are reading this week’s news from the comfort of your oak panelled study whilst supping a fine whisky and reveling in your new elasticated jeans.

Healthy new year

New year, new start, new hole in your belt. We’re not going to mention the word ‘detox’ once in this week’s news. Not once. Not even if you lasso the hosepipe in an enticing way and promise doughnuts afterwards. What we will tell you about though is our nice new poster and press ads, which are out and about right now. There’s a bit of maths involved but it’s not hard maths where you have to dig out the protractor or figure out quadratic simultaneous equations to get the answer. It’s simple stuff. 1 of our smoothies + 1 of our veg pots = your 5-a-day. No long division. No crossings out. No sexy hosepipe dances. For a healthy start to 2009, all you need to do is click here.

Healthy new stuff

While you were wallowing in lukewarm eggnog and gorging yourself on turkey millefeuille, we were busy here, beavering away, making shiny new things for you. There’s our latest smoothie of the month, beetroot, apples, pears & ginger, renowned for its bright purple hue, cleansing properties and ability to taste better than a sprout kebab. And there’s also our brand new seasonal veg pot recipe, sweet potato chilli, which is perfect for days when you want a good hearty lunch and a bit of a warm-up. Granted neither of them are particularly shiny but they’re still very good, still very tasty and both very much less fiddly than an eggnog bath.

Healthy new pockets

If you’re a bit skint after Christmas and are resorting to drying your teabags on the radiator and milking the cat, then here’s something sure to cheer up both you and your bank manager. Our smoothies are on special offer for the next few weeks in a store near you, meaning you can save a few pennies and walk off that second layer of chocolates. What’s more, since our veg pots are new to Tesco, for the next few weeks you can also save £1 on them too, leaving you free to indulge in one hundred penny sweets, a bag of scampi fries or a ‘sorry’ present for the cat.

And finally...