As more and more health conscious Calgarians are jumping on the bandwagon of the benefits of drinking fresh juice to start their day, the price of a so-called superfood ingredient has been steadily increasing.

Celery, the centre of a current health fad, has become the most expensive ingredient on the shopping list of Juice Because, a juice bar in the Beltline.

“It hasn’t been in the past but it definitely is now. It’s over doubled in price for a case. Even compared to pineapples and bigger items that we have, it’s now probably the most expensive,” says co-owner Elisa Boyd.

She says the increase in demand is partly fuelled by the findings of Anthony Williams, a self-proclaimed medical medium.

Williams claims to have started extolling the benefits of drinking the one-ingredient juice on an empty stomach since 1975, when he was a child, according to his website.

“[He says] having one glass of celery juice every morning, before you eat anything and then wait 30 minutes has all sorts of health benefits,” Boyd says.

The advantages of celery juice, sold for $8.00 a bottle at Juice Because, include helping with inflammation, boosting energy levels, adding anti-oxidants, improving overall health as well as a way to cleanse or ‘reset’ your body.

Williams even says the routine is known to heal people of different illnesses.

Food experts say there is really no evidence that proves celery is a superfood.

Industry experts also suggest that some of the increase in cost for the stalky vegetable has come from poor weather in parts of California that produce the bulk of Canada’s imports.

In April 2018, customers could expect to pay $3.00 for a kilogram of celery, according to Statistics Canada. The agency stopped tracking the price of the vegetable the following month. In the most recent years for which data is available, the price mostly hovered around $3.00, save for a couple spikes that pushed it upwards of $4.00.

Now, one major Canadian grocer is advertising celery stalks for $5.99 online. A two-pack of celery hearts costs $6.99, while celery root runs $11.00 per kilogram.

Boyd says her business is feeling the pinch from the high cost of celery.

“When we first started getting celery, I want to say we were sitting at maybe $60 a case. That’s now almost over $120. That’s just something we can’t pass onto our customers.”

As a result, she says her business has been forced to simply eat the extra cost.

(With files from Stephanie Wiebe and the Canadian Press)