Juicing - Why should we juice?

JUICING? - WHY DO IT?


Why Juice? Why not just eat the stuff?

Loads of good reasons, here are just a few to chew on...

1. Juicing is a way of mechanically chewing up your food before you eat it. Your body is like a juice extractor, you chew the foods up so that your body can extract the nutrient-rich juice and then reject the fibre. Juicing saves your body time and energy – it is like nature’s fast food, healthy fast food. Most of us are too busy to chew properly and this has bad effects like bloating, wind, reflux etc. Juicing gets nourishment into your body in a form it can absorb quickly and easily.

2. You would not sit down to a big plate of greens and fruit for breakfast – so you would not just eat the stuff. Also, we need to eat more fruits and veggies to get the same nutrients that we used to get in our fresh food; intensive farming and long journeys to market, vast storage barns where the produce is stored, all mean that our food has lost a lot of its nutrients but the time we get them home. We should try to eat more seasonally and more locally produced foods to get more nutrients.

3. Juicing enables you to “wrap up” the less attractive taste of nutrient-rich greens and veggies in the sweet and flavourful juices of fruits making the whole thing palatable and getting nutrients inside you that you would not normally have ingested.

4. Because we don’t just eat the stuff!

But don’t we need the fibre?

Yes we do need fibre, we are not suggesting that you replace all your meals with fruit and veggie juices – just ADD the juices to your diet and eat nice high fibre meals as well. People who go on juice-only fasts often have a lot of problems with constipation so we acknowledge fully that we need fibre, probiotics and prebiotics to maintain a healthy colon. So drink your juice and eat your high fibre complex carbohydrates (wholegrain cereals and salads) too!

How much juice should we drink every day?

Studies over 10 years in Israel have shown that just one half-litre glass of green juice taken three times per week can reduce your chances of Alzheimer’s by an astonishing 76%. Think what a daily drink could do! If you get into the habit of taking a large glassful (think of a pint glass) every day and then a refreshing carroty or beetrooty or fruity cocktail for the fun of it any other time of the day, then you are boosting your daily nutrient intake way beyond what most people have in a week. 30 days on that and you will feel the energy and health improvement.

I don’t have time in the mornings to make a juice, can I do it the night before?

Yes, if you can get the juice nice and cold with some ice, put it in a flask and fill it right to the top to avoid air oxidation and keep it in the fridge until you need it, you won’t lose too many nutrients and the quality will be ok. An old juice is still better than no juice!

Which juicer is the best one to buy?

The best juicer on the market is the one that you would use every day. It is no good buying the top of the range technically brilliant machine if it doesn’t suit your lifestyle and spends most of its expensive life in the cupboard – I have been there, done that! A cheaper, less-efficient juicer that is a pleasure to use and one that you keep on the table top and use every day is a far better buy than the gleaming stainless steel beauty that costs you a month’s salary and is too complicated to clean up afterwards.

Great starter models are shown on the “Shrek Juice” leaflet. Other models of juicer are designed for multi-purpose and more advanced kitchen usage and we cover some of those in the demonstration.

Should we only juice organic foods?

In a perfect world, all produce would be organic and yes, that is the best type to buy and juice. But this is not a perfect world and organic foods cost a lot more than conventionally farmed produce. A juice made with conventional fruits and veggies is still better than no juice at all. If you have to compromise, consider that any green leafy vegetable is going to have been sprayed at least once (sometimes many times), so where you have a choice, buy green leafy veggies organically if you can and wash thoroughly all the other produce that you may have to buy conventionally grown. Make the spinach, lettuce, cabbage and kale the first choice for organic if you can; it is much easier to wash the other produce and remove pesticides and chemicals, much harder to get them off crinkly lettuce and kale leaves.

Things like avocados, bananas, oranges and coconuts etc., have thick skins so they should be ok to eat non-organic. Make choices where you can, but don’t worry about it if you can’t. It is still good to juice even if it is not organic.

I’ve got a smoothie maker – can’t I use that? What is the difference between a smoothie and a juice anyway?

Smoothies are blended fruits and vegetables with none of the fibre taken away – it is the whole fruit or veggie blended to a fine pulp and sometimes watered down with fruit juice or water to make it drinkable.

Blenders are the same thing as smoothie makers and neither one is a juicer. You really need a juicer AND a blender in the kitchen.

Stay Juicy - Stay LIVE!

For more ideas on juicing, join in one of the Juicy Workshops at Taymount Clinic - see www.taymount.com for details of the next one. Fun, information, juicy samples and take-home recipe sheet and a chance to try out various juicing machines.