The juiceproducer’s guide to juicing for health
First a statement from the juiceproducer!
“Juicing is a great way to separate the body of your fruit and veg from the liquid nutrients lying therein, the reason for doing this is that this gives you enzyme and nutrient rich liquid goodness that takes no digestive effort to absorb”
Digestive effort? Yup, your body uses energy from food in several different ways, to keep warm, to run your brain, for muscular movement AND to run the digestive tract, in fact this is one of the body’s largest energy drains. In modern life we have such as massive array of food to choose from, in one meal you can combine pretty much every food group all together finished off with a dollop of cake, then coffee, then a mint, then the bill. Just think what the inside of your stomach has to contend with! Let’s think back a bit to the way we are designed, go back as far as cavemen times and we were hunter-gatherers, if you came across an apple tree, it was apples on the menu, sure, you may have a few berries in your loin cloth but you get the idea. Things were simple back then and so were meals, I guess if a sabre tooth tiger appeared then it was either tiger steaks for the next few weeks or just avoiding becoming the meal yourself. My point is that meals were fresh, uncooked and uncomplicated
These days its fair to say that most of us have over-taxed our digestive systems for quite some time now, overloading the body with a smorgasboard of different foods most of it processed or far from fresh. This can make our digestion quite sluggish and in turn makes us low on energy, a downward spiral as then eating well just seems like more effort!
Raw power!!! Think of juice fresh from the juicer as liquid power!! It’s uncooked, it’s easily digested, it will absorb straight away AND deliver its goodness straight to where it’s needed with little strain on the digestive system!! Isn’t that what EVERYONE needs from time to time??!!
Cooking! Now I love cooking, cooking is great! Couldn’t live without it! In making our food hot and comforting, just the way we like it, we do turn down the volume on the nutrient and enzyme content of our food! Just think of raw fresh juice as full volume tunes from a whopping boombox while a cooked meal is your favourite nurturing classic burbling from the stereo at chattering volume, both good, and a bit of each makes for life well lived.
Enzymes? Nutrients? Mmm, mmm, these two are IMPORTANT!! Natural foodstuffs have enzymes in! Digestion, past the teeth stage, is largely a chemical process, enzymes are the catalyst to the chemical reaction that is digestion and that’s what allows the body to utilize the nutrients packed into food! There’s that word again, nutrients, this is where it’s at, nutrients are vitamins, minerals, amino acids, in fact all the things body needs to build, repair, warm, and just run in general. If you aint getting these or just aren’t digesting them well, you’ll not be at your full glory!!
Now with fresh juice from the juicer being rammed full of natural fresh goodness, can you see why its so good for you? Sooooooo whats next?
A word about shopping, let’s go back to the music thing, next time you are wandering round the supermarket I want you to pick your favourite tune, (perhaps something by Take That, works for me) and imagine all the fresh fruit and veg are singing to you, full on, like only fresh fruit and veg can! The louder the better as this is what they have to give you by way of goodness! The canned fruit and veg sing too, just muffled from inside the can, waiting to get out! But as you go down the isles with all that processed, boxed up stuff there’s barely a sound! Its dull lifeless food, with dull, lifeless results!
My other juicy hint here is to find your local farmers market, these are great outlets for fresh food. Try this link www.lfm.org.uk
Juicing and weight control: here’s a promise to you, I will never read, write or follow a diet book! meal plans, calorie counting, rewarding myself with a lo-fat muffin after I’ve behaved and filled in the chart are not for me. I’m basically too simple for that, if they work for our then good, but let me share my thinking with you. Hunger is a funny thing, for example I’m sure that if you start your day by eating sugar filled breakfast cereal then you’ll want sugary stuff all day as the first helping of sugar enters and leaves your bloodstream. On the other hand if you start the day with a sustaining breakfast of non-processed natural goodness then it will leave you satisfied till lunch. It’s all in the choices, like most things really. Making sustaining nutritious food choices is the only thing I do, hand in hand with this goes controlled hunger, high energy levels and particularly stunning dance moves*.For reading on nutrition I thoroughly recommend Patrick Holford’s excellent books, these will give you an understanding of nutrition rather than recipes to follow.
So what’s wrong with sugar? you can tell eh? I’m not sugar’s no1 fan! Before I took an interest in nutrition I was a sugar fiend! Sugar was on everything, on it dissolved in it, dusting it, slopped over it and dried off. You get the picture. Then I learnt all I could about nutrition, and basically why I was knackered all the time, sugar as it is in a packet is too refined, we don’t digest it as such, it enters our bloodstream too directly. The problem with this is momentarily we feel rather jolly as the sugar zips us round, however then the pancreas shoots insulin into the party to regulate our blood sugar, this ends the fun but leaves us wanting more! Again this brings us back to caveman times when refined sugar just didn’t exist! Our pancreas can become exhausted by this load and either overcompensate (low blood sugar) or not cope at all (diabetes). The sugar fix is rather addictive too, so breaking the cycle takes some doing. It will be worth it though as you will be rewarded more energy, mood stability, weight loss and hunger control for a start!