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POWERS OF JUICINGBY JULIE DARGAN RN, ND, BHSc, JUICE THERAPIST
WHY SHOULD WE JUICE?
Many people ask me the question, “Why do I promote Juicing”. Why do I recommend juicing rather than promoting to eat more fruit and vegetables? The answer to this question is simple. In the ten years that I have been a Naturopath and trying to get people to eat more fruit and vegetables, very few people actually did change their diet. The majority of people found it too difficult, taste was a big issue, recipes, availability, and the list was endless. Then I discovered how easy and tasting juicing fruit and vegetables could be, as well as the positive changes in so many of my clients once they introduced juicing into their diet.
Juicing is all about extracting the nutrients from the fibre found in fruits and vegetables. It is in the juice where all the goodness comes from. By juicing, you are removing the indigestible fibre (but still retaining soluble fibre) and making the nutrients more readily available to the body in much larger quantities that if you was to eat the fruits and vegetables whole. The nutrients I am talking about here are not only vitamins and minerals, but also an array of enzymes, antioxidants and soluble fibre, all bursting with goodness and vitality, into order to nourish our cells and keeping us alive. Many people are not aware of the importance of eating foods with the enzymes intact. This is so important in helping the body to break down the nutrients in the foods we are eating.
When people think of juicing, they immediately think of fruit juices. At Juice Master, we incorporate many green vegetables into our juices as well as avocado, wheatgrass, spirulina, probiotics and yoghurt. By incorporating greens into the juices this promotes an alkalising formula and will help protect your body against disease and illness. Most diets create an acidic environment which increases the risk of disease and illness within the body.
At Juice Master we like to add avocado to our juices. Avocado is a wonderful fruit. They are rich in fibre and healthy fats while naturally low in sugar and sodium. Within an avocado the majority of fat is the healthy kind: 60% monounsaturated fat and 12% polyunsaturated fat. Half an avocado contains 18g of the beneficial monounsaturated fat. They also have a strong antioxidant capacity to help prevent the healthy fats in avocados going rancid too quickly. Avocados contain not only antioxidant vitamins and minerals but also other natural antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds. Avocados are also a great protein source. Avocados provide all of the essential amino acids (those that must be provided by our diet), with 18 amino acids in all, plus 7 fatty acids, including Omega 3 and 6. Avocados contain more protein than cow’s milk, about 2% per edible portion.
Also added supplements include: Wheatgrass: a great aid to alkaline the body. Great to alleviate any sugar cravings that can occur. Spirulina: great as a cleanser, for maintaining health and energy as well as a great aid in weight loss. Yoghurt: protein source. Make sure to always look at the ingredients and that no sugar or sugar substitutes have been added to the product.
Juicing yields a high amount of easily digestible nutrients, fat burning compounds, vitamins and minerals, proteins, protective phyto-nutrients as well as healthy bacteria in order to helping you to build stronger muscles and tissues as well as aiding your digestive processes. It is also cleansing for the kidneys and lymphatic system as well as a whole host of other nutritional values.
Most Western diets are commonly comprised of cooked and processed foods that are devoid of enzymes. Therefore our bodies must produce the enzymes needed to digest the food. When food is eaten with the enzyme intact (as occurs in raw fruit and vegetables), the breakdown of food begins in the stomach decreasing the workload placed on the pancreatic enzymes. By eating foods with the enzymes intact the body is able to focus on growth, maintenance and repair of the body rather than having to spend a great deal of time digesting food. Anyone who is ill or exhausted etc should not be putting further burden on the body. Eating foods with the enzymes intact assists the body in getting rid of wastes as well as taking stress off the pancreas. When we eat a diet mainly comprised of processed and cooked foods, the pancreas has to work harder to produce more enzymes.
Enzymes are destroyed by heat (40-450C), processing methods (such as all processed foods), and microwave cooking.
Foods that contain no enzymes include high refined foods, over cooked foods etc. Preservatives are put into food to prolong their shelf life. The problem with this is that they also destroy the enzyme activity within the product (pasteurized apple juice contains no enzymes). Preservatives are also capable of destroying the enzymes naturally made by the body! You may be making yourself a wonderful green salad, but if you pour a commercial dressing over it and you may be contributing to decreasing the enzyme activity of the salad, rather than increasing it! A great salad dressing I recommend to all my clients is a mixture of Balsamic vinegar and Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Most, if not all, frozen vegetables bought in the supermarkets are flash boiled before freezing thus destroying the enzyme activity. Drinking carbonated drinks destroys enzyme activity as well as leeching calcium from the bones. If produce is picked too soon and left to ripen in transit, there is no enzyme activity available.
What many people do not understand that if you do not have sufficient enzymes to breakdown food nutrients, then the nutrient within the food is not released and delivered to the cells to be utilised. What then happens is that the cells are not nourished but starving and crying out for nutrients. You do not feel satisfied and continue to eat more food to feed the starving cells without enzymes to breakdown the foods the cells never receive the fuel that they need.
A common complaint many of the clients in my clinic have include bloating, IBS, constipation or raiding the cupboards after dinner. This is due to the fact that the lack of enzymes in the diet causes foods to be insufficiently digested. The undigested starch, sugars, carbohydrates can ferment while fats can go rancid. This also causes toxins to build up. Think of food left out on the bench on a hot day that goes rotten, smells, and gives off an odour. Well, that is happening inside the colon. No wonder the abdomen swells up like a balloon with resulting smelly gas/wind, constipation etc. You really need to try and visualise this if you really want to make a change. You need to give your body a good cleanse, just like you would give your car a grease and oil change 2-4 times a year to keep running in top condition and not break down when you least expect it. Fasting and juicing both go hand in hand in getting the body back on track, not pills!!
So to sum up, to clean out the colon- the back end of our digestive tract- you need to get the food particles broken down in the small intestine-the front end- way before it reaches the back end. A diet rich in enzymes starts getting to work straight away in the mouth, stomach and small intestine. Once in the small intestine, enzymes can heal any damage to the lining in the small intestine as well as facilitating nutrient absorption and digestion (great news for those starving cells). Nutrients then find their way to the cells rather than making an exit 24 hours later into the local sewage plants. This also helps the liver and the pancreas due to the fact of decreasing their workload.
A simple way to introduce more raw foods into your diet is to juice with a good quality juicer.
Drinking more fluids in the form of water and fresh juices, as opposed to tea, coffee and pasteurized juices, assists in flushing out toxins and helping to optimize organs such as the liver and pancreas, to function well. The body is able to absorb the nutrients from freshly squeezed juices efficiently which can assist the cleansing potential for anyone with low energy levels or recovering from surgery or illness etc.
It is always best to drink freshly made juices straight away due to the fact that storing juices does decrease the vital enzymes, antioxidants and vitamin content. But, please, common sense prevails here. If you have to make up your juices in the morning (or even the night before) to take them to work with you, then you will be giving yourself more nutrition than if you opted for a quick takeaway. There will still be nutrients in the juice, not as much, but still a reasonable amount. Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves, or allow the puritans to make us feel guilty in doing everything perfectly. In order to make any lifestyle changes to work, they have to be practical for anyone to commit to.
If you enjoy a juice before your evening meal (an excellent aperitif to give) then it should be taken at least 15 minutes before the meal and at least 1 ½ hours after a meal in order to allow food in the stomach to be mixed effectively with gastric enzymes and HCl rather than be diluted with the juice.
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