Juicing

One of the many benefits of juicing is that it is a delightful way to increase fruits and vegetables in your diet. From green smoothies to simple fresh fruit juices, juicing can help improve your nutritional intake, lose weight, and enjoy delicious tasting foods.

Benefits of Juicing

Other benefits of juicing include the fact that juicing breaks down the pulp and fiber in fruits and vegetables, extracting most of the enzyme and nutrient-rich juice. The remaining pulp and fiber may be mashed so fine that it adds to the texture of the drink or is extruded as waste from the juicer. Juicers strain out the pulp and other hard-to-digest materials from fresh fruits and vegetables, but blenders and processors don't have that feature. Blenders are fine for making smoothies, but if you want a really smooth drink with a juice consistency without pulpy bits, you'll have to use a juicer.

Many people swear by the health benefits of juicing. Beet, carrot and cucumber juices are especially noted for their healing properties. They aid in detoxification and some, such as cucumber juice, can act as a diuretic to release extra water stored by the body.

Raw foodists believe fresh raw vegetables are more beneficial than cooked because they furnish the body with nutritional enzymes on a cellular level. Fresh vegetable and fruit juices provide these nutritional properties in a form that is easily digested and assimilated. Juicing recipes for good health have been collected for decades which makes juicing today easier than ever. Books like Dr. Norman Walker's Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices offers vegetable juice recipes for specific ailments. It not only tells you what vegetables to juice but the ratio of juices for the perfect blend.

Getting Started with Juicing

You don't need to invest a fortune in special equipment, but you will need to buy a juicer. Many people have an old fashioned orange juicer in the kitchen, and while these work fine to juice citrus fruits they are not what you need to juice vegetables and other fruits. When purchasing a new juicer, look for features that make cleaning and using the juicer easy. Choices include centrifugal or masticating juicers. While masticating juicers tend to be more expensive, they often last longer and provide more juice per vegetable.

Whether you indulge in fresh carrot, apple, pineapple, spinach juice, or a nutritional blend of juices, juicing is a great way to get more fruits and vegetables.