Benefits of Fresh Juice

Juicing Helps You Consume More Vegetables Than You Could Eat on Most Days
 People often ask me why not just eat the vegetables and fruit.  You should eat vegetables and fruit.  I hope you eat plenty of vegetables and fruit every day. But the latest nutritional guidelines indicate that we need more veggies and fruit than most people can eat in a day—between 9 and 13 servings of vegetables and fruit (2 or 3 servings of fruit; 7 to 10 servings of vegetables)—to stay healthy depending on age and activity level, with an emphasis on dark green, leafy vegetables and red and yellow vegetables and fruit. Most people don’t come even close to getting those number of servings every day. Juicing can make it possible to reach the goal of a minimum of 9 servings a day without requiring a lot of time.

You Can Juice A Variety of Vegetables and Parts of Plants You’d Probably Never Eat
You can juice stems, leaves, and seeds that you would probably never eat and get a big nutritional bonus!  My breakfast juice often includes carrots, beet with leaves and stem, celery, cucumber, lemon, and ginger root.  I would never eat all that in one setting.  I once ate 5 carrots just to see how long it would take.  It was almost an hour to chew all of them and my jaw was sore when I finished.  I can juice 5 carrots in less than a minute and drink the juice in  about the same amount of time.

Fresh Juice Offers Health Benefits Nothing Else Can Match
Not only does juice provide your body with water and easily absorbed protein, carbohydrates, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and phytonutrients. It also provides a substance that’s more difficult to measure that is present in raw foods. Light energy is found in the living cells of raw foods such as fruits and vegetables. Uncooked plants have been shown to emit coherent light energy when photographed (evidenced in Kirlian Photography). This light energy is believed to have many benefits when consumed; one in particular is to aid cellular communication.  It’s also believed to contribute to our energy and a feeling of vibrancy and well-being.

Juice Can Help Your Body Heal
If you have a health problem, it’s even more important to juice.  Fresh juice offers the nutrients that help your body heal.  It also helps to increase your energy and strengthen your immune system, plus the raw juice offers materials that help your body heal more quickly and completely. If you want to prevent disease, the surest path to a disease-free life begins with a diet rich in plant foods. Juicing provides the nutritional advantages of plants in a concentrated form that is easy to absorb. Juicing offers a delicious, simple way to increase your consumption o life-giving raw foods.
People all over the world have found healing from ailments such as cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, and many other conditions by juicing and making dietary changes. The body was made to heal itself.  When you provide it with the materials it needs for repair and rejuvenation, and remove irritating substances that contribute to disease and illness, the healing process begins. Therefore, make sure you add fresh juice and a healthy diet to whatever treatment plan your health care provider recommends.

Some Commonly Asked Questions About Juicing

Now that you know why juice is so good for your health, you may have some questions about juicing.  Following are some of the most commonly asked questions:

Does juice have fiber?
Yes.  Juice has soluble fiber; the insoluble fiber is removed. Whole fruits and vegetables have insoluble and soluble fiber. Both forms of fiber are very important for colon health.  Soluble fiber in the form of pectin, gums, and non-starchy polysaccharides, are found in juice. That is a fact many people do not know. Soluble fiber is excellent for the digestive tract. It also helps to lower blood cholesterol levels, stabilize blood sugar, and improve good bowel bacteria.

Science Proves Juice Has Soluble Fiber
Maligned for years as being devoid of fiber and inferior to whole fruit and vegetables, juice is finally taking its rightful place in nutrition. Though juice does not have insoluble fiber, it does have the soluble kind in the form of gums, pectin, and non-starch polysaccharides. Look at what the studies show:

	A serving of orange juice (1 cup) has approximately .19 gm soluble fiber (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, February 2007)
	Carrot juice has approximately 1.1% to 1.5% non-starch polysaccharides (fiber). (Journal of Food Science; Volume 59 Issue 6 Page 1155-1158, November 1994)
	Wine (which is made from grape juice) has approximately .14 gm soluble fiber. (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, February 2007)
	Berry juice has soluble fiber in the form of non-starch polysaccharides—pectins, hemicellulose, and cellulose.   (Laboratory of Food Chemistry, Department of Agrotechnology and Food Sciences, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8129, 6700 EV Wageningen, The Netherlands; 8 November 2004.)

Are Most of the Nutrients Lost with the Ejected Fiber?
No. In the past, some people thought that a significant amount of nutrients remained with the fiber that was ejected, but that theory has been disproved. The Department of Agriculture analyzed twelve fruits and found that 90 percent of the antioxidant activity was in the juice rather than the fiber. That’s why juice makes such a great supplement to a high-fiber diet.

Why is fresh juice better than commercially processed juice?
Fresh juice is “live food” with its full complement of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, enzymes and that living ingredient --light energy-- that revitalizes the body. You feel different when you drink raw juice! In contrast, commercially processed canned, bottled, frozen, or packaged juices have been pasteurized, which means the juice has been heated to high temperatures, and many of the vitamins and enzymes have been killed or removed.  And the light energy is virtually gone. Look at a Kirlian photography picture of a cooked vegetable or a pasteurized glass of juice, and you’ll see very little “light” emanating from the food. This means the juice will have longer shelf life, but it won't give your body the kind of life you’ll get from raw juice. Making your own juice also allows you to use a wider variety of vegetables, plus stems, seeds, and leaves that you might not otherwise eat. For example, some of the recipes in this book include Jerusalem artichokes and jicama, beet leaves, green cabbage, celery leaves, and parsley. These sweet, crisp tubers and healthy greens are not found in most processed juices. Recently, a friend said he bought a bottle of freshly made juice from a store and could tell that he didn’t feel the same energy and vitality after he drank it like he felt when he drank his own freshly made juice.

How long can fresh juice be stored?
The sooner you drink juice after you make it, the more nutrients you’ll get. However, you can store juice and not lose too many nutrients by keeping it cold and away from oxygen, light, and heat. Store in an insulated container or covered in the refrigerator.

On a personal note: 
When I had chronic fatigue syndrome, I would juice in the afternoons, at the time I had the most energy, and store the juice in a covered container in the refrigerator. I’d drink it for the next twenty-four hours until I juiced my next batch. (You can read my story of recovery at About Cherie. 

How much produce do you need to make a glass of juice?
People often ask me if it takes a bushel basket of produce to make a glass of juice. Actually, if you're using a good juicer, it takes a surprisingly small amount of produce. For example, all of the following items, each weighing roughly a pound, yield about one 8-ounce glass of juice: three medium apples, five to seven carrots, or one large cucumber. The following each yield about a half cup of juice:: three large (thirteen-inch) stalks of celery or one orange. Juicing is actually economical as well as nutritious.

Juicing is a very simple process. Simple as the procedure is though, it helps to keep a few guidelines in mind to get the best possible results:

• Always peel oranges, tangerines, and grapefruits before juicing. The skins of these items contain bitter-tasting oils that can cause digestive problems. (Lemon and lime peels can be juiced, if organic, but they do add a distinct flavor that is not one of my favorites. I usually peel them.) Leave as much of the white pithy part on the citrus fruit as possible, since it contains the most vitamin C and bioflavonoids. Always peel mangoes and papayas, since their skins contain an irritant that is harmful when eaten in quantity.

• Peel all produce that is not labeled organic, even though the largest concentration of nutrients is in and next to the skin. The peels and skins of sprayed fruits and vegetables also contain the largest concentration of pesticides.

• Remove pits, stones, and hard seeds from such fruits as peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, and mangoes. Softer seeds from oranges, lemons, watermelons, cantaloupes, grapes, and apples can be juiced without a problem. Because of their chemical composition, large quantities of apple seeds should not be juiced for young children, but should not cause problems for adults.

• Juice the stems and leaves of most produce. For example, beet stems and leaves, strawberry caps, celery leaves, and small grape stems offer valuable nutrients. Discard larger grape stems, as they can dull the juicer blade. Also remove carrot and rhubarb greens because they contain toxic substances.

• Cut fruits and vegetables into sections or chunks that fit your juicer's feed tube. You’ll learn from experience what size works best for your machine. If you have a large feed tube, you won’t have to cut a lot up.

• Some fruits and vegetables don't juice well. Most produce contains a lot of water, which is ideal for juicing. Those vegetables and fruits that contain less water, such as bananas, mangoes, papayas, and avocados, will not juice well. They can be used in smoothies and cold soups by first juicing any other produce, and then pouring the juice in a blender and adding the avocado, for example, to make a cold soup.

Why We Should Choose organic produce?
The best way to get the healthiest juice possible is to use organic produce whenever possible to avoid the billion pounds or more of pesticides and herbicides sprayed onto or added to our crops yearly. It is estimated that only about 2 percent of this amount actually fights insects and weeds, while the rest is absorbed into our air, soil, and water. These pesticide residues pose long-term health risks, such as cancer and birth defects, and immediate health risks from acute intoxication, such as vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision, tremors, convulsions, and nerve damage.

I'm often asked if organic produce is more nutritious than conventionally grown food. Studies have shown that it is. According to results from a $25-million study into organic food--the largest of its kind to date, organic completely outshines conventional produce. A four-year, European-Union-funded study found that organic fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 percent more antioxidants. They have higher levels of beneficial minerals like iron and zinc. Milk from organic herds contained up to 90 percent more antioxidants. The researchers obtained their results after growing fruit and vegetables, and raising cattle, on adjacent organic and non-organic sites. They say that eating organic foods can even help to increase the nutrient intake of people who don’t eat the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. (Times Online October 28, 2007)

Organic Produce Is More Nutritious. A 2001 study conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins University looked at 41 studies involving field trials, greenhouse pot experiments, market basket surveys, and surveys of farmers. The most studied nutrients across those surveys included calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, zinc, beta- carotene, and vitamin C.  According to the study, there was significantly more vitamin C (27 percent), iron (21 percent), magnesium (29 percent) and phosphorus (13 percent) in the organic produce than in the conventionally grown vegetables. There were also 15 percent fewer toxic nitrates in the organic vegetables. The vegetables that had the biggest increases in nutrients between organic and conventional production were lettuce, spinach, carrots, potatoes and cabbage. Couple that with fewer chemical residues, and you can see that buying organically grown food is well worth the effort and the additional cost.

Choosing Organic Produce. When choosing organically grown foods, look for labels marked "certified" organic. This means the produce has been cultivated according to strict uniform standards that are verified by independent state or private organizations. Certification includes: inspection of farms and processing facilities, detailed record keeping, and pesticide testing of soil and water to ensure that growers and handlers are meeting government standards. You may occasionally see a label that says "transitional organic." This means the food was grown on a farm that recently converted, or is in the process of converting, from chemical to organic farming.

You may not be able to afford to purchase everything organic.  When that’s the case, choose wisely. According to the Environmental Working Group, commercially farmed fruits and vegetables vary in their levels of pesticide residue. Some vegetables, like broccoli, asparagus and onions, as well as foods with peels, such as avocados, bananas and oranges, have relatively low levels of pesticides compared to other fruits and vegetables.  However, some vegetables and fruit contain large amounts of pesticide.

Avoid Irradiated Food. Some food producers use gamma-ray radiation to kill pests and germs in stored food, and to increase the food's shelf life. Although the Food and Drug Administration has approved the practice, eating irradiated food is not a wise choice. The average dose of radiation used to decontaminate most foods can be up to 5 million times that of a typical chest X ray. This practice destroys vitamins, phytochemicals, and enzymes. It also generates harmful byproducts such as free radicals, which are toxins that can damage cells, and harmful chemicals known as radiolytic products, including formaldehyde and benzene.

Avoid GMO Foods. Whenever possible, avoid genetically modified foods, also known as GMs or GMOs. Scientists, doctors, and health educators in many sectors of the health industry have long warned about the possible deleterious effects of GM crops on the health of animals and humans.  An Australian project to develop genetically modified peas with built-in pest-resistance had to be abandoned after tests showed they caused allergic lung damage in mice. A similar situation occurred in the early 1990’s when a strain of bio-engineered soybeans was found to cause an allergic response in people with Brazil nut allergies.

A March 2007 article in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology reported on a study that was commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace in which rats were fed for 90 days on GM maize (corn) developed by the chemical giant Monsanto. The rats showed signs of toxicity in the liver and kidneys. In reporting on this study, Scientific American quoted a statement by Greenpeace spokesman, Arnaud Apoteker saying, "It is the first time that independent research, published in a peer-reviewed journal, has proved that a GMO authorized for human consumption presents signs of toxicity."