The Complete Idiot's Guide to Juicing - Ellen Brown [1]
That’s where the benefits of juicing begin. An 8-ounce glass of juice can fulfill a third of your daily needs. It’s like the difference in medicine between injections and pills. The benefits of the injection go directly into your bloodstream, while a pill must dissolve and be absorbed, which increases the time between when you take it and when you begin to feel the results.
The same is true when juicing because it allows the body to quickly absorb high-quality nutrition, which leads to increased energy levels. So drinking fresh juices is an excellent health habit. It’s more than an excellent source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, purified water, proteins, carbohydrates, and chlorophyll. In liquid form, juices supply nutrition that is not wasted on creating its own digestion, as is the case when eating whole fruits or juices with a large percentage of pulp.
Here are some of the benefits that come from juicing:
• Juicing creates fast assimilation of nutrients. Some enzymes, vitamins, and minerals are “trapped” in the indigestible fiber of vegetables and fruits and can take up to a few hours to be assimilated into the body. When these nutrients are added as a pure juice, the time is reduced to 15 minutes, which allows the body to rest.
• Juicing keeps up our water table. Our cells consist mostly of water, which is essential to their proper function. That’s why we should consume at least 8 glasses of water a day. Beverages such as coffee, soft drinks, and alcohol actually draw water from our bodies to metabolize. Raw juices, on the other hand, supply the water we need to replenish lost fluid. And the water is purified better than from any bottle. Juices also promote our bodies’ natural alkalinity, which is important for immune systems and metabolic functions to work properly.
• Juices deliver natural sugar. The natural sugars in fruits and vegetables deliver the same energy as from soft drinks but without chemicals or fat.
You might be wondering why I’m asking you to buy an expensive machine rather than just pour from a bottle. There’s an important reason: only fresh juices that haven’t been pasteurized to increase their stability contain necessary enzymes and other “living” ingredients.
Plants are the spark plugs that keep our bodies running. They get their energy from the sun during photosynthesis. These “living” qualities comprise enzymes, vitamins, and minerals. Minerals are basic parts of the earth’s crust, and plants get them from the soil while enzymes and vitamins are produced in plants’ tissues.
But cooking and processing destroy these nutrients. Enter juicing as a way to get the maximum benefit. Cooking accounts for the loss of almost all the water-soluble vitamins (A, E, D, and K) from food. And even allowing raw vegetables to sit after peeling reduces their level of nutrients. For example, cantaloupes lose 35 percent of their vitamin C if slices sit overnight in the refrigerator.
So drinking a juice right after it’s extracted gives you the best of all possible worlds.
How This Book Is Organized
The book is divided into four parts:
Part 1, “Component Parts,” teaches you the fundamentals of juicing. The first chapter details how to select a juicer, how to use your blender, and the difference between juicing and pulping. In the next two chapters you’ll find profiles of fruits and vegetables frequently specified in recipes, along with their nutritional highlights and the amount of juice that comes from them. Part 1 ends with a chapter detailing information on nutritional supplements you can add to juices, herbs you can use to flavor them, and ways to use your juice machine as a kitchen tool.
Part 2, “Garden Patch Purées,” gives you combinations that use just about all the vegetables in the produce aisle. The recipes are divided by both the types of vegetables they contain and if any additional ingredients are added into the flavor profile. In one chapter