Guide to Juicing
Without doubt, juicing is a wonderful way to improve your health and it is exactly why so many natural healing centres around the world have used juicing as part of their regimes for many decades. Fresh fruits and vegetables play a huge role in improving our health and well-being, and have outstanding nutritional qualities. The benefits of juicing are many more energy, hydration and they are very effective in enhancing the growth of healthy cells. The World Cancer Research Fund in London estimates that high fruit and vegetable intake may reduce cancer incidence by 64 per cent.
The main reason that this type of liquid nutrition is used to heal the body is because none of the fruits or vegetables have been cooked. When fruit and vegetables are consumed in their natural state, their nutrients remain intact. On the other hand, if you boil, steam or zap the life out of what you eat in a microwave, you are consuming dead food with little or no nourishment. Foods that are stripped of their nutrients are not going to nourish your body.
You will feel the benefits almost immediately of this simple step:
Increased energy: Juices are great at boosting energy.
Weight loss: Juicing is a great low-calorie way to fill you up and help you stay slim.
Skin and anti-ageing: If you want to become a picture of health as you get older, then a regular routine of juicing is the way to go.
A daily routine of juicing is easy to put into practice, as you don’t need fancy instructions or ingredients. All you need is just some fresh fruit and vegetables, a good juicer and the commitment of time to making two juices each day. Take it from me, it is well worth the effort. If you are a beginner, you can start with mixed fruit and vegetable juices and, as you progress, you can gradually phase out the fruits in favour of the veggies. Vegetable juices are less taxing on blood-sugar levels – even natural fruits can spike blood sugars. You can change the recipes so you don’t get bored, and use you own favorite flavours to mix things up a bit. Enjoy
Which juicer should you buy?
There are basically three types of juicer: centrifugal, masticating and manual juicers.
Centrifugal juicers: These use the power of centrifugal forces to separate the pulp from the juice and are available in most high-street stores. However, this is not a juicer I would recommend as the high revolutions produce a poor-quality juice. They are quite wasteful on produce as they produce a lot of wet pulp, which can become very expensive if you are buying organic produce. Also the spinning fine mesh basket inside the machine is a pain to wash. A machine that is difficult to wash is the major reason why people who start juicing enthusiastically soon pack it in. This is why I always recommend that you buy a good juicer first and don’t waste money on poor substitutes. Another point to remember is if you are juicing every day or juicing for a family, these machines can easily burn out and need replacing. Finally, centrifugal juicers won’t juice wheat grass or leafy greens, they tend to get stuck and can jam the machine. So all in all, I believe they are not the ideal solution.
Masticating juicers: Having tried and tested many different machines, I use a twin-gear masticating juicer. These juicers have two gears that grind the fruit and vegetables slowly and their unique design uses an extremely gentle and efficient process to extract high-quality juice. They are extremely efficient and produce very small amounts of dry pulp, which ensures you get the best possible yield from your produce. The pulp can even be returned to the chute to extract more juice. As they revolve very slowly while grinding, no heat is produced which is another reason you get a superior quality juice.
There are single-gear masticating juicers that are cheaper but having tried these, they are not as effective as the twin-gear machines in my opinion. However if you are on a budget these are cheaper.Twin-gear masticating juicers are the best juicers you can buy. They are very versatile and will grind nuts, grains wheat grass and leafy greens. Treat yourself and start with the best juicer, it’s an investment in your health and your future.
Manual juicers: These are very affordable, however they are difficult to use and wash. They are not as good at juicing fresh fruits and vegetables as the electric-powered models. Manual juicers are, however, handy if you are travelling because they are lightweight and portable, which means you can make your own fresh juice wherever you go. They can juice wheatgrass and leafy greens and as a result most people tend to buy them just for wheat-grass juicing