Health Benefits of Juicing

Juicing is a fantastic way to squeeze fruits and vegetables into your diet, especially if you typically don’t manage to consume your 7+ a day. Fresh juicing can be enormously beneficial for your health. It can help to supercharge your nutrient intake by providing your body with essential vitamins, enzymes and micronutrients – with none of the bad stuff that constitutes processed food or store-bought reconstituted juices. 

Some specific benefits of adding fresh juices into your diet include;

• Juicing provides nutrients in their raw form, making them highly available for our bodies to absorb and utilise. Some valuable and sensitive micronutrients can become damaged when you heat foods. Cooking and processing food can damage these micronutrients by altering their shape and chemical composition.

• When making juice, you can add loads of fruits and vegetables that are about to spoil in your fridge or fruit bowl. That way, you can avoid wasting produce!

• Juicing allows you to consume an increased amount of vegetables in an efficient manner. Some people may find eating the recommended number of fruits and vegetables per day difficult, but it can be easily accomplished when adding a quick glass of juice to your diet.

• If you are overweight or have diabetes, it is best to limit using large quantities of fruits as fruits are naturally very high in sugar which can exacerbate both of these conditions. The exception would be lemons and limes, both of which have very low levels of the offending sugar that contributes to metabolic complications. Additionally lemons and limes are amazing at helping to eliminate the bitter taste of the dark, deep green leafy vegetables that are some of the most nutritionally dense vegetables to include in your juices. 

• You can add a wider variety of fresh produce into your diet in an original way. It’s easy to fall into the trap of eating the same vegetable salads or adding the same fruits to our breakfast every day. With juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally think to buy, or you may not enjoy eating whole.

To ensure a balanced diet, it is important to consider the following when including juicing in your health regime;

• Juice isn’t a nutritionally-equivalent replacement for whole fruits and vegetables. There are certain nutrients that whole produce gives you that you can’t get just from the juice, including bowel-friendly fiber. The skin and the pulp of fruits and vegetables is where a lot of the fiber, vitamins and minerals are stored.

• It’s important to note that juice has very little protein and virtually no fat, so is not really a complete food fit for meals. It really should be incorporated in addition to your regular meals not in place of it. So unless you are undergoing a professional fasting or detoxification program, it is not recommended to use juicing as a meal replacement. 

By putting the most nutritious fuel into your system possible, you can kick start your metabolism and give your body a break from the less desirable foods that it may have been challenged to process until now. With the warmer months upon us, perhaps you want to consider adding some extra zing into your day with nutrient-rich fresh homemade juices!