This week Gareth Edwards, our Alkaline Diet Expert and highly qualified nutritionist, is writing about the numerous health benefits of fresh juicing.

If you want to become and remain healthy, alkaline and energised then you should read Gareth’s article below.

He explains why making our own fresh juices is so beneficial for our health and why a green vegetable juice is about as close to nutritional perfection as it’s possible to get.

Health Benefits of Fresh Juice

Solid gold nutrition …… a green vegetable juice is about as close to nutritional perfection as it’s possible to get. For those of you who read what I write regularly, you may remember that last week I spoke about Olympian Paul Brotherton drinking green juice to help re-build his depleted stamina. On Friday Paul and his crew won their category at the season opening Olympic classes regatta in France.

Why Juice?

People often ask me why juicing would be better than eating large amounts of vegetables. I think the most succinct explanation I’ve heard was given by (self styled juice master) Jason Vale. He said that the human body is really just like a juice machine.

We mash the vegetables up in our mouths, allow the juice to pass into our blood stream via our intestines and then pass the fibre out into “the collecting pot”!

When we drink fresh vegetable juice we take in large quantities of vitamins, minerals and phyto-nutrients in a highly bio-absorbable form. Multi-vitamin and mineral tablets are trying to achieve the same effect but they mainly use synthetic analogues (man made “look alikes!”).

It’s Alive!

Another advantage of freshly made juice is that it’s like eating raw food. Look at the Kirlian photographs of raw versus cooked cabbage to remind yourself of the energetic qualities that raw foods possess. The act of juicing vegetables will start to break the energetic qualities apart so ideally drink the juice within minutes of making it. You can put it in the fridge or in a thermos with ice, but two hours after “pressing” would be my top storage time limit.

Commercially produced vegetable juices are pasteurised (heated) to give them shelf life. This alters heat sensitive molecules, such as water soluble vitamins and disrupts their energetic qualities.

What to Juice:

What you’re looking for is high nutrient and low sugar. Carrots, apples, pears and pineapples are all really too high is sugar to be drunk as juice regularly. Adding small quantities of these sweeteners to vegetable juices to make them more palatable can help with getting started. Longer term I’d suggest using lemon or lime juice to take the edge off the green-ness!

Using green plant foods such as kale, chard, spinach, watercress and lettuce gives you a high level of chlorophyll. This is very good for helping to build healthy red blood cells. Grasses such as wheat and barley grass, although kind of funky tasting, are loaded with nutrients and chlorophyll. You’ll need an auger or twin gear juicer for them.

Use cucumbers and celery to give your juices volume. These low sugar foods yield high fluid volumes. Cabbage juice is particularly good for helping with digestive difficulties, but its best mixed with other low sugar fruits and vegetables for a better taste. You can also put broccoli and sprouted seeds and beans through the juicer.

Click here to see my green juice recipe.

Isn’t Drinking Green Powders Just As Good?

We have to remember that green powders with pH drops leave most convenience foods in the shade. They are however still made from dried vegetables with micro-electronic charges and Ph raising salts added. Eating fresh raw foods and (particularly if you are faced with a health challenge or want ultra performance) drinking fresh (mainly green) juices is essential to promote health.

Click here to listen to what Cindy Wheatcroft drank to help reverse breast cancer.

Remember!

Juicing removes the fibre from vegetables so I often have a glass of pHour salts before my juice to raise the pH and maintain intestinal motility! If you want to dilute your juices with alkaline water and add pH drops you can, but you will still get huge benefits from juice drinking it straight! Adding healthy oils such as hemp or flax can make juice slightly more calorific.

Action Plan:

Get juicing!

If you want to have the most cleansing and nutritious drink available then you need a juice machine and quite a large supply of fresh organic, mainly green (and leafy) vegetables.

Energise sell the best juicers available on the market. After experimenting with different brands I’ve now got an Oscar Vital Max. It’s the easiest juicer to use and clean that I’ve ever owned. If you’re budget is tight then see if you can stretch to the Matstone.

You may want to have a juice cleanse, where you only drink vegetable juice for a day or two (longer periods would need to be supervised). An easier way may be to incorporate vegetable juices into your healthy eating plan. A large green vegetable juice with a huge salad and some de-hydrated crackers is going to tick a lot of nutritional boxes.

About Ross Bridgeford

Ross is known as THE Alkaline Diet Expert...especially when it comes to implementation and making the alkaline diet REAL in your life. He has been living, learning, teaching, coaching and loving the alkaline lifestyle since 2004 and has written over 600 articles, alkaline recipes, videos and guides on how to live alkaline and stay alkaline for life. Ross loves life in Brisbane, Australia (although is a proud Englishman) and is healthily-obsessed with nutrition, fitness and Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

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From Energise Alkaline Diet & Natural Health Blog - health news, alkaline diet resources & tips to make you happy! do something nice today...

I’ve recently had a few people on the Alkaline Diet Course ask me if they really need to buy a juicer to get alkaline, and every time I’ve answered a big YES with a million reasons why!

And there are a million reasons! However, to keep it simple and hard-hitting (as I like to…)

Drinking fresh juice is perhaps the most amazing gift you can give yourself!

Why? Let’s find out…

The Energise Guide to Juicing

Making and consuming fresh juice is about to become a major part of your life. The day I bought a juicer I saw nutrition in a whole new light. No longer did eating five serves of vegetables per day seem daunting. In fact, most days I’ve had that and more before I’ve even left the house thanks to one simple juice!

When juices, particularly from fresh, green vegetables, are added to your diet you will notice the benefits immediately. Your energy level will skyrocket, your immune system is strengthened, your skin becomes clearer and your body immediately starts to eliminate toxins as your organs are working twice as effectively.

The regular consumption of fresh vegetable juice is one of the very best gifts that you can give to your body. Here are just a few of the reasons why I crank up my juicer every day, and why you will too!

• Massive Veggie Consumption: juicing concentrates nutrients and allows us to consume much more than if we were to eat the foods whole.

  In a normal veggie juice I might include 2 cups of spinach, 2 sticks of celery, a whole cucumber, a handful of lettuce, a few leaves of kale or cabbage, a carrot, some green pepper etc. It changes every time I make one, but I get all of that nutrition in one tasty, easy to consume drink. I couldn’t imagine eating that much food in one sitting. Certainly not before breakfast! But what a nutrient-dense start to the day!

• Instant Access Goodness: Freshly juiced vegetables give your body an instant boost of nutrients, enzymes, vitamins and minerals in a form that the body can easily assimilate, absorb and digest – in fact, studies have shown that the nutrients from juiced vegetables are within our bloodstream within 30 minutes of consumption!  
• Lots of Chlorophyll: Green juices contain lots of chlorophyll, which, as me now know, is incredibly effective at detoxifying our body and cleansing our blood. Chlorophyll can help make our bodies strong, detoxify the liver, can purify and rebuild blood cells, remove mold, parasites and myco/exotoxins from the body and (as many, many studies show) can help prevent and remove cancer cells.  
• Cellular Cleansing: According to macrobiotic.co.uk – one of the biggest health benefits of juicing can be summarised in one phrase: cellular cleansing. Steve Meyerowitz (the Sprout Man) states that all changes to a persons health should start at a cellular level by oxygenating and cleansing the system of toxins and other damaging foreign invaders.

  This is known as creating and enhancing health and fitness from the inside out. The cellular environment is the environment where all of the cells in our body live, including the lymphatic system, digestive system, and cardiovascular system. This could be a whole article in itself, however, it is important to remember that fresh vegetable juices are massively beneficial to the body’s efforts to cleanse its cellular environment.
   

• Highly Alkaline: Raw, fresh vegetable juices are extremely alkaline. We have several other articles on the importance of alkalising your body, however, very briefly – it is highly beneficial to ensure that your body does not become over-acidic and that an alkaline balance is maintained in the blood & tissues. Over acidification is the common theme and cause of almost all conditions of ill health!
   
• High in Alkaline Salts & Minerals: Easily absorbed alkaline salts and minerals such as calcium, potassium, magnesium & silicon are contained within fresh vegetables. These alkaline salts and minerals assist the body in restoring the biochemical & mineral balance in the tissues & cells, which helps to prevent the premature aging of cells & disease.
   
• Natures Antibiotic: Vegetable juices are rich in natural medicines, vegetal hormones & antibiotics. For instance, certain hormones needed by the pancreas to produce insulin are present in cucumber & onion juices and freshly juiced garlic, onions, radish & tomatoes contain many beneficial antibiotic substances.

At the most basic level, juicing allows us to add so many more vegetables to our daily diet, and to up the amount of raw, alkalising food we consume.

What to Juice

If you are serious about living alkaline then the main ingredients of your juice (70-80%) should be fresh, green vegetables (organic if possible). You should try to include a varied selection of vegetables to make sure you are getting a good range of nutrients.

Here are some vegetables that I include in my juice on a regular basis:

Spinach, rocket, cucumber, cabbage, capsicum, Asian greens, beetroot, cress, green beans, basil, tomato, lettuce, alfalfa, watercress, celery, broccoli, kale, kelp, parsley, carrot and more!

From this selection you will be able to make any number of great, alkalising veggie juices. You might, at this stage, be worried about taste, but I am sure you are going to be pleasantly surprised.

I have included a great range of juices in the Alkaline Diet Course and I slowly introduce you to the subtly sweet taste of juiced greens by incorporating some slightly sweeter vegetables such as carrots, beets and peppers. If this still sounds daunting, don’t worry, I’ll look after you!

What Not to Juice

I am expecting that by now you will have guessed that this guide to juicing rules out packaged juices such as cartons of ‘fresh’ orange juice, Nudie/Innocent-type juices or any other juice that has been packaged, pasteurised or made more than twenty minutes before consumption.

If nothing else, the sheer length of time between creation and consumption is enough to kill any nutrients and enzymes in these juices. However when you consider that most prepackaged juices are pasteurised (killed) and packed with sugars, sweeteners and other chemicals you can begin to understand why they do not really count as ‘juice’. Better than Cola? Probably, yes. But these are still not beneficial to your health.

Many of these juices also use reconstituted fruits. Reconstituted juice, according to the Australian Fruit Juice Association means that:

juice is ‘condensed’ by removal of water using heat. The resultant concentrate is transported to factories around Australia where the water is added back to the concentrate

I’m not sure too many nutrients will survive that process.

The trouble with fruit…

However, the real trouble with these juices is not the lack of nutrients per se, it is more about the sugar. Sugar is acid and feeds acid, fermenting and turning into alcohol in the blood stream, promoting the massive overgrowth of toxins, molds, yeasts and bacteria in our body. Dr Young describes the effects of consuming sugar as being similar to throwing petrol on a fire.

But sugar from fruit is different isn’t it? Fructose is ok, right?

Nope. Sugar is sugar is sugar. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, it still wreaks havoc with the acid/alkaline balance of the body. Whether it is from fructose, sucrose, an apple, honey or a piece of chocolate cake, the sugar still has the same devastating effect.

I don’t want to go into this in too much detail here – but you can read my blog post on this if you want to find out more.

How to Start Juicing

The obvious starting place is with the juicer itself. If you already own a juicer – excellent – if not, I would probably do whatever it takes (within legal and moral limits!) to get access to one. Basically, beg, steal or borrow (without the stealing bit).

There are literally thousands of juicers available on the market and it can seem a little overwhelming at first when trying to find the juicer that is right for you. When you are looking it could be important to consider the following:

What can I afford right now?

Prices range from between £60 to £1000+ with a large bulk being in the £60-£300 range. I certainly would think carefully before spending more than £300 on a juicer, however it is certainly true to suggest that in the instance of juicers you definitely do get what you pay for.

What juicer action will be best for me?

In other words, how does the machine juice the vegetables? Personally I would steer clear of anything that is too harsh on the vegetables (which almost certainly rules out many centrifugal juicers). The cheaper units can be a little rough, however if you shop around then you can definitely get a juicer with an action that will retain the most nutrients for around the £100-250 mark.

What features are you looking for?

Do you want it to just juice? Do you want it to be able to juice grasses (such as wheat grass)? Do you want it to be, above all, easy to clean and maintain? Do you want it to look shiny?

At Energise for Life, we are constantly on the look out for new juicers which we feel push the boundaries in terms of value for money and/or features.

The Two Best Juicers on Earth

To help you come to a decision, overleaf you will find a juicer comparison chart which highlights the pro’s and con’s of each model, but here are my two recommendations:

1. The Matstone 6-in-1 Masticating Juicer: £159

This is the original, and in my mind, best-value-for-money masticating juicer. The Matstone is a classic, and it is probably the most popular juicer we have ever sold. And for very good reason. The masticating function means that it juices your vegetables in a way that squeezes and squashes the juice out, rather than cutting and whipping – meaning that more nutrients stay in tact and you get better juice. You also get more juice, meaning less wastage – and the masticating action means that it can handle wheatgrass.

The 6-in-1 functions means that the Matstone is not only a juicer, it can also make pasta, nut butters, dips, sauces and all sorts of other exciting things!

The Matstone is built to last. It is strong, sturdy and comes with a 10-year warranty, just in case.

Click here to buy the Matstone

2. The Oscar VitalMax Juicer: £209.99

A little more expensive than the Matstone, but if you can afford it, it is worth it. The Oscar is the best quality single-augur multi-purpose juicer/food processor on the market today. Juices wheatgrass, fruits, veggies and leafy greens!

The next best thing to a twin gear juicer (the really expensive ones), the low operation speed ensures maximum taste and nutrition utilising an efficient 3-phase extraction auger. This patented three-step auger crushing system provides “the maximum” pulp free juice. The Oscar comes with a massive 20-year warranty!

Click here to buy the Oscar VitalMax

I really recommend you start juicing, and I recommend you try to do it on a daily basis. What better way to ensure you get at least your five-serves of vegetables each day? It is quick, easy and delicious!

Ross
(http://www.energiseforlife.com)

About Ross Bridgeford

Ross is known as THE Alkaline Diet Expert...especially when it comes to implementation and making the alkaline diet REAL in your life. He has been living, learning, teaching, coaching and loving the alkaline lifestyle since 2004 and has written over 600 articles, alkaline recipes, videos and guides on how to live alkaline and stay alkaline for life. Ross loves life in Brisbane, Australia (although is a proud Englishman) and is healthily-obsessed with nutrition, fitness and Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

Mail | Web | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | YouTube

From Energise Alkaline Diet & Natural Health Blog - health news, alkaline diet resources & tips to make you happy! do something nice today...