Juicing — More Benefits

You’ve read about how I love juicing.  The following post was written by my daughter, Kelsey and offers some more insight into the benefits of juicing

If you have worked juicing into your diet consistently, you’ve probably already noticed a change in your body.  That’s because raw foods hold more nutrients than cooked food and eating a nutrient rich diet is better and more effective than fat-free, low-calorie, low carbohydrates, and other trendy and exclusionary attempts to lose weight.

Using a technique known as Kirlian Photography, nutritionists have captured the difference in life force between a piece of broccoli that was steamed (left) and a piece of broccoli that is a raw, “living” organism.  The life force or energy emanating from the raw broccoli is significantly more than the cooked, even though it was only steamed for two minutes!

“Great,” you think, “raw broccoli, that sounds delicious.” —  Don’t sass me yet!  You already know how to juice raw fruits and vegetables together to make a great tasting liquid packed with energy and nutrition (here is just one delicious recipe). Now you can discover how to make solid meals from raw foods and healthy, crunchy and satisfying snacks; ladies and gentleman it is time to invest in a dehydrator.

You can use a dehydrator to make your own banana chips, kale chips (delicious and rather expensive when you buy them already prepared), raw breads, and more. Dehydrators range in price from $40 – $400 depending on your needs.

Checkout this recipe for raw vegan falafel with lemon garlic aioli!

A Green Juice to Remember!

The thing about juicing is that you can put ANY combination of veggies and/or fruits in the juicer and voila!  you have a nutritious juice.

Most of the time the juice is delicious.  (However sometimes I have added a combination of things that resulted in a not so great juice.)

But, today my juice was terrific!  Light and flavorful…but green, so if this bothers you, throw in a small red beet!

This is what I juiced:

• 1 cup of spinach leaves
• a handful of kale stems
• 1 carrot
• 1/4 of  small kohlrabi
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1 small cucumber (I use pickling cucumbers)
• 1 small apple
• small piece of ginger

Not only does this drink taste good, it provides plenty of nutritional value!

• Calories 131
• Protein 4.1 g
• Vitamin A 801 mg (115% of RDA)
• Vitamin C 65 mg (87% o RDA)
• Calcium 125 mg (10% of RDA)
• Iron 2 mg (25% of RDA)
• Magnesium 72 mg (23% of RDA)
• Potassium 997 mg (21% of RDA)
• Plus a bunch of other important vitamins and minerals

Let me know if you give this a try, or post some of your best juice combinations!

 

I Love my new Juicer

A friend of mine has been raving about her juicer for  months.  She comes into work every day telling us about the juice she had that morning and how great she feels.  I had to have one!

It is wonderful.  We all know that we should eat at least 3-5          servings of fruits and vegetables  a day (that’s 3-5 of each, not a total of 3-5), but  it is rather difficult to get these all in.  Juicing extracts the juice from fresh fruits and vegetables leaving the vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals found in the whole fruit.

An easy and delicious juice combines:

• apple
• pear
• carrot
• celery
• 1/2 a beet
• red pepper
• 1/2 a package of spinach

There is no concrete evidence that juicing is actually better than eating raw whole fruits and vegetables, but some believe say that we can better absorb the nutrients from juice. Because juicing allows us to get in all our servings of fruits and vegetables, it can boost our immune system, help remove toxins from our body, reduce our risk of cancer, aid digestion, and help us lose weight!

The only thing lacking from juice is the fiber as the pulp is separated from the juice. But the pulp can be used .  Today I juiced the fruits first,  and discarded the fruit pulp, then I juiced the vegetables.  I mixed the vegetable pulp with a can of mashed black beans and about a tablespoon of olive oil.  I mixed it all together, made 4 patties, rolled them in bread crumbs and sautéed them in olive oil for delicious high protein, high fiber veggie burgers!