Juicing as part of your diet

Does anyone here regular juice veggies and fruit and include them as a portion of your daily diet? What led you to the decision to do so? Have you seen any results from including juicing in your daily routine?

I do most juicing with my molars. I also like blenders, since nothing is wasted. I've heard of hard core juicers who consume far more sugar than most of us do. When fruit and vegetables go into a blender with some nuts, a balanced meal results.

Dale - As always, I appreciate the humor in your responses.

I just started dabbling with juicing a little. I am wondering if anyone has seen a benefit with it, health wise, because my thoughts were that it might be a way for my body to absorb some nutrients a little better since I tend to be a little nutrient deficient. I figure it is a quick way to get an extra boost of veggies into myself, too. Don't get me wrong, though...I like molar mangling my food too much to include it for more than meal or snack right now.

While I haven't tried it yet, I have looked up some recipes in which I could use the left over pulp in it, so there would be no waste. The couple of times that I have experimented so far, though, my chickens have been the beneficiaries of the pulp and, already, when they see me coming with it I think of them bellying up to the bar because they dive right in and clean it up in no time flat.

Hey Jen:

Yeah - I know you said you only wanted juicers to reply here....

I've had people do fruit/veggie juices for me in the past and quite honestly, it wasn't for me. First of all, like you, I have pain limitations - the process of juicing and cleaning up afterward is a tad labor intensive. For me personally, the texture/flavor of must juices is either "meh" or downright disgusting. (that may just be me). I way prefer to chomp away on fruits and veggies - especially crunchy ones! It satisfies me the way mushy or juiced fruits and veggies cannot. Due to the aforementioned pain issues - I will most often choose to eat fruit veggies whole - as in "eat a bell pepper like an apple" or simply pull apart a head of cauli or broccoli and eat it like that without all the cutting up. It's a tad "barbaric" for polite company....but I rarely keep "polite company" anyway

Unless consuming enough fruits/veggies is really a problem for you - like you don't get 5-7 servings - I would say adding juicing into the mix is probably more work than it's worth. Juicing is no miracle cure from what I've seen but it can help people get extra nutrition if they don't like fruit/veg other ways.

I follow John Pinette's advice on juicing:

Jen Shrock wrote:I just started dabbling with juicing a little. I am wondering if anyone has seen a benefit with it, health wise, because my thoughts were that it might be a way for my body to absorb some nutrients a little better since I tend to be a little nutrient deficient. I figure it is a quick way to get an extra boost of veggies into myself, too. Don't get me wrong, though...I like molar mangling my food too much to include it for more than meal or snack right now.

Ah...our posts crossed in the ether.

To your point above. I have a friend who does a green smoothie every morning and then eats what she wants the rest of the day - she has a particular fondness for cheesy, salty Mexican food. She tried going all raw/juicing and got overwhelmed and she said it made her tired and cranky. She even started to slip a little into the anorectic state (she is VERY physically active). She decided that she'd meet much of her daily nutritional needs with the juice first thing in the morning and then not feel bad about the rest of the day. This latter method has worked out really well for her as it's also helped stabilize some emotional issues as well.

I'm a regular "juicer". I must say I'm more a fan of blending than juicing.

I have a green smoothie every morning and do a full green smoothie/juice fast 4 times a year.

To read more about the benefits, I wrote about it here: http://www.unconventionalparents.com/green-smoothie-detox-for-parents-side-effects-and-benefits/

Currently I'm in Costa Rica organizing an online Permaculture Design Video Course for http://organiclifeguru.com I must say the winter access to fresh fruit and veg is really nice. Previously I've lived in Alaska and Montana.

The morning green smoothie habit is something I highly recommend for energy and nutrition.

As a physician with 50 years of unhealthy eating behind me and an increasing desire to undo a lot of that damage--I have some thoughts on this.

First, if you have cancer and you are trying to cram as many anti-oxidants and nutrients into yourself as possible--then the juicing is a great way to go.
If you think you are deficient in nutrients for another reason--then the juicing might be fantastic.
There is no way I'll get the nutrients from 5 pounds of carrots into me, other than by juicing them.

However, in general, Americans don't get enough fiber.
So, for the rest of us, I am a big fan of using the whole veggie.
Blending them and turning them into soup can sure help me increase my consumption.

If the veggies are not organic (or at least very well cleaned), then i would not juice--because I would not want to consume the concentrated pesticides.

As for your question about feeling better--I cannot say that I noticed any positive difference between drinking juice and eating veggies/fruit.
However, I have found that I am capable of juicing and drinking enough concentrated kale juice that I make myself sick.
I will never eat enough Kale to cause nausea, but I have juiced and drank enough of it to regret it later.
I presently juice every other day.

I juice fruits and veggies when I am asking a lot of my body physically, for example when gardening out in the sun for hours in summer. Also when I'm pregnant or menstruating. If I'm sick I'll throw chunks of fresh ginger in there. Mmm. My favorite, hands down, is beet carrot lemon. I juice the whole lemon, skin and all. It's much more delicious than I thought it would be.

There is something about fresh juice that feels like it gets energy and nutrition into my cells fast. (None of that pesky fiber slowing things down?)

It's wasteful in a way, but either I use the pulp in food (carrot and beet pulp is quite nice in baked goods) or give it to the chickens.

I really like juice, I feel great when I drink it and I would do it more often if cleaning out the juicer wasn't so annoying! When I don't drink coffee, fresh beet carrot lemon is just as energizing. I usually drink coffee.

Yes, I "juice" with a vitamixer almost daily for a part of my breakfast.

The SAD (Standard American Diet) and the health ramifications that come with it, is what led me to juicing.

Healthier outlook on life, gut, skin, spirituality, mood, stress, hair, and chronic health problems.

I used to do raw kale, but now I blanch it in boiling water for about 30 seconds before I use it, especially if I buy it at the store. I use a whole bunch each time I juice it. I noticed doing it raw would cause some issues, so now I blanch it.

My standard ingredients are (all fresh) kale, lemon, ginger, turmeric, and some keifer/yogurt. I add berries, apples, plums, and other various items which rotate/change.

This thread is cracking me up in a perverse way. A couple of years ago, I had some blood work done that indicated I was low on some nutrients. It so happened that I'd been tracking everything I ate for about 8 months (tedious!) just prior to this. So I let my dr take a look. Turns out I was getting TOO MUCH fiber and that was impeding some nutrient uptake. Go figure. Bummed me out though because like I said - I'm a HUGE fan of crunchy veggies - like fresh carrots or jicama or sugar snap peas - CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH - just thinking about them is making me want to eat some. Maybe I should fight the gag reflex I get with most juiced stuff and go that route - but....I can't make myself do it. It seems criminal...an affront to a perfectly good veggie.

I'm just gonna have to quote Eric Cartman ...

Dude.... You know that feeling when you take a huge dump? Awesome.

Jen Shrock wrote:Dale - As always, I appreciate the humor in your responses.

Thank you Jen. You are obviously a woman of impeccable taste.

I've done juicing mostly on the advice of the Naturopath. I've used a vitamix, the Breville juicer (as publicized by Joe Cross) and a hand cranked one for wheat grass juice. Both juicers take a bit of cleaning and therefore it is easy to cease using them, or use only sporadically. My favourite juice combo is beets, carrots, celery, cuke, whole lemon (sans seeds) and a good chunk of ginger. I don't juice anything in the brassica family as I prefer those foods lightly cooked, and use lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and avocado in regular salads. By juicing this way, I prepare enough for two days and make sure there is minimal head space in the bottle in the fridge to reduce oxidation--an alternative would be to add some ascorbic acid like Andrew Saul recommends.

I may go back to growing wheatgrass juice and juicing that which IMHO doesn't taste too wonderful, so then I add in some Pomegranate juice or Akai concentrate to make it more palatable.

I'm actually moving to the viewpoint that it may be better to produce and use home made fermented veges such as beet kvass or gingered carrots (both recipes in Nourishing foods) to up the probiotic intake than juicing--it takes about the same amount of time, but produces less waste (maybe less waist also!).

I actually think that makes the most difference in the live blood analysis my Naturopath uses is plentiful water!

Hi Edith, hope you're well. Pomegranate juice can make turnips and sand taste good. I think the best thing about both juicing and blending is that people will consume things that are good for them by mixing with something tasty. Without these machines, sugar is commonly used to mask unpleasant flavors. Fruit has sugar, but lots of other good stuff as well.

"Let thy food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be thy food", I think that at one time or another we have all been subjected to poor quality food. Weather it be our parents feeding us what was on the menu for most Capitalists, or just plain bad decisions personally. Having a personal awakening to health and understanding some simple truths about what main stream calls food, we can start a personal journey towards food consciousness.
There is so much information on diet, and juicing. Its kind of nice to be at the pinnacle of humanity, we can access information quicker and utilize both human breakthroughs and mistakes. The main thing for us was information and experience.
My wife and I decided that we were not satisfied with the quality of packaged food. We started a food club and order grains, oils, honey and assorted ingredients in bulk. We pay around a buck a pound for our food, and support farms directly. We grow a large portion of what we eat and use a lot of the grains to sprout. We have also learned so much about canning and drying. The best part of all of this is the "well being" that comes as a result of getting what we need nutritionally.

I do my juicing with a blender and then strain through a nut bag.

Less parts to clean up. Plus the pulp in the bag can then be spread out in the dehydrator for 'crackers' for me to spread jam or spreads on,

put in the freezer to add to a broth,

or I used to give it to the chickens, dog, or compost, depending on how much I wanted to fool around with it.

I don't have property now so I put it out by the bird feeder for the birds.