Get juiced!
Juicing is amazing! Imagine being able to have way more than your “five a day” (which is, in my opinion, a bare minimum anyway) in a delicious drink that’s not only easy to digest, but is also easily incorporated into your daily routine? Imagine what that could do for every single one of your 50 trillion cells, and those of your children and loved ones! Juicing, in my opinion, is one of the most important things we can do to maximise our health, vitality and their nutritional status at a cellular level. I can’t imagine starting my day without a big, yummy green juice!
Juicing is really simple and, once you get into it, takes next to no time. Of course you will need a juicer, and there are various types available, but once you have invested in one, the rest is easy.
To make life as simple as possible, I recommend setting aside one part of your kitchen as a “juicing station”, preferably close to the sink, so that it’s easy to clear up afterwards. If your kitchen is spatially challenged, you can always use a large chopping board, or even worktop offcut, placed on top of your cooker. You can even do the chopping on the draining board if that is easier.
Depending on your budget, there are many different juicers available. I own three different juicers – a Champion, my first purchase, which is fast, easy to clean and juices most things apart from wheatgrass. It doesn’t juice green leaves as well as some of the auger juicers, but it served me very well for 16 years prior to obtaining the juicer that I now use all the time, my
Green Star Elite. This is a “twin gear” type, which, although expensive, maximises the amount of juice available from the produce that you are juicing and leaves a very dry pulp. It is a slow-speed machine and ensures that the juice is not oxidised, and therefore gives you the greatest possible nutritional potency. My third juicer, which I no longer use apart from at lectures and demos, is a manual wheatgrass juicer, which basically does what is says on the tin – it juices wheatgrass and other green leaves and runs on arm power rather than electricity.
Many people ask me which juicer I recommend. This depends on your budget. In my opinion, the best twin gear juicer is the Green Star Elite, but it does take a bit of time to clean. However, you can throw most of the parts into the dishwasher if you have one, which makes life a lot easier. It will set you back about £599, so if you’re new to juicing I can appreciate that you might want a cheaper model. In this case, I have no hesitation in recommending the Tribest Solostar 4, the absolute best of the slow-turning single auger juicers. It’s easy to use, easy to clean, and an all-round winner at £349. The Solostar 3 is also available for £349.
Cheaper “centrifugal” juicers are also available. I personally don’t recommend these as an option if you are serious about juicing, because they produce a fairly wet pulp and therefore don’t extract as many of those essential nutrients you’re hoping to get from your produce by juicing it. They are fast, some are easy to clean, but ultimately have their limitations and won’t do wheatgrass, one of the juices used extensively in the Hippocrates regime and one of the greatest sources of nutrients you will ever encounter.
Click here to find out more about the benefits of wheatgrass juice.
Juicing is different from blending, although the two are often confused. With juicing, the cell wall of the produce is broken down and the juice is separated out from the often indigestible fibre. Blending gives you the whole produce, together with the fibre, and is also a valuable method of food preparation.
Because you are removing the fibre when juicing, it is better to juice low glycaemic produce – in other words, food that is low in sugar and not so sweet. When we eat a whole apple or carrot, for example, the rate at which sugar gets into the blood stream is slowed down by the fibre present in that carrot or apple. Many people have issues with sugar sensitivity and find that they are thrown “off balance” metabolically by a sugar “hit”, so that is why I recommend that juices are kept low GI (GI standing for glycaemic index, which you may well have heard of). Many people love carrot and apple juice, but unless you have very stable blood sugar, which many people nowadays do not, it is not recommended to have these juices unless they are diluted (which also dilutes the taste, so kind of defeats the object!).
When I think about juicing, I recommend that you juice vegetables, rather than fruit, and combine as many dark green, nutritionally potent leaves as you can. This might take a bit of getting used to initially, so for those just starting out, if you find that the juice tastes just a bit too “green”, perhaps add half an apple initially for taste and palatability purposes, or some lime or lemon, to give it a bit of “zing”. After all, if you don’t like what your juicer is producing for you, it’s unlikely you are going to carry on juicing, and you don’t want that nice machine you’ve just invested in gathering dust on top of a kitchen cupboard!
My favourite juice recipe of all time, and the one recommended by the Hippocrates Institute as being best for energy, vitality and nutritional potency, is as follows:
- Celery
- Cucumber
- Sunflower Greens
- Pea shoots
Additionally, other good stuff can be added, such as:
- Kale
- Lemon
- Lime
- Garlic
- Ginger
- Liquid blue-green algae
Juices can also be made to be specific for certain medical conditions. For example, did you know that adding garlic to your juice is a great way to lower your blood pressure and cholesterol? Or that adding ginger to your daily juice is anti-inflammatory, and in addition to aiding the relief of painful conditions such as arthritis, it also helps athletes to recover after tough workouts? Or that the celery in your daily juice replaces minerals lost through heavy exercise in a way that is vastly superior to even the most advanced sports drink you will find on the market? My athlete clients love the juices that I recommend for enhanced performance and recovery.
Juicing is also a mainstay of that most ancient of healing techniques, fasting. Indeed, juicing is, in my opinion, something that everyone should do, every day. It enhances your life in immeasurable ways and makes you feel great! It can be incorporated into even the most demanding of schedules with a little forward planning, and I am here to help with any questions you may have.
If you’d love to get all of the benefits of juicing without actually having to invest in a juicer, click here for details of a fantastic, scientifically validated juice powder product that is available in easy-to-take capsule form. It’s not really cheating, and I won’t tell on you! This is brilliant if you travel a lot and can’t take your juicer with you.
The great news is that I have negotiated a 20% discount on these top spec juicers for my clients. To access your discount please quote the code RAWFOOD20 at checkout. This will give you the best price anywhere on the web.
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