If you find it hard to eat the recommended daily six to eight servings of fruits and vegetables, one option that many people have turned to is juicing. Juicing is quick, easy, and affordable, Plus, it offers numerous health-related benefits, such as weight loss, improved energy, and can help boost your immune system!
If you are using dark, leafy greens in your juice blends, you may wish to consider adding in cucumber as well. Leafy greens tend to be quite strong and not taste all that great. Cucumber is great at masking the strong taste, while making your drink taste more refreshing. Using cucumbers with the peel on will add a lot of nutritional value to your juice.
Wheat grass is only usable by us when it has been juiced. We physically can’t process the fibers when it is in plant form. Learning to enjoy wheat grass will provide your body with benefits from nourishing your kidneys, providing vitalization to your skin and body, and removing toxic metals from your body’s cells.
Don’t just make fresh juice, keep the choices fresh as well. When you go to the farmer’s market, produce stand or grocery store, look for new fruits or vegetables you haven’t tried before. Not only will you bring much needed variety to your juicing, but also discover new and exciting produce to add to your meals.
Know where your vegetables grow to decrease sugar content. Vegetables that grow underground such as carrots or beets, will contain a higher level of natural sugars than above ground veggies. While natural sugars are good for you, they must be taken in moderation like anything else. Keep a proper blend of upper and lower-ground vegetables to prevent overdoing the sugars.
Notice the signs that body gives off after drinking certain fruit and vegetable juices. There may be some that your system doesn’t agree with. If one juice makes you uneasy or queasy, figure out what it was that caused that reaction. If you pinpoint the problem ingredient, you can drink just a little of it to get your body used to it.
Ginger is a great food that can help to aid gastrointestinal problems. It adds some kick to the flavor of your juice as well as promotes health. Ginger is an excellent anti-inflammatory that helps with stomach ulcers and acid reflux.
Once you have your juicing materials, they should be of good quality if you want good quality juice, it is of utmost importance that you know how to function your juicer to it’s fullest extent. If you delve into making juice before you really know what you are doing, you will just be wasting your juicing materials.
It’s best to avoid juicing fruits and vegetables that have a low water content. Avocados and bananas, for example, are quite dense and don’t have much water in them. They will clog up your juicer and you won’t get much juice out of them. If you really want to include them, blend them first and then mix them with juices from other produce.
If you’d like to add an exotic flavor to your juice recipes, try some fresh coconut! It adds a nutty smoothness to any mixture, giving you something new and different to enjoy. Try mixing it with other exotic juices, like mango or papaya. Some like to chew on a piece of coconut while preparing their juice!
Studies have shown that the optimal intake of fruit and vegetables in a day is 8 or 9 servings per day. Most people are lucky to even get 2 to 3, but by juicing you can meet your minimums easily and tastily! Make sure that the bulk of the servings, preferably 5 to 6, are vegetables.
Your hair and skin can greatly benefit from cucumber juice. There is a lot of silica in cucumbers. Silica helps your connective tissue by strengthening it, and is helpful for your tendons, muscles, ligaments, and bones.
Maintaining blood sugar levels helps to curb hunger, so including carrot juice in your creations can help you keep healthy and eat less. Carrots do have more sugar in them than many other vegetables, but the fact that they don’t cause a spike in blood glucose means that you can overlook that and drink them up!
In regards to juicing, it is important to consider the fact that it does remove the fiber intake that you would have gotten from eating the fruit outright. Be sure to obtain fiber in other ways if you had been relying on your fruits and vegetables as your main source.
In regards to juicing, it is important to consider consulting with a doctor if you are currently pregnant or planning on getting pregnant in the near future. This is important because you want to make sure that the potentially powerful effects of consuming homemade juice will be beneficial to your baby.
The best place to get your herbs, vegetables, and fruit is from your garden. Planting and tending to them will also give you exercise! If you live in an apartment or condo, grow some plants on your balcony. If you don’t have a balcony you can find local co-op gardens which will permit you to take some of their produce in return for pitching in and working for a few hours a week.
Juicing can be an excellent option for those of us who often fail to get our recommended daily doses of fruits and veggies. So whether you plan to find juicing recipes on the internet, or get creative in the kitchen and make up recipes of your own, go get started!
