After my amazing, energy boosting, skin-clearing, mood-balancing Green Cleanse from Purifyne, it inspired me to keep juicing. I have been wary in the past about investing in a juicer. They are bulky things, a faff to clean and I thought, would end up in the utility room after an initial ‘honeymoon’ period.
Not so. Here is this morning’s carrot, orange and ginger beauty:
After A LOT of research, I plumped for the Philips HR1861 Whole Fruit Juicer. The general consensus is that you want one that you can fling everything in whole. If you have to start chopping and peeling stuff, that is when it becomes a faff and you will definitely give up. This little powerhouse (and it is more compact than I had imagined, about the same size as my food processor) can take whole apples, carrot, great lengths of cucumber and even fibrous ginger. The only thing I peel are oranges but lemon wedges and limes go in whole.
This book actually came free from Amazon with my order and it’s been a pretty good starting place for tasty (if a bit sweet for me) juice recipes:
That actually, would be my next tip when juicing. Make sure you don’t overload on fruit based juices, else the fructose will send your blood sugar levels haywire. I try to keep to a 80: 20, veg:fruit ratio. So a favourite is spinach, cucumber, celery, lemon and then an apple to help sweeten it:
My husband calls it my ‘hulk juice’.
Another great one from the book for a serious vitamin and antioxidant hit, which isn’t too sweet, is carrot, apple, celery, beetroot, lemon and ginger. I like to start the day with this one:
Now I’ve got more confident with my combos, I’m starting to go off-piste. Melon, mint, lettuce, broccoli, parsley (such a good cleanser)… it takes 15mins for the nutrients in raw juices to simulate into the bloodstream, as opposed to 3 hours (and a lot less benefits) from cooked veg.
There are a billion and one benefits to raw juices – my favourites being:
- 3 raw vegetable juices a WEEK can help reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s by 76%
- You absorb up to 90% of the nutrients from raw juice, as opposed to 25-35% of the same veg/fruit if you were to eat it. Making juicing very cost vs. nutrition efficient!
- It has been proven to eleviate health problems from asthma and skin conditions such as psoriasis (my skin is certainly at it’s best), to case studies showing a high beta-carotene juicing diet shrinking some cancerous masses.
This last one is obviously a biggie for me. Yes, I’m sure my recent health drive is a knee-jerk reaction to losing Daddy so rapidly to cancer. Yet after a reading a wealth of medical research (the cancer active page here is a really important read) into the health benefits of raw juicing, and particularly the link between cancer cells and betacarotene intake, it seems clear that upping your vitamin, mineral and antioxidant levels in this way is a VERY GOOD THING.
Bottoms up!
CF x