When starting a raw food diet, it will be a great addition to include juicing in your everyday routine. Juicing is the process of squeezing out natural juice from raw fruits and vegetables, and it’s fresher and healthier than the store-bought kind. It’s the fastest, easiest and most economical way of putting healthy amounts of nutrients to your body. If you want to adapt a raw food diet one step at a time, you may start drinking green juices as your first step. Once you see the improvements in your health, you may want to make more changes until you can consume 50% or more raw foods on your daily intake.
But even if you’re not embarking on a raw food diet, juicing can still help you a lot as it is one of the best things you can do to improve your health. In fact, it would be great for anyone. Even without changing your diet, drinking a raw juice at least once a day can give you a boost in energy and improve your skin. These are the many great things juicing can do to your body:
1. It helps your body absorb more nutrients
Because you will be consuming vegetables and fruits in a liquid state, it will be easier for you to absorb more nutrients. Can you eat two to three pounds of vegetables a day? Only a few people can really do that, but juicing makes this possible. Because the fibers and pulp is removed, it takes digestion off the equation and introduces the nutrients directly to the bloodstream.
In short, it allows you to consume more vegetables efficiently. Yes, vegetables, because the majority of the ingredients of a juice recipe must be vegetables and minimize high-fructose fruits so as not to raise blood sugar levels. A good ratio would be 80% vegetables and 20% fruit. Although, if you do not have diabetes or blood sugar related illnesses, of course you can make your own fruit juices. It’s just that the body needs only 15 to 25 grams of sugar a day and you can easily get it from other food sources.
For people starting out to juice, drinking veggies aren’t exciting because they aren’t palatable. So, to counteract the strong flavor of dark greens, you can mix in a fruit with low fructose content like lemons to mask the bitterness. If it’s still too bitter, you can add an apple or cucumber – these can help mask the strong flavor of vegetables. It will take a while to make your taste buds used to the flavor of green juice, so try to lessen the amount of fruit as you make your next green juice.
2. It allows you to consume wider range of vegetables
You can easily eat a variety of whole, raw fruits if you want to because they naturally taste delicious. But most of us do not eat raw vegetables, unless they are in fresh salads. Meanwhile, the other vegetables we eat are cooked. So, if you’re embarking on a raw food diet, your needed intake of more vegetables poses a dilemma. But with the help of juicing, you can try many different raw vegetables without stressing about how you can prepare it or what should you eat it with.
With juicing, you get lots of vegetable options because of the many recipes you can try. If you juice every day, you can take in up to 5 to 6 different vegetables that may include dark leafy greens, hard vegetables or cruciferous greens. This is especially helpful for non-fruit and vegetable lovers.
3. It aids in weight loss
Many people became interested in juicing because of its weight loss benefit. Juice cleanses the body and your taking in lower calories and that curbs your craving for processed sugar. As you eat less processed sugars, you can observe weight loss. Getting on a juicing habit will also affect your desire to eat healthier and exercise. You wouldn’t want to jeopardize the benefits of juicing, so you will end up looking for healthier alternatives and you also get motivated to intentionally avoid junk foods, which can make you gain weight. Your metabolism also quickens as you regularly drink fresh juice.
Combine juicing with activities like cardio, strength training or simply walking more every day, and you will see pounds getting lost.
4. It improves mental clarity and more energy
Juicing can help improve blood circulation, as it helps transport oxygen to the whole body and to the brain, giving you mental clarity and more energy throughout the day. Juices are best consumed in the morning in an empty stomach, and it works better than caffeine in keeping you awake because your body feels an instant surge of health. By giving your body what it really needs, you will feel lighter and brighter. Juicing helps your digestive system to rest, so you are saving energy, which can be used in other ways.
5. It helps lower high cholesterol
Lowering cholesterol levels can’t be done by juicing only, but juicing can aid you in consuming more veggies that help lower cholesterol like dark greens, capsicum, cucumber, celery, ginger, lemon and bitter melon. To help reap the benefits, avoid fried and fatty foods and replace it with more greens and fruits.
6. It detoxifies the body
Consuming lots of fast food, junk foods and other processed foods can bring toxins to the body and these can accumulate over time. One great way to detoxify is through a juice fast. Having a juice fast means you have to consume only juices for 3-10 days, depending on the detox program that is best for you. This way, you can let your digestive system rest, nourish it with nutrients and then flush out toxins. Some fresh fruits contain glutathione, a protein which aids in detoxification of things like lead and pesticides. When you drink processed fruit juices, this protein is stripped off.
7. It helps you achieve clear skin
If you eat a lot of greasy foods, your skin will most likely to be oily and have breakouts. Yes, hormones and even genes may play a part in this, but you could minimize those breakouts if you minimize junk in your diet and absorb nutrients from fruits and vegetables instead. Skincare products may work skin deep, but nourishing your body inside will help reflect it on the outside, which is clearer and better skin.
8. It helps improve digestion
You may ask, juicing takes away the fibers, so how does it help in digestion? It’s a good point, but it’s not only fibers that help your digestive system. Actually, if you overload on fiber, you might experience digestive distress. Juicing helps the gut by introducing good bacteria or prebiotics. Vegetables are rich sources of prebiotics that help keep the digestive track work more efficiently. Dark green, light green and yellow vegetables are rich in folate, vitamin C and vitamin E, which helps fight colon cancer. Ginger is also great in aiding digestion and in healing upset stomach.
9. It helps fight cancer
Cancer is one of the worst diseases you can have because treatment takes a toll on your body and your bank account. A lot of people turned to alternative medication, which includes juicing to fight this disease, and there were people who have been cancer-free with the help of it.
We are not saying that fresh juices are enough to cure cancer, but it can surely help keep the body nourished during chemotherapy or any cancer treatment. Many cancer patients have trouble swallowing food and have reduced appetite, so eating large quantities of food can be difficult. Through giving them green juice, they can help keep their bodies nourished.
For people who do not have cancer, juicing can help arm your body with anti-cancer nutrients to fight off cancer cells and cancer-causing toxins. By helping your body get healthier, the less likely you are to develop cancers.
10. It helps lower blood sugar levels
A lot of people today have diabetes, pre-diabetes conditions or high sugar levels. With the growing number of fast food chains and cheap food options served within minutes is hard to resist, but these things cause havoc to our health. Fortunately, by consuming more fruits and vegetables, you can lower down your blood sugar levels. Foods like broccoli, spinach, ginger, celery, onion and citrus fruits like pomegranates, grapefruit, lemons and oranges can help.
11. It helps prevent diseases
The nutrients you absorb as you drink more green juices help protect against cancer (as mentioned above), and other inflammatory diseases. It raises the pH level in the bodies, which in turn prevents certain conditions like diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and osteoporosis. Drinking more fresh juice helps bring an alkaline environment in the body where diseases can’t thrive.
