Juicing is time consuming; anyone who juices regularly will tell you. If you’re looking for results you’ve got to be committed to the process. There are juicing aficionados who will tell you to juice fresh every time; every glass you drink. However, with the busy lives we lead it is simply not doable for most people to juice once a day let alone multiple times. Juicing needs to be worked into your schedule, you have to take into consideration shopping, washing, cutting as well as the actual juicing and clean up. Juicing is not for the faint of time. It takes me an about an hour to prepare my juices. I juice in advance, if I didn’t I would never be able to do it. Yes, you can juice in advance but you need to be aware of a few critical points; Juice directly into individual glass mason jars and immediately screw the lid on as tightly as possible, this is to prevent any further oxidation and nutrient loss. Refrigerate immediately. Juices will stay fresh for 72 hours.
Juicing is a convenient way of getting your daily quota++ of vegetables and nutrients. There are proponents and naysayers on both sides of the juicing fence; I'm not going to tackle that debate of whether you should or should you not juice; there is plenty of documentation online and that is where as an educated consumer you must do your research and talk to your doctor. There is a very good Q&A on the Mayo Clinic website about juicing and for nutritional information on fruits and vegetables visit the United States Department of Agriculture National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference.
Benefits of juicing goes beyond weight loss. Each and every vegetable and fruit boasts its own nutrient packed benefit for your body and overall heath and wellness; and when combined with other [fruits and vegetables] it packs an even greater health punch. I recommend a starter juicing book for those new the world of juicing, The Everything Juicing Book by Carole Jacobs, Patrice Johnson and Nicole Cormier, RD. This book details benefits of most common fruits and vegetable as well as the outcome of combining certain produce together. It’s always best to arm yourself with knowledge and know why you’re doing certain things in a certain way, it makes the success of the outcome more understandable and attainable.
So many fruits and vegetables, after 7-10 days you find your juicing way, you discover what you like and what you don’t like. My base is ususally tomatoes, with some sort of leafy vegetable and always a cruciferous vegetable (cauliflower, kale, cabbage, bok choy, broccoli) added to the mix. I also add wheat germ for vitamin E and folic acid. So what about flavor? At this point you have lettuce, cabbage, tomato juice; this is where I think people get turned off or turned on depending on their state of mind and palate; I add jalapeno peppers with the seeds, to most of my juices. I like my juices hot & spicy and it adds tremendous flavor and depth to the overall juice, as does ginger. The amount of ginger [root] you use depends on your individual taste; start with less, you can always add more. Break off the piece of ginger root you will be juicing, and with a vegetable peeler, take off the skin and feed it into the juicer with other fruits. I don’t like to combine sweet and savory flavors, so most of my recipes are one or the other, fruit or vegetable; some people add yams, apples or other fruits to sweeten up the juice to make it drinkable at first.
Recipes, I do not follow a recipe with said amounts. Rule of thumb, if you keep your ingredients to 1-2 pieces, stalks, cups etc…with approximately 6 ingredients you’ll have about 8-12 ounces of juice. If you add more ingredients and/or larger portion sizes you’ll make more juice. Depending on how much juice you want to make adjust your amounts.
juicing your way to a healthy lifestyle by christine najac
southfloridalifestyleguide.com