I get asked this question all the time. It always goes something like this, “I want to start juicing what should I do?”
Inevitably I ALWAYS refer them to my good friend Drew Canole and the program he put together called Juice Up Your Life. We love the work that Drew is doing and he’s put together an entire program about exactly how to juice. I always refer people to the Power Grind Juicer made by Jay and Linda Kordich.
Lots of people dive right into things without doing much research first. And I have to admit I’m guilty of this myself.
Whenever I buy something from Amazon.com that requires assembly, I never bother to read the directions I’d much rather try to figure it out first and then refer to the directions if I need them.
Are you like that also?
When it comes to juicing I want to give you one warning though. Juicing is not like blending. When you blend foods in a Vitamix for example you’re essentially eating the food like you would if you just ate the apple. You’re simply pre-digesting it first by blending it up.
That’s a whole food. It contains all the fiber and all the components.
Is juicing better than blending, or is blending better than juicing? They’re both equal and I say do them both.
With blending though you have more room for error when it comes to sugar because you have fiber as the buffer. Juicing is very powerful. You’re getting liquid nutrition that’s hitting your blood stream in under 15 minutes.
Juicing can be the best thing you’ve ever done or one of the most harmful things to your body.
Why is that?
The answer is sugar.
Sugar is very inflammatory in the body
You have to be VERY careful when you juice because it’s SO powerful.
Remember people on the Gerson Therapy use juicing as one of the main components for their anti cancer healing protocols.
But if you juice too much sugar this can be very damaging to your body over time. Think about it, if you’re juicing 5 carrots, 1 beat, 3 apples and some pineapple could you ever eat that much sugar?
You might be thinking well if I juices 8 sticks of celery a huge handful of lettuce and broccoli I couldn’t eat that either.
Yes that’s true but those items contain very little sugar. When you remove the fiber from the fruits that you juice you’re getting sugar directly infused into your blood with no buffer.
It’s simply too much sugar. I like to juice my vegetables and eat my fruit. I never juice any fruit at all. I’ve stopped juicing carrots, beats and even apples. I use lemon as the way to cut the bitter flavor of many green leafy vegetables.
It takes time to change your taste buds and palate but if you can look at your juice like your medicine and not worry too much about the taste, the lemon should be enough for you to drink it.
If you’re going to use any sweet fruits or vegetables at all try to limit them the best you can. Use green apples (I like the tart granny smith varieties myself) instead of red ones.
Do your best to slowly lower the sugar intake in your juices by replacing them with lemons. Your taste buds will change over time and you’ll be glad you did.
