Juicing can promote great health benefits, but if you aren’t sure what you are doing, you can miss out completely. There are several things that you can learn about juicing to ensure that you are maximizing the results and feeling great from taking in a more nutritious beverage, with these tips offering an excellent process to follow.
Try to use locally-grown fruits and vegetables in your juicing. The best option is to use produce that you’ve grown yourself. Every mile that a piece of fruit needs to be transported to get to you increases the carbon footprint of your glass of juice. It also increases the chance of your produce becoming contaminated with bacteria or chemicals.
Drink your juice soon after making it if you are looking to benefit from the health benefits. Juice starts to lose its benefits as soon as it comes out of the fruit or veggie. The longer you let it sit, the more it will lose, so go ahead and drink it as soon as possible to be able to let your body enjoy all the nutrients.
Don’t forget to wash your produce prior to juicing, and use organic products where possible. So many people seem to think that since it’s going to turn into juice, they don’t need to wash their fruits and veggies. Just because it’s liquid, doesn’t mean the chemicals present on the peels are going to go away. Clean your fruits and vegetables thoroughly before juicing.
You don’t have to buy a fancy juicer to start juicing, you can use a blender or food processor just to get the hang of it. In fact, a food processor can do just as good a job as a juicer! I also picked up an inexpensive citrus juicer, though, as I found doing it manually hurt my hands.
The best place to find the freshest produce for juicing at great prices is at a local farmer’s market. Often, they are held once a week during the summer and fall months, and you’ll find everything sold on a farm, including meat, eggs, dairy, baked goods, canned goods, and TONS of fresh fruit and vegetables!
When it comes to juicing, one thing that you want to keep in mind is the fact that juice may lose it potency not long after it has been extracted from the fruit. This is important when you consider the shelf live of your product in comparison to your expected consumption rate.
Juicing is an excellent way to lose weight in a safe and healthy manner. Before meals, drink juices that include vegetables that require more calories to digest than they contain, like carrots, cabbage and broccoli. This will help curb your appetite and speed up the weight loss process. Adding spices like cayenne or cinnamon, will stimulate your metabolism.
A single cup of juice will be equivalent to a much larger amount of actual vegetables or fruit, meaning one cup of juice can also be equal to make more servings on the food pyramid. For example, a single cup of carrot juice is equivalent to four cups of diced carrot!
Don’t juice fruits that don’t have a higher water content, such as bananas and avocados. They’ll do better in a blender. In a juicer, they will just cause friction and interfere with the juicing of the other fruits that you put in. You don’t want to break your juicer, in the process.
To make sure that your juices pack the most nutritional punch, always choose organic ingredients if they are available. Organic produce has a higher nutritional content than conventionally grown produce and it also usually tastes better. You’ll also avoid any possible toxic chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers that are used in conventional agriculture.
Have you heard of almond milk? Anything that comes in liquid form can be juiced! Try adding chopped almonds to your juicer, and save the pulp for use in cookies, cakes, or breads. You might also add the almond pulp to a sugar-free banana bread to give it more flavor.
If you’re juicing for health, or doing a juice fast, you MUST use organic produce. Pesticides and heavy metals in the soil used to grow normal fruit and vegetables will negate any cleansing you’re trying to accomplish, wasting your money and time. Buy organic to ensure that the only pesticides used are organic and fine to ingest.
When using fruits to create your juice, it is important to remove seeds and pits, if there are any. For example, you must remove pits from peaches and seeds from apples. Adding these items can quickly deteriorate the quality of the blades in the juicer and possibly, even break the juicer. Furthermore, certain seeds like apple seeds can be dangerous because they contain trace amounts of cyanide.
When you are doing your very own juicing, it’s good to be mindful of the fact that not all fruits are created equal or the same. Some fruits, such as a citrus varieties, require special equipment to efficiently extract the juice. You’ll need to be cautious when using melons, as mixing their juice with other fruits can impair the taste.
To get into juicing, you definitely have to be sure that you are aware of the things that you will do, what fruits are good to use, and what benefits you can receive. Understand juicing more and you can get your benefits, with the advice of this article invaluable to your progress.
