Juice ko po!

I’m a lazy, slow eater. I like to take my time when I eat, so I don’t eat if I don’t have the time. I like to graze or eat a little every time I’m hungry, I think grazing is amazing. I love soup because I don’t have to chew it. And here’s another liquid diet that I love: juice, healthy juice! I was introduced to the joys of juicing by my Fil-Canadian nephew who’s a health freak. After work, he would make a detour to his favorite supermarket and haul off a bag of his favorite fruits — raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, apples, bananas, oranges. At home, he would mix some of these fruits together in his juicer, adding only some ice cubes. Berry delicious! Besides, berries are chock-full of antioxidants, such as flavonoids, which boast anti-cancer and anti-heart disease health benefits.

Of course, you can do this with vegetables, too, but I’m not much of a veggie eater.

According to health activist Joseph Mercola: “You have made some great changes to your life. The last step will be to implement a juicing plan. I am firmly convinced that juicing is the final key to giving you a radiant, energetic life, and truly optimal health. I’ve said this in the other levels of this nutrition plan, but it’s so important I’ll say it again — valuable and sensitive micronutrients become damaged when you heat foods.”

He explains, “Cooking and processing food destroys these micronutrients by altering their shape and chemical composition. In this advanced nutritional level, you avoid all processed foods and eat only organic vegetables and fruits, unless not otherwise possible.”

Health experts recommend that we get six to eight servings of vegetables and fruits daily, but who really gets to eat that amount? Luckily for us, juicing is a no-muss, no-fuss way for us to get our Recommended Daily Allowance of vegetables.

Mercola lists three main reasons why we should think about incorporating vegetable juicing into our optimal health program, as follows:

1) Juicing helps you absorb all the nutrients from the

vegetables. Because of our “impaired digestion,” due to our less-than-optimal food choices over the years, our body’s ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables has been limited. Juicing helps “pre-digest” them for you, so you will receive most of the nutrition, rather than having it go down the drain.

2) Juicing allows you to consume an optimal amount of

vegetables in an efficient manner. If you are a carb person, you should eat one pound of raw vegetables per 50 pounds of body weight daily. Go ahead and drink your vegetable!

3) It adds a wider variety of vegetables in your diet.

Many people eat the same vegetable salads every day. This violates the principle of regular food rotation and increases your chance of developing an allergy to a certain food. But with juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally enjoy eating whole.

But vegetable juice is not a complete food. Veggies have very little protein and virtually no fat. It really should be taken in addition to your regular meals, not in place of it.

So unless you’re fasting or on a detox program, it is not recommended to use juicing as a meal replacement. It should be consumed with your meal or in between meals.

But of course, you will only enjoy juicing if you eat the vegetables you enjoy eating non-juiced. Juicing should be a precious juicy experience, not a nauseous one that will make your stomach turn and churn.

A friendly reminder: Vegetable juice is highly perishable so you should drink it immediately (within 24 hours of juicing). If you are bringing your juice to work, it is recommended that you store it in a glass jar with an airtight lid and fill it to the very top. The reason is there should be a minimum amount of air in the jar as the oxygen in the air will oxidize and damage the juice.

Other juicy suggestions from Dr. Mercola: “Also, to make drinking vegetable juice compatible with protein-type metabolism (which needs high amounts of fat), it is important to blend a source of raw fat into the juice. Raw cream, raw butter, raw eggs, avocado, coconut butter, or freshly ground flax seed are the sources of raw fat that we most recommend. In addition to adding a source of raw fat to your juice, you may also find that adding some, or even all, of the vegetable pulp into your juice helps to make drinking the juiced vegetables more satisfying.”

Surely, life is so much juicier with juicing!

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