To Juice or Not to Juice

That is not THE question, but it is ‘A’ question.

One that I’ve struggled with for several reasons.

1) It’s yet another gadget to buy that sits on the counter and must be cleaned after use

2) It’s expensive to buy the gadget and the requisite pile of fresh fruits and veggies required to produce the Juice.

3) Isn’t it better to get the nutrients from the whole plant rather than just the juice?
Honestly, we have never been fruit juice drinkers perhaps due in part to the gallons of nasty frozen concentrated orange juice forced on me as a child.  (I know most people like OJ – I never really did).   Perhaps the orange juice tasted so bitter to me because I had placed 3 Tablespoons (an approximation) of sugar on my cold cereal and so ANYthing tasted bitter.  At any rate, fruit juice in my adult household has been used as an occasional treat or purely as a source of calories and taste when someone can’t keep any solid food down.  It seemed to me that smoothies made much more nutritional sense as they deliver the benefit of the whole plant.

So why am I now juicing?

Several things have changed my mind on this point but due to my stubborn-ness, or my increasingly inflexible knees that only allow me to bend so far… I found a compromise in the juicing that helped resolve objection #3.

The first thing that changed my mind was the film “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.”  This is a charming film that portrays the power of vegetable nutrition to change health in a big way.  The center of the film is a man who is not only overweight but struggles with an autoimmune skin disorder.  We’ve got skin stuff goin’ on in this house, so I was interested that he stopped suffering from this problem after changing his diet so dramatically, including juicing.

The second thing was that since we have been juicing I don’t need as much sleep and my skin looks brighter.

The third thing that happened was the realization that my vitamins may not be all they’re cracked up to be.  I mean, I read labels on everything else I buy but my tendency when purchasing supplements has been to read the nutritional content but not the source.  I had some chosen brands that I trusted to ‘do the right thing’ – will I never learn?  See post on Breyer’s frozen dairy dessert and decide that apparently it will take me a long time to learn!!   I want food not chemicals.  So shouldn’t I want food-based vitamins and not chemicals as well?

So in not reading or investigating the actual ingredients in my vitamins I have been consuming things that are probably better not consumed.  This is the article that got me feeling stupid about not reading the labels.  Now to be fair, I don’t know how good the science is behind their claims but they make too much sense for me to ignore.  When it comes to food I like to say, “If it wasn’t grown, raised and/or harvested from clean, natural conditions….  Don’t eat it!”  The same should go for my vitamins.  And do I really need vitamins if I am juicing?  (Still working on that but certainly I don’t need TOXIC vitamins.)

So enough about why I have begun… here’s my knee-saving compromise.

I juice and then use the juice to combine with some kale or spinach and berries and a little banana and make a powerful smoothie.  Jam packin’ the nutrients in there Baby!  You got your nutrient dense juice and you got your fiber-rich smoothie with even more nutrients.  Never thought I wanted to be dense (see above article about Breyer’s again), but in this case dense is great.

Here’s this morning’s pile of produce:

  There’s a lot of vitamins in that pile.   Have to throw in one apple to ease the bitter for my son.  He still doesn’t like the juice, but hey – health doesn’t always taste good goin’ down.

So, since my son prefers his juice naked – no extra kale.  I pour his glass off:

 Kapow!  One beet with greens is a whole lot of color going on.

Then I put 2 large handfuls of kale, some berries and 1 frozen banana in the blender.  Add the rest of the juice…

And blend it into a powerful purple purveyor of plenitude.  Abbondanza!  Future supplements will be plant based – and most of them will be pourable as well.

Most people juice tons of greens and I am looking forward to having lots of swiss chard from the garden to boost the amount of greens in the juice.  Guess that’ll combine with beets to make brown juice.  I will have to start working on alliterations with the letter ‘B’.