The Art of Juicing
Who has time to juice?
I don’t always have the time but our family tries to detox a few times a year and juicing is one of our favorite ways to accomplish this goal. My solution to ‘no time’ is to get up earlier, delegate other duties to family members (like cooking), skip T.V. and video entertainment, let house-cleaning go to hell and then just go for it.
We all know, (or should) that we all need approximately 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night to regenerate and heal. This leaves approximately 15-16 hours of time to conduct your normal daytime duties. How will you spend the time not devoted to absolutely essential life-tasks?
Health isn’t everything but without health, everything is nothing.
One of my favorite quotes is, (paraphrasing) if one doesn’t take the time to be healthy, and then one will eventually have to take the time to be sick. Another is, (paraphrasing again) health isn’t everything but without health, everything is nothing.
Juicing now, as well as culturing various fermented foods, will add many quality years to your life as well as saving time for frequent doctor and hospital visits. (Not to mention feeling fatigued all the time due to lack of nutrients in the diet and toxins in the system.)
One of my other solutions for ‘no time to juice’ is to make enough for 2 days. Fresh juice oxidizes rapidly, decreasing the benefits. I add organic citrus, including the peel to help prevent oxidation and refrigerate immediately. I add a small amount of beneficial oil such as black seed, MCT, quality olive oil or any beneficial fat to the juice as this helps convert beta-carotene to vitamin A.
It’s extremely important to find and use the freshest organic vegetables and fruits possible as most of the nutrition of the food is in the skin or directly beneath the skin.
Some other important notes regarding successful juicing:
Steam all oxalate-containing food before juicing, discarding the water. Eating raw oxalate-containing foods on a regular basis (this includes your kale smoothie, sorry) can cause joint pain, gout and kidney stones over time. Some oxalate-containing foods include: spinach, Swiss chard, beet tops, kale, parsley and arugula. For a more complete list, try google.
Lightly cook all cruciferous vegetables before eating or juicing as they contain compounds that can decrease thyroid function. Cruciferous vegetables are all in the cabbage family. Exception could be broccoli sprouts and watercress.
Xenoestrogens
There are huge benefits to consuming steamed or sautéed cruciferous vegetables (I’ll be writing more on this later). Many protective compounds are found in this family of vegetables that encourage and promote liver detoxification of dangerous xenoestrogens (estrogen-like chemicals found copiously in our environment that damage the body’s hormonal system.) These xenoestrogens may be one the primary causes of breast and prostate cancer.
EATING WILD
I’m compelled to mention a few other important facts about the food we consume, more about which I will write about later. There are over 6.000 scientific studies outlining how our grocery store variety of fruits and vegetables (big, beautiful, hybridized, easy-to-harvest, even better tasting) are full of starch and sugar but lack the untold beneficial properties of once wild versions. Compared with wild and heritage fruits, vegetables and herbs, most of the grocery store and even health food store varieties lack vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, phytonutrients and other bio-nutrients that heal and prevent disease.
Seeking out and purchasing heritage foods from your local store or farmer’s market, growing your own garden and harvesting wild, are all ways to find more powerful healing foods. For instance, wild apples contain up to and exceeding 15 to 475 times more phytonutrients than your typical store purchased apple.
Seeking Wild and Bear Poo
Every fall, I seek out abandoned wild orchards (luckily there are plenty here in Idaho) and harvest as many apples as I can to dehydrate and store properly for juicing and eating. (Think exercise, fun and adventure.) I had to side-step huge piles of bear poo. They love wild apples too!
While your supermarket or health food store may have large, luscious-looking fruits and vegetables, sadly they may offer little protection against disease.
Following are just some of the benefits of juicing. Adapted from the book by Mimi Kirk, Modern Juicing.
Helps with chronic illness, Strengthens the immune system, Anti-aging, Decreases allergies and autoimmune conditions, Increases strength and energy, Promotes sound sleep, Aids digestion, Removes toxins, Supports weight loss, Promotes bone health, Increases mental clarity and emotional balance, Prevents disease and...
Fresh juice is packed with chlorophyll and abundant bio-nutrients that help to oxygenate the system, removes toxins stored in the lungs, liver, kidneys and digestive system. Juice supports the utilization of calcium, magnesium and other nutrients that support health in general. Drinking juice is like drinking pure energy!
More on Eating Wild coming soon.