Juicing 101
Juicing… It’s all the craze at the moment! For those of you who have been blissfully unaware, the juice debate has been going on for as long as I can remember – we had huge debates on this subject in my first year nutrition course! I won’t get into the multiple juice theories; but instead I would like to focus on the benefits of juicing, and how to juice right!
Green Juices
Regular consumption of fresh vegetable juice is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your body. When I say fresh vegetable juice I mean fresh (do-it-yourself) and vegetable (not fruit). By consuming vegetable juice you are giving your body an instant boost of essential nutrients in a form that your body can digest easily. It is also an easy way to get more vegetables into our diet, and to increase the amount of raw food we consume.
Green juices are full of chlorophyll - one of my favourite pigments! It does a great job helping detoxify the liver and rebuilding our blood cells. The best juices have at least 70 to 80% of vegetables so that they are not too high in fructose - fruits should be used sparingly to sweeten. When I don’t have much fruit, my go-to favourite sweetener is a carrot!
Here is a recipe you may like to try. I add lemon to some of my juices as the citric acid helps to keep it fresh (if I am not drinking it straight away).
1x cup of spinach or kale
1x cup celery/ 1x beetroot
1x lemon or lime
1x carrot
2.5 cm cube of fresh ginger to boost circulation.
When juicing, it is best to use organically grown or home grown vegetables. This is a great way to avoid pesticides and other chemical residues in your juice. If you are not using organically grown vegetables, you may like to remove the peel.
Vegetable juices are extremely alkaline and help to ensure that our body does not become overly acidic - a common cause of many health conditions. An alkaline body can resist and fight disease better than one that is acidic and just one glass of vegetable juice a day can revitalize the body and raise your pH levels to be alkaline once again.
Are you alkaline or acidic?
Want to test your pH levels? You could use pH strips.. or… you could try this creative way of testing your peeH!
Testing our peeH… Let’s do some science!
- First, either boil some purple cabbage until the water turns deep purple or (a quicker and safer way since there’s no hot liquids) blend some raw with water in a blender and strain out the solids.
- Then what you can do with that royal purple liquid is pour it in the toilet bowl after you urinate. (You can imagine how much fun kids have with this!
What does it mean when it turns….
- Purple - your urine is acidic and you should eat more dark green leafy vegetables.
- Pink - your urine is really acidic, so you should definitely eat more dark green leafy vegetables.
- Blue - your urine is neutral or even basic.
- Sky blue - continue to eat more dark green leafy vegetables.
The best thing about this is you get to have some purple cabbage after! Who says eating healthy can’t be fun?
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