Benefits of Living on the Fresh Side of Life
It’s no secret that incorporating fruits and vegetables into your daily diet is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. From grade school, all of us learned about the food groups and getting our five servings each day.
What you may not know is that juicing can be an even better way to get those nutrients into your diet than eating your produce raw. In addition, recent studies indicate that 5 servings may not be enough – with most nutritional recommendations adjusting the number up to 9 – 13 servings per day! While eating 13 servings of produce per day is a little unrealistic, it’s easy to juice an equivalent amount of produce and get your daily servings using juice.
Did you know? Just ¾ of a cup of freshly extracted juice equals one daily serving of fruits or vegetables.2
The most easily recognizable benefit of juicing is that, “fresh juice provides an excellent way for us to absorb vitamins and minerals, which is even superior to eating whole [produce] because juicing releases these nutrients in a highly absorbable form."3
While most foods need to be broken down by the body, juice is already broken down – the nutrients and minerals are ready immediately to be absorbed through the digestive system. All of the amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), carbohydrates, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and phytonutrients (plant chemicals) found in fresh juice are ready for your body to process and use.4 As a result, you feel increased energy (instead of feeling tired and worn down after eating a meal) plus get all the preventative health benefits of fresh produce.
Fiber from Juicing
There are 2 types of fiber that you get from eating plant-based foods – soluble and insoluble. Both types have various beneficial effects on digestion. Fresh juice only contains soluble fiber, whereas raw produce will have both types.5 In this light, you shouldn’t cut all of the raw produce from your diet in favor of juicing, but it’s a good way to get the maximum amounts that nutritional guides recommend daily.
“The recommended fiber intake for adults is between 20 and 35 grams per day, but the average American’s daily intake of dietary fiber is only around 14 to 15 grams. Increasing vegetable consumption by juicing will significantly add to the daily intake of soluble fiber.”6
Where are the antioxidants? Common thought in the past led people to believe that antioxidants remained in the fiber of juiced produce, so you lost the benefits of these vital dietary agents. However, new studies have proven that quite the opposite is the case. “The Department of Agriculture analyzed twelve fruits and found that 90 percent of the antioxidant activity was in the juice rather than the fiber.”7
Antioxidants in juice
Yes. “Fresh juice is loaded with antioxidants that bind to toxins and carry them out of the body so they don’t damage your cells.”8
While people spend untold amounts of money each year paying for expensive detoxifying treatments and miracle detox drugs, you can get the same kind of effect simply by adding more produce to your diet. With the vitamins and enzymes, both, that are found in fresh juice, you’ll have a gentle, natural way to detoxify your system yourself.
These antioxidants are also vital in building your natural immune system against disease. “Fresh juice is not only a healing aid; it is the best health-insurance policy you can invest in.”9 With fresh juice daily, you’re strengthening your body’s natural immunities with all of the vitamin and enzyme antioxidants you need.
The Importance of Phytonutrients
Phytonutrients are plant chemicals (also called phytochemicals) that occur naturally in plants. The most well-known of these is beta-carotene. While these phytochemicals are commonly used in the production of a wide range of drugs, they are often overlooked when weighing the benefits of fresh juice in your diet.
“Phytonutrients found in plants may be even more important for our health than vitamins and minerals. Without all these important substances, found principally in vegetables and fruit, our immune systems weaken and we become subject to various disturbances, which can lead to feeling sick and tired most of the time, and to illness and disease.”10
The preventative – and even curative – health benefits of phytonutrients are wide and varied, which is why they are so commonly used in drug manufacturing. Juicing is the perfect way to get these into your system naturally.