Top Tips for Juicing

Juicing is something that has gone a little bit out of fashion. With people touting the sugar levels in juice makes the whole thing bad for you. But juicing is a practice which, when done correctly, can be a great way to get added nutrients into your diet.

Juicing allows the nutrients within the fruit or veg to become easily digestible by the body, essentially bypassing the bodies first stages of digestion in terms of breaking down foods.

1. Juice veggies, not fruit.

This is the number one rule when wanting to juice for you health. While juicing fruit tastes delicious, you are essentially concentrating the sugar from the fruit, and discarding the fibre. The fibre is vital when consuming fruit because it helps you stay fuller for longer, compared to the juice, which will give you a hit of sugar. If you do juice fruit, make sure it's alongside mostly veggies. For example, juicing half of a granny smith apple along with celery, carrot, ginger and cucumber is much more beneficial then just having the granny smith apple juice on it's own.

Juicing vegetables provides you with a more diverse nutritional profile. Minerals like iron, magnesium and calcium are found in all of your green leafy vegetables, compared to the apple, which when juiced gives you minimal amounts of vitamin C and potassium.

If you must have a fruit in your juice for the taste (which is understandable, especially if you are new to juicing) then ensure that your ratio is 3:1. 3 veggies for 1 piece of fruit.

2. Get rid of the pulp.

Pulp is good, don't get me wrong, but for the purpose of juicing we don't want that pulp in our juice. The pulp is a source of fibre, and this slows down the absorption of the nutrients from our juice. Juicing allows the nutrients within the fruit or veg to become easily digestible by the body, essentially bypassing the bodies first stages of digestion in terms of breaking down foods. We want our juice to be pure and easily absorbed and for this reason straining your juice before drinking it is best.

***Don't discard the pulp once it's been removed. How onto it and add it to baking- ie in muffins, or add it to smoothies for an added fibre hit.

3. Cold Pressed is best

This point may not be particularly doable for a lot of people, and that is perfectly fine. But It is important that you know the difference between cold pressed juice and regular juice. Cold pressed is a method of extraction, which, as the name suggests, maintains a cool environment for the food being juiced. The reason why this is so important is that within the fruit and veg there are lots of enzymes which have many beneficial actins upon the body. Some help with digestion, others exhibit anti-inflammatory actions. And when the food is juiced we want these enzymes to still be present and active, so that we can get as much benefit from the juice as possible. Normal extraction methods for juicing use heat, mechanical fractions can generate much heat whilst juicing and when these enzymes are exposed to heat they activity reduces.

So to sum up, cold pressed juices provide us with a more nutritionally rich end product.

So what are you waiting for! Get the juicer out and get juicing! I can't wait to see you're creations!

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/science/monitoringnutrients/nutrientables/nuttab/pages/default.aspx