My Old and New Nutrition Love - Juicing!

As a kid I remember my parents buying this huge clunky juicer, a big back of carrots, a big bag of apples and us drinking fresh juice.  It tasted great, was healthy and was fun.  I loved it, after all, what was not to like.  I remember mixing and matching fruits and making my favorite, green grapes and apples, a lot. 

Actually, if I remember correctly, a lot of our church really got into juicing at that time and a few of the adults drank only carrot juice and their skin began to turn orange.  Seriously, I'm not joking...they were ORANGE!  If you are reading this, you know who you are.

But now that my family and I are juicing again I can see how someone may have turned orange.  It is addictive...in a good way.  Once you start juicing you begin to crave more and more of it.  Just don't drink all carrots all the time and you will be OK; at least you won't turn orange.

Juicing has come a long way since then.  With the Internet, e-books and health consciousness we now know that juicing is a wonderful art that can lead a person into extremely wonderful health, plus it tastes good.  Some juice blends have the ability to give sustained energy throughout the entire day...bye, bye coffee.

A few juicing tips:

• Juice vegetables


• Only juice fruit on occasion.  Rather, eat your fruit.  The fiber helps to regulate your blood sugar so you won't store fat.


• You can juice some apple or pear with your veggies to give it a sweetness.


• A little lemon in the veggie juice cuts bitter taste.


• Carrots are good for your eyes.


• Beets are good to cleanse the blood and good for the heart. (by the way, beet tops are tender and sweet.  Great in a salad if you don't juice them.)


• Green juices are amazing for sustained energy and for juice cleanses. 


• I love kale.  Just a few leaves in my juice and my 20/10 eyesight gets even better!  All Day Long!  Seriously. Sharp. Vision.


• Use organic produce only (you don't want to juice herbicides and pesticides)


• If you plan to do a juice fast get the facts.  I like the Alpha Reset program.

A few juicing recipes:
(These recipes come from Fitlife.TV and Rawfully Organic)

• Lower Cholesterol
  
  
  1.       Thumb size slice of ginger
  
  
  2.       1 apple
  
  
  3.       3 carrots


• Morning ‘Coffee’ Replaces your morning coffee as Energy Drink and alertness.
1. Handful Parsley


2. 5 Carrots

• Green Gulp (Yummm!  I love this one, but usually add carrots, spinach and celery)

1. 3 Kale leaves


2. 1 Granny Smith Apple


3. 1 Cucumber


4. 1 lemon


5. 1 inch ginger

• Detox Juice (great for fasting)




1. Handful parsley


2. Handful cilantro


3. 2 carrots


4. 1 apple w/out seeds


5. 3 celery ribs


6. 1/2 beet with green tops


7. 1 inch ginger (or less until you get use to the kick!)

I literally have dozens and dozens of more juice recipes.  I have enjoyed all of the ones I have tasted. 

By-the-way, there is NO COMPARISON to the taste of fresh juice vs. the store bought juice.  With fresh juice you get all of the vitamins and nutrients since there was no shelf life.  The store bought stuff is glorified sugar water that has lost all of it's nutrients, that is why they ADD vitamins and nutrients to it!  Food for thought.

So get out there and start small if you need to.  You may just find that you too have a new love of juice.