Juicing For Health And Weight Loss

Are you considering getting that juicer or Ninja bullet to jazz up you weight loss efforts? Are you looking for the evidence that juicing will support your quest for better health and a smaller waist line? Then you have landed on the right page as I weigh up the pros and cons of juicing for weight loss and better health. Below you will find 18 benefits of juicing and 8 draw backs that need to be taken into consideration.

Love the refreshing taste of healthy fruit and vegetable juices and smoothies

Many of us really love to indulge a refreshing drink of fruit and/or vegetable juice, whether home made or bought from the stores. Especially during the summer time we all want some thing to cool us and the smoother it goes down the better. So if you need to pay attention to the calories while enjoying your healthy natural plant based juices, you will want to continue reading this article.

18 Great Benefits of Juicing

Some of the benefits of making your own healthy fruit/vegetable juices and smoothies include;

1. You know exactly what is in the drink when you are enjoying it. No need to guess at the E numbers and hard to pronounce ingredients you may encounter with a shop bought smoothy or health juice.

2. Fruits and vegetables start losing nutrients once they are cut, peeled and chopped or processed. So the sooner you consume (or freeze) your juice the more of the goodness and benefits you are assured of getting.

3. No need for preservatives that are not always natural or healthy for you.

4. Wide choice of vegetables and fruits to make tasty and healthy juice and smoothies.

5. Opportunity to increase your knowledge about different foods

6. Many recipes available online and in books if you prefer your own recipe book.

7. This method of preparing your vegetables and fruits allow you to consume a larger portion of raw foods than you are likely to consume by eating a salad.

8. With a smoothie you get the whole vegetable and/or fruit including the juice and fibre from the pulp.

9. With juicing you are able to enjoy undiluted juice from your fruits and vegetables which is less likely to require any sweetener.

10. Juicing allows your digestive system to have a break from heavy foods that require more effort for digestion. This is only when you are juicing exclusively for a period of time. For example when convalescing.

11. Supports nutrition and hydration.

12. Alcohol free tasty drinks with half the calories found in red wine compared with similar volume of natural unsweetened home-made grape juice.

13. More likely to be tailor made to suit the taste and nutritional requirements of you and your family.

14. A great way to incorporate more greens in your diet for you and your family.

15. When green juice is made with added citrus fruits the citric acid in the fruits ensure a greater bioavailability of iron mineral to nourish your body cells.

16. A great way to have naturally filtered clean water for example by making cucumber juice.

17. A good way to support nutrition and healing when you or someone you care for is diagnosed with cancer or other chronic disease, or just to allow your digestive system to rest for a few days.

18. Is unpasteurized and therefore has lost fewer water soluble vitamins that are destroyed through the heating process.

8 Drawbacks of juicing

The cons

1. May be time consuming to make your own vegetable juices and smoothies.

2. With juicing you may be wasting the fibre if you discard the pulp after juicing. This would be a shame as you can always keep the pulp from your vegetables, to make soups, add to baking (for example add apple and carrot pulp to your cake or cookie recipe) to incorporate all the lovely fibre and probiotic that your gut loves.

3. You may incur expenses from the purchase and maintenance of your chosen blender or food processor as well as the cost of the electricity.

4. Its time consuming to clean your appliance after each use.

5. Juicing may also increase the rate at which your blood sugar rises as the separation of the fibre means the rate of absorption will be faster and therefore result in a spike in blood glucose and in insulin secretion.

6. Requires knowledge and practice to let your drinks/juice linger in your mouth in order to allow the digestive process that takes place in the mouth to take place. This is because drinking your juice like water will reduce the time required for enzymes in your saliva to mingle with the juice to start to digest the sugars and starches.

7. You may find that you require recipes and other resources if you are not a chef or cook.

8. If you are using juicing as a therapeutic dietary aid it requires research and some expert knowledge. So it would be advisable in that case to speak to your dietician, doctor or nurse or nutritionist.

In Summary ….

In summary juicing can be a great way to boost you health and nutritional status, whether you are slimming, trying to have more vegetables each day, convalescing or juice fasting. I hope my list of pros and cons have inspired and encouraged you on your quest for health.