Juicing has become one of my favourite topics. This is quite an ironic turnaround as commercially bottled juices have long turned me off drinking any form of vegetable juice in particular, for a couple of decades. Like many kids, I didn’t really like or appreciate my vegetables at dinner time when I was much younger. Why on earth would I want to start consuming vegetable juice then? It must surely be horrible? Fruit juice can be nice if fresh, but the bottled stuff is too often laced with sugar, artificial sweeteners and preservatives.
Recently my wife and I bought our first juicer; the centrifugal type. This was relatively cheap and we got right into it juicing everything we could get our hands on. The results were great. We have a wonderful garden and even as I write we have beautiful self-sown bok choy and silver beet growing abundantly in the cold Tasmanian winter. It’s not hard to come up with great tasting combinations. Although I thought the veggie juice would taste awful, we quickly realised that if you simply add a small amount of apple or carrot to the mix it tastes beautiful!
We had to take our juicing to another level. Even though we were composting all the waste from our exploits, it seemed to be too much in volume for too small an amount of juice. This can be costly. We also noticed very early on that the juice oxidised quickly (heat from the centrifugal model), turned brown and didn’t taste fresh for very long. Lastly, the really leafy stuff like the bok choy and silver beet mentioned was virtually all churned out into the waste bucket for almost nil return in juice. Then it happened, we discovered the cold press juicer!
The cold press model cost us around 4 times the price of the centrifugal one ($219 versus about $50). But as I always respectfully say to people, what price do you put on your health? The new machine overcomes the negatives of the old one. There is much less heat so whilst there must still be some oxidisation, you certainly can’t notice by eye or by taste. Our juice does not last that long (as in we consume it quickly) but even after 5 days it still tastes like we have just made it. There is much less waste and incredible gains in juice volume, particularly with the leafy veggies. The new unit whilst clever in design is no harder to clean than the other one either.
So why do we do this? As mentioned in my first post, Chlorophyll is one of the important elements lacking in modern diets. You can pick it up quickly en mass in your juice while still eating what you normally would. This is like drinking liquid sunlight! It’s incredibly healthy when sourced from organic produce, and if you are like us you can source much of it that might otherwise be excess from your own garden.
Natural fruit and vegetable juices are highly alkaline so are wonderful for people with acidic diets. Juicing thus not only restores pH to healthy levels, but in so doing restores deposits of critical minerals and trace elements lacking in those who eat a lot of processed food. Start your juicing today! Not only will you enjoy the health benefits, but you can also have fun if you collaborate in the kitchen with your partner, children or willing other, on the interesting combinations you can manifest. Our favourite is often tagged on other forums as “miracle juice” which is roughly equal parts apple, beetroot and carrot. It’s quite sweet, has a magical colour and an amazing array of nutrients.
jasonparkerhealth 