Juicing is not just for fruit!

Keep in mind that I am a 45 year old 'work from home' mom, with grown teens. I live on Canada's east coast… we are not exactly overflowing with diversity of any kind here. I don't even KNOW a vegetarian! (no I am not kidding!) There are no juice bars… oh there may be one opened up over there at the Goodlife Fitness Center. Seems to me that the last time I was there they had some such, and there could very well be the odd juice type franchise popping up here or there, but our entire province only has 900,000 or so people, so there really isn't a huge market out of the very small percentage of people who might be into all this 'fringe' health stuff.

Anyway… I digress. I started this journey (have been led?) a while ago. Juicing, just vegetarianism, veganism, and raw foodism, has me intrigued. So I dug around and read websites, and blogs, articles and books. I am a 'sometimes' reader of Mike Adams over at NaturalNews.com (it used to be News Target) and he likes the whole juicing thing. At any rate, I've discovered that when it comes to juicing, just like anything else, there's a whole spectrum of people. On one end… where I used to be, there's the person who buys "Florida Sunshine" in a carton and drinks a small glass every day with breakfast. On the other end of the spectrum there are the "Juice Feast" proponents who do 92 days at a time drinking ONLY 100% fresh fruit and vegetable juice, pressed through their kitchen counter top juicer and consumed immediately. Up to 4 gallons a day of fresh pressed juices with no solid foods what so ever for 92 full days.

Apparently the health benefits of the "Juice Feast" are huge, although I may never be able to give you a first hand account. Admittedly, my blog articles are aimed at the "in between" crowd which is where I seem to be planted at the moment. I've been fond of saying that this journey of mine is not a religion. It's simply a day by day choice. while many people might find that non-committal (and they would be right) it suits my lifestyle, and is still a radical shift from how I survived up until a couple of weeks ago.

SO… back to juicing…. oh yeah … for BEGINNERS.

There are so very many reasons why juicing fresh fruits and vegetables is really good for you. I am going to list just a few of them for you.

1. Enzymes: "Until recently, the scientific community believed that the digestive enzymes in our body are constant and last forever. Researchers now know that we lose digestive enzymes through sweat, body waste and the natural ageing process of the organs that produce our digestive enzymes.
   Our current fast-paced society with its preoccupation with convenience has resulted in more chemical pollution, overly processed foods and microwave cooking, all of which create a lot of free-radical damage in our body, also known as a process of accelerated ageing. This process of free-radicals lowers the body's natural ability to produce enzymes and meet its demands to function well."

   1. Digestive Enzymes, secreted by the salivary glands, stomach, pancreas, and the small intestine help break down food into simple components.

   2. Food Enzymes exist naturally in raw food. If the food is cooked above 47 degrees Celsius, the high temperature involved in the cooking process destroys the enzymes. Digestive enzymes and food enzymes serve the same function; they digest the food so it can be absorbed into the blood stream. The difference between the two is that food enzymes are derived from fresh, raw, uncooked foods such as fruits, vegetables, eggs, raw unpasteurised dairy, meat and fish (sashimi), whilst digestive enzymes are made inside our body.

   3. Metabolic Enzymes are produced in the cells and are found throughout the body in the organs, in the bones, the blood, and inside the cells themselves. Metabolic enzymes help run the heart, brain, lungs, and kidneys. Hundreds of metabolic enzymes are necessary for the working of our body.
   ref: The Power of Enzymes

2. Juicing is a way to get vitamins and minerals in the most absorbable form to the body.
3. Juicing is a way to get far MORE in nutrients than you would if you were eating.
4. What we're finding today is not only that raw foods are good medicine, but in fact raw foods are the BEST medicine for virtually all the big diseases now devastating Western civilization. Juicing super concentrates the beneficial compounds in raw fruits and vegetables.
5. Heat (cooking) and irradiation destroys the beneficial ingredients in foods.
6. Mike Adams (NaturalNews.com) says " Cancer simply melts away when bathed in these vegetable juices."

And a final note from Mike Adams

The bottom line to all this, folks, is that juicing vegetables is the secret to reversing disease now and preventing disease for a lifetime. But it has to be fresh, raw, living juice.

Remember, pasteurized vegetable juices purchased in bottles at the store are worthless! That includes all the Naked Juice, V8, Odwalla and other brands that claim to be good for you. While they're not bad for you, they're also DEAD JUICE. That means they have virtually none of the nutritional healing benefits of fresh, living juice. Don't be fooled by healthy-sounding bottled juice products. If it's in a bottle, it's dead. And dead juice doesn't support life.

There is only one way to get fresh, unprocessed, living juice: Make your own juice! This is the simple secret to staying healthy, vibrant and mentally sharp for the rest of your long, enjoyable life: Juice your way to health! (And then supplement with superfoods, herbs, and other targeted nutritional needs.)

Juicing is the future of medicine. It cures cancer. It reverses heart disease. It stabilizes cholesterol and blood pressure. It ends kidney stones and gall stones. It reverses depression and psychosis. It builds strong bones and strong muscles. It absolutely reverses diabetes in a matter of days, and it obliterates obesity in a matter of weeks. And in doing all that, it makes virtually all pharmaceuticals obsolete.

Juicing and raw foods go hand in hand. They are the answers to disease and sickness. No wonder Big Pharma and the FDA don't want you to find out about the true healing power of plant-based nutrition, huh?

So what do you need if you wanted to start juicing? Well  to start with you might want to get a juicer.

 The other thing you want is a good variety of fruits and vegetables for juicing. If you've never had fresh green juice before I will recommend you start with romaine lettuce, celery, cucumber, spinach and maybe some alfalfa or broccoli sprouts. These are milder. I found (and still do) that green juice is an acquired taste. I will juice a couple of apples with mine or some carrots (or both) most days.

Other vegetables that are great for juicing are beets, red cabbage (one of my faves), all kinds of lettuce, zucchini, tomato, yellow and green beans… just about any vegetable you can imagine. I do not like the starchy veggies juiced (potatoes, yams, squashes) but you can try and see what strikes you.

For fruit, lots of whatever is in season.  Go organic whenever possible but if you find it is too expensive, save the organic for those fruits and vegetables that are hard to wash (broccoli, cauliflour, lettuce etc) or that you are not going to peel.

Drink the juice right out of the juicer, or add it to a smoothie, but DO drink it right away, as the digestive enzymes and oxidation will begin breaking down the nutrients. If you must make it and save for later, then put it in mason jars (GLASS) and refrigerate no more than 24 hours!

Go for ALL the colors Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and purple, and orange and mix them up. Don't be afraid to experiment.

Please let me know all about YOUR first experience with juicing! Bottoms Up!!

Why Raw is Better Than Cooked.

(Part 1)

I’ve spent the last couple of months reading everything I can get my hands on about nutrition. As a nurse I have a pretty good background in understanding how the body works, and what we need. Most nutritionists are still following ‘Canada’s food Guide’ which closely resembles the recommended eating plan supported by the American government. (Do they call it a food pyramid?)

Well I don’t think there is a nutritional purist on the planet that would begin to accept what the government recommends that we eat for health!

Let me explain

Or better yet, allow a medical doctor with a passion for nutritional awareness explain.

On the blog Weighty Matters, in the post entitled Canada’s Food Guide to Unhealthy Eating Dr Freedhoff says

I believe that Canadians deserve a Food Guide that reflects medicine’s best understanding of the effect of diet on chronic disease prevention.

I also believe that Canadians deserve a Food Guide that will not make them gain weight if they follow it.

Here’s the guide.

OK so first off I don’t want to get into a huge analysis of the Food Guide. Suffice to say that Dairy is more and more being shown to NOT be a healthy choice, no one really needs 2-3 servings of meat a day, and the recommendation of 5-12 servings of grains a day is shocking. You could eat white rice, canned peaches in syrup, processed cheese and peanut butter every day and be with in the parameters laid out in Canada’s food guide! Can you think of ANYONE who would need 12 cups of white rice a day?? (When the bovine industry starts promoting the food guide with ads like The Canadian Government says "Put Pork on your Fork", sensible people KNOW we’ve got an ISSUE!

OK so really…. this is supposed to be about raw. The diet being recommended by what I consider REAL nutritionists… people who study nutrition and apply it to their own bodies daily… these people recommend a diet of AT LEAST 80% fresh, locally grown, raw, organic fruits and vegetables.

Real extremists (The Raw Foodist Community) will not EVER eat ANYTHING cooked! Nothing heated at a temperature over 110 degrees. There’s are sone  very specific reasons for that.

Let’s go to famous Raw Foodie Alissa Cohen for the answer to

What is Raw & Living Food?

Raw and Living foods are uncooked, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouted grains. These raw foods can be eaten whole or combined to make the healthiest, most delicious meals.

Sound boring? NO Way!!! Imagine eating burgers, pizza, pasta, cookies, cakes and pies everyday. Imagine never having to count calories, proteins, fats or carbs! You won’t have to weigh or measure your food. The raw and living food diet is about eating whatever you want, whenever you want! You can lose weight, heal your body, increase your energy, look and feel younger, not in years, not in months but within days!

Now I will admit to being concerned about food variety, but truthfully I do not need a particularly exciting diet to live. I just grab and eat mostly without tasting anyway. That may not be the same relationship everyone has with their food. So Alissa has a recipe book (oh I almost said CookBook LOL) that has yummy looking raw/live food choices such as the amazing looking pizza there.

The best reason I have seen in favor of raw living foods are the enzymes. I mean, never mind that absolutely nothing can compare in flavor to a vine ripened tomato picked from your patio garden, or a crisp Cortland Apple plucked from the tree after the first fall frost. Never mind that you are getting whole nutrients, and plenty of fiber, or that you house fills with the fresh summer aroma of field strawberries brought in by the quart, fresh from the u-pick or farmer’s market. Living foods have enzymes that are beneficial to your body’s health and vitality.

Here are some FAQ’s from Living-Foods.com

 

Raw and Living Foods are foods that contain enzymes. In general, the act of heating  food over 116  degrees F destroys enzymes in food. (Enzymes start to degrade in as little as 106 degrees F).  All cooked food is devoid of enzymes, furthermore cooking food changes the molecular structure of the food and renders it toxic.  Living and raw foods also have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that have been cooked.

 

What are Enzymes?
Enzymes assist in the digestion of foods.  They are known to be the "Life-Force" and or "energy" of food.

 

From the dictionary:
Noun: Any of the various complex organic substances, as pepsin originating from living cells and capable of producing certain chemical changes in organic substances by catalytic action, as in digestion.

 

Why are Enzymes Important?
Enzymes are important because they assist in the digestion and absorption of food.   If you eat food that is enzyme-less, your body will not get maximum utilization of the food. This causes toxicity in the body.   (Can you guess why over 75% of Americans are overweight?)

 

Doesn’t the acidic ph of the stomach destoy enzymes?
Viktorus Kulvinskas, one of the world’s foremost and most experienced active researchers into enzyme nutrition has information showing then stomach acid merely deactivates food enzymes.  The enzymes are then reactivated in the more alkaline small intestine.  Many people who eat all raw foods, sense a world of healthful difference in our energy, digestion and connectedness with nature by eating enzyme-rich living foods. When we stopped eating cooked protein foods which require large secretions of stomach acid (which is not healthful for several reasons) our stomach doesn’t produce much stomach acid.  Many people who eat  raw foods eat a low protein diet and are free from the stomach acid secretions and have much more energy and a lighter disposition.

 

Is there a difference between living foods and raw foods?
Living and Raw foods both contain enzymes. In living foods, the enzyme
content is much higher. Raw, unsprouted nuts contain enzymes in a "dormant"
state. To activate the enzymes contained in almonds, for example, soak them
in water for as just 24 hours. Once the almonds begin to sprout, the enzymes become "active" and are then considered living. In the context of this web site,
the terms are used loosely.

 

Why eat only Organic Foods?
When juicing or eating foods, it is very important to choose to consume only organically grown produce. "Conventional" or "industrial" produce are grown with pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and other chemicals that are toxic and/or harmful to your body. Organic foods are grown without the use of these harmful substances, taste better, and are more nutritious.

Do I need to eat all organic to be raw?
No, you do not NEED to eat all organic to be raw.   I personally reccomend eating as much organic food as possible.  It has been shown that organic produce contains less pesticide and other toxic residues.  In addition, it has been shown that organic food may taste better and contain more nutrition.  I believe its better to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables in most any case.

There is often a concern expressed by meat eaters that vegan, raw-foodists will not get adequate protein. The truth is that there are amino acid complexes in live and raw fruits and vegetables, and eating enough and a wide array of organic living foods will provide you with enough protein. If you are concerned about protein though, you can certainly find a number of vegan protein sources including soy, sprouts, nuts, and if you really must… shake mixes. (I must! LOL)

You will find me talking a lot about raw, and the need to move towards an 80% raw diet. The more I know the more this makes sense. If you think about our body physiology, and our hunter/gatherer ancestors, as a race we survived mostly on fruits, seeds, nuts, and grass. Hunting for meat didn’t come until later. So back to our roots I say.

Again, don’t get me wrong, totally vegan may be an impossible goal for most of us, but to make raw food choices over cooked whenever possible is likely going to be easier than you think, especially if you plan ahead (i.e. BEFORE you go to the grocery store). I do want to make mention of one thing…. I have almost completely removed myself from processed foods when it comes to meals. For the most part, I cook from fresh ingredients whenever possible. I think we ALL need to start preparing meals from real foods. I swear our hips are made up of those gross swanson tv dinners, and big macs that came in styrofoam containers!

So now I want to leave you with this wonderful video…. (I haven’t eaten at McDonald’s since I saw this early this winter!