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!!

Could the Vegetarian Lifestyle be for me?

I find myself increasingly drawn to vegetarianism. I am very fascinated with the whole idea of eating nothing but nourishing, nutrition packed fruits and vegetables interspersed with whole grains. Today I had absolutely nothing to eat EXCEPT raw fruits and vegetables, a few pieces of my yummy healthy chocolate, and a piece of cheddar cheese this evening, only because I was a little hungry, and had a craving for salt.

It’s not that I have anything against meat eaters, or meat for myself. I eat meat, but I am enjoying it less and less, only because I am immersing myself in vegan and vegetarian research. I mean… LOOK at that picture over there. I feel healthier just LOOKING at a picture of food like that. First of all, it is visually appealing, second of all, a bounty like that smeels really great, and you know smell is the FIRST taste you get of your food. I see mostly fruits in that picture, but vegetables have the same visual and olfactory appeal.

I found myself ALL DAY researching vegetarianism, and raw foodism. I signed up for a bunch of newsletters and the more I read the more excited I got. It seems kind of a silly thing to be excited about. But why not… whenever you make a drastic lifestyle change like I have been making, you pretty much think about it all the time. At least that’s been my experience. So if I need to be obsessed about anything, and I need to lose weight, it seems that fruits and vegetables are a good thing to be excited about!

So what about the vegetarian lifestyle. I won’t call myself a vegetarian, because to me that denotes a certain attitude. Yes that’s it… vegetarianism seems like an attitude. So I’m not a vegetarian. I think I am just going to choose fresh fruits and vegetables whenever possible. That feels right to me for now.

if I am presented with a chunk of cow or pig (hehe) well I may or may not eat it. Vegetarianism (for health) doesn’t need to be a religion. It will be a meal by meal choice. I do think that just for the first 30 days or so (maybe 6 weeks? to form a habit) I will try to be strict with myself, and make a conscious decision with every bite to stay with the vegetarian choices. I think it needs to be that way for the first while because habit always wants to pull us back in, and refined food withdrawal is likely.

So first I have some whole food, raw organic vegan powdered drinks and protein shakes on the way. (well I don’t know if the shakes are raw or not but I do know the drinks are. I am going to talk about those a bit later as well, because I have already had some samples and they are TRULY amazing and very yummy! But I think I will save that discussion for my next post on ‘juicing’. You know, vegetarianism is so easy, and SO appealing right now, being that it is summer time in Canada, and the bounty of fresh is plentiful, but what will it be like in November through to June? I guess I will wait and see. It’s not like we can’t get produce here. it’s just that it isn’t as fresh, and it is very expensive. With the cost of gas going through the ceiling, and the flooding all through the farmer’s fields in Canada, and mid-west USA, I dread the food costs this winter.

Oh well…. aren’t you laughing at me worrying about that already?? I just realized what I am doing… did you recognize it? I just gave myself an escape hatch in case the whole vegetarian thing doesn’t work out for me. I’ve created a perfect scape-goat in case of failure! That is so typical and GOOD FOR ME for recognizing it! You know, here is going to be the best thing ever about writing down my thoughts every day…. I will be able to recognize bahaviours that are designed to take me and hopefully stop them before they manifest a s a reality!

So back to vegetarianism…. it will be important to make sure I am getting all of the nutrients I need. I have see it said that B12 may need to be supplemented. B12 is mostly in organ meats, although wild rainbow trout and salmon have decent levels of B12, and I do love fish!

I have a number of supplements I take that I will talk about in another post as well, but one thing I know and that is that protein is NOT an issue like some people believe. Plants in variety will give us all of the amino acid complexes that we need to live.  At any rate I do have my back up protein shakes on the way, and I will probably have those frequently in smoothies and alone as part of a meal, so I am unconcerned about that.

So overall I think I have convinced myself that fresh organic fruits and veggies, leafy greens and sprouts are going to be a popular way to eat. I’m kind of excited about it!

I would love to know what you all think!