Looking for an alternative to juicing?
In an ideal world, you would be able to get all of the nutrients you need on a daily basis from the items you buy at the supermarket or, even better, through food grown yourself under organic conditions, eaten in either a raw or juiced form, but this is simply not a realistic option for most people.
So what is the alternative? Well, we have the answer! Our tasty, easy-to-make, easy-to-take fruit, berry and organic vegetable powders are packed full of superfruit and superfood ingredients, which will help you to sustain the health benefits experienced through detoxing and juicing for the long term. All this without the time and expense of visiting health farms and buying huge quantities of fruits and vegetables. In other words, these powders are the next best thing to eating fresh fruits and vegetables in the quantities required on a daily basis. If you want to support your energy levels, vitality and immune system and general well-being, why not try them now!
To find out more about the benefits of juicing and raw / living foods, read on.
What are the benefits of juicing?
Juicing is a brilliant way to ensure that you receive the daily recommended supply of fruits and vegetables. The nutrient content of juice is as high as it is in the fruit or vegetable in its whole form. It is one of the most effective ways to get useful enzymes from raw food into the body. Enzymes from fruits and vegetables convert food into body tissue and give you lots of energy. They are also important because they aid digestion and absorption of food into the body.
Regularly drinking fresh juices will also increase the amount of phytochemicals - the powerful substance in plants that helps fight germs that invade your body. Additionally, antioxidants and other immune-enhancing properties are concentrated in juices, which help to speed-up recovery from infections.
Adding raw juices to your daily or weekly diet is a brilliant means of boosting the fruits and vegetables that our bodies crave without sacrificing taste. Not only does juicing help to suppress appetites, it could lead to weight-loss in a healthy way.
Drinking juices ensures that we are increasing our servings of fresh produce daily. This is welcome news for those of us who don’t eat nearly enough fruits and vegetables. Freshly juiced vegetables and fruits are packed with many vitamins and nutrients, and since it is in liquid form, it is easily assimilated by the body.
There are loads of benefits to juicing. With their high levels of vitamins, minerals and digestive enzymes, raw fruits and vegetables and “living” foods provide an instant supply of nutrients and antioxidants, which can help to build a strong immune system.
Fresh cold pressed juice quickly supplies the body with health-promoting enzymes, vitamins, minerals, pigments and phytonutrients. Enzymes are the workforce of the body. They are essential for digestion of food, producing energy, and are important for most of the metabolic activities taking place in the body. By juicing, you are giving your digestive system a break, while flooding your cells with the healing benefits of the juice. Juicing helps to cleanse the body on a cellular level as well as creating a more alkaline body.
By juicing a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables everyday, you can dramatically increase your intake of natural enzymes and antioxidants. Both can help delay the aging process and prevent disease. Juicing also speeds up the detoxification of the liver after alcohol abuse. Alcoholics are deficient in vitamins A, C, and all of the B complex. The nutrients help the damaged liver, help build the immune system and help with energy and metabolism.
Disadvantages of pre-packaged juices
Processed bottled juice can last for up to 2 years. The fruit and vegetable processing industry uses powerful versions of the same low speed extraction process as the cold press juicers to extract the maximum yield of juice from the item of food.
Once cold pressed, fresh juice is quickly pasteurised or heat treated. This heating process has been shown to destroy many nutrients, as well as the naturally occurring enzymes within the fruit and vegetables, and changes the pH from alkaline to acid. Most antioxidants are heat sensitive and can reduce by up to 15% each time a juice is heated.
By the time the juice is packed and sold it may have been heated at 2 or 3 locations to get in the final bottle and the long term storage of pasteurised juice leads to even further breakdown of nutrients over time. The primary purpose is to extend the juice’s shelf life.
If you look at the ingredients, you will see that a lot of juice companies use juice concentrates to save costs, but regardless of whether the juice is made from concentrate or not, the alkaline properties and naturally-occurring nutrients are greatly diminished by the pre-packing process. These juice concentrates are often imported and typically involve hours of heating to remove the water, leaving little nutritional value behind.
Unfortunately, the pasteurisation process destroys everything, both good and bad, within the juice. Enzymes are naturally present in all raw and living foods. Certain enzymes are responsible for causing the food to naturally spoil or go bad. This is why you see fruit naturally fall from a tree, when unpicked.
What are the benefits of a raw food diet?
The focus of a raw food eating programme is on eating uncooked, extremely nutritious foods, such as fruits and vegetables, to lose weight quickly and effectively. Naturally, these foods are low in calories, but eating them raw or uncooked is also recommended, because they lose nutritional value when cooked.
The raw food diet (also referred to as the ‘living foods’ diet) is made up of food that is uncooked and unprocessed. A food is essentially ‘raw’ if it is kept below 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degree Celsius); the temperature above which enzymes are destroyed. Such food still contains important enzymes, which assist in the digestion and absorption of food.
Enzymes are important because they assist in the digestion of foods and the absorption of nutrients. They are known to be the “life-force” or “energy” of food. If you eat food that is enzyme-less, your body will not get maximum benefit of the food. This can result in toxicity in the body.
Unprocessed, preferably organic, whole foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, sprouts, grains, legumes, dried fruit, seaweed, freshly juiced fruit and vegetables are all examples of very beneficial raw foods, which lead to higher intake of vitamin A and vitamin C, as well as higher levels of antioxidants.
The benefits claimed by those who adhere to the raw food and living food diets are many and varied, but the following are benefits consistently reported: slimming, better digestive function, boosted energy levels, improved resistance to illness and healthier-looking skin.
Eating raw food translates into eating higher levels of dietary fibre, which improves digestion and the excretory processes of the body. It also promotes the intake of a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. It does not require calorie counting or portion control.
Raw foods contain fewer trans fats and saturated fat. They also tend to be low in sodium and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fibre and health-promoting plant chemicals called phytochemicals.
Cooked and processed food is short of enzymes, and lacks most vitamins and minerals. Living food enzymes make the process of digestion and assimilation considerably easier. In addition, fragile vitamins and minerals are easily lost in traditional heat-prepared foods. Raw and living foods contain all the healthful nutrients our bodies need and crave.