Fun Christmas Present..

For Christmas this year I received a fun new gadget...a juicer.  So far it hasn't been one of those things that you use a ton in the first couple weeks and then set aside and forget about.  I use it multiple times a week and has made consuming the insane amount of fruits and veggies required in a day more do-able and fun.  

The Juicer

My new favorite flavor of juice...pineapple, melon, & mint leaves.  

The final product

Reasons why I LOVE juicing....

• Juicing helps you absorb all the nutrients from the fruit & vegetables. This is important because most of us have impaired digestion as a result of making less-than-optimal food choices over many years. This limits your body's ability to absorb all the nutrients from the fruit & vegetables. Juicing will help to "pre-digest" them for you, so you will receive most of the nutrition, rather than having it go down the toilet.
  
• Juicing allows you to consume an optimal amount of vegetables in an efficient manner. The National Cancer Institute believes that the rise in cancer these days has a lot to do with the lack of fruits and vegetables we are consuming. They recommend we get 5 servings of fruit and 3 servings of vegetables per day in order to get the effects from the vitamins, enzymes and phytochemicals found in them. Most people may find eating that many fruits & vegetables in a day pretty difficult, but it can be easily accomplished with a quick glass of fruit/veggie juice. 
• You can add a wider variety of vegetables in your diet. Many people eat the same vegetable salads every day. This violates the principle of regular food rotation and increases your chance of developing an allergy to a certain food. But with juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally enjoy eating whole.  (watercress, kale, wheat grass, bok choy, collard greens)
  
• Juicing your own fruit/vegetables is obviously the healthier option rather than buying ready made juices at the supermarket. Commercial juice is pasteurized, meaning it has been heated taking away from it's vital enzymes. They also contain artificial chemical sweeteners, or artificial colors which have proven to cause cancer in some animals.  
  

I'm hoping to do a "juice fast" one of these days.  I'll let you know how it goes!