"What's the benefit of juicing?" This is a question being asked more and more these days as consumers see the addition of new juicers and blending equipment flood store shelves and television infomercials.
Juicing fruits and vegetables isn't a new idea; it's been something some nutrition fanatics have been doing for years. In fact, many well known nutrition experts have made juicing and blending their plant food their way of life!
To understand the benefit of juicing, it's important to differentiate between juicing plant food and blending food.
The Difference Between Juicing and Blending
Juicing fruits and vegetables is the act of separating the juice of the plant from the fibrous portion, with the juice to be consumed as a beverage. Blenders, or emulsifiers, generally keep the fibrous portion of the plant in the beverage, but while pulverizing the cell wall and extracting the juice from the cells, the fiber is ground up very small, often suspended in the drink.
One benefit of juicing is that the consumer to make and drink concentrated plant nutrition. More of it can be consumed because the fiber, which fills you up, is separated from the juice, often discarded, or used for something else. The down side? We need fiber in our diets to be healthy. Therefore, while you can get more concentrated nutrition by juicing, fiber needs to be taken in through the meals or snacks eaten.
Blending food, on the other hand, still contains the fiber of the plant. Therefore, while the user can't consume as many blended drinks (often called smoothies), they are still getting the fiber nutrition.
Which is more beneficial?
It's hard to say without considering the rest of your diet. It also depends on a person's goals. If someone wants to realize the most nutrition in food, they might include both juicing and blending of a variety of fruits and veggies into an otherwise healthy diet. Someone who wants to start juicing to lose weight might want to do more blending, using the blended, fiber-filled drink as a meal replacement, on occasion, and supplement with low calorie snacks.
Should You Start Juicing?
For overall health, the benefit of juicing (or blending) is clear: it can add natural vitamins, minerals, and live enzymes to any diet. With today's over consumption of food devoid of nutritional value and filled with chemicals, taking in more natural, live plant material is essential for the cells of the body to perform properly and regenerate as they should.
What's important, though, is to add juicing and/or blending while improving the rest of the diet. All too often, people justify eating worse than they did before juicing because they are now adding nutrients that they weren't getting previously. Juicing and blending raw plants is most beneficial when the cells can use the nutrients to operate as they should, not to scour for toxins and repair damage done by continuing to eat poorly.
With that in mind, if you haven't juiced or blended before, try adding it for a week. Chances are, you will never have felt better and you might just be juicing for life!