Think, Eat, Be Healthy

My Thoughts On Juicing

orange juice, fresh squeezed orange juice, glasses of orange juice

Fresh squeezed orange juice made with a citrus juicer retains all of its natural pulp and fiber. Beet or carrot juice made with a vegetable juicer has almost all of its health-promoting fiber removed.

Juicing Today

Juicing is popular among people who want to be healthy and get proper nutrition. Fresh vegetable juices have gained a dedicated following that is still growing and has many well-known advocates. Juicing has become a modern health phenomenon.

The basic process consists of tossing the desired vegetables into a juicer and then drinking the juice that comes out the other end. The premise is that you get all of the nutrients from the vegetables in a concentrated form that is easy and quick to digest and absorb. Juicing is often pushed as a sort of all-natural substitute for vitamin and mineral supplements. Being a dedicated whole food diet guy, I see several possible problems with this approach.

Problems With Juicing

Foremost in my mind is that many vitamins oxidize almost immediately upon any contact with the oxygen in air. Juicers, by design, pulverize vegetables into minute pieces and aerate the resulting juice. I have to wonder how much of the vitamin content of juiced vegetables remains available to the body after even a minute or two. This is why it is never a good idea to buy vegetable juices in jars at the store which may already be a week or more old. Eating a whole unpeeled carrot or beet, however, puts all of its nutrition into the body before it is broken up, making all of its nutrients available to us.

Fiber is another issue with juices. We have all heard about the importance of getting plenty of fiber in our diet. Fiber slows absorption from the intestines, reducing or eliminating blood sugar and insulin spikes. Fiber bulks up our stools to keep things moving along through the intestines and makes elimination easier and more regular. Dietary fiber also binds to many toxins and carries them out of the body rather than letting them be absorbed. People eating high fiber diets tend to have healthier cholesterol levels and are less likely to be overweight. More fiber in the diet correlates to a lower risk of colon cancer. Juicers remove almost all of the naturally occurring fiber, leaving just the liquid. Why would we pay for great, fresh, healthy whole foods like beets, carrots and apples and then throw away such an important part of them?

I also see volume as a stumbling block for vegetable juice. How many carrots or beets or apples does it take to make a 4-5 ounce serving of juice? It often takes one whole vegetable to make one once or less of juice. Would you sit down and eat four or five whole carrots or beets or apples at one time? Is this a natural thing to do? Remember that our bodies are very good at self-regulating, maintaining very close tolerances for core temperature, blood insulin levels and salinity and levels of all vitamins and minerals. If we eat or drink 20-30 times more of a nutrient than our body needs, the excess nutrient is normally just eliminated in the urine or feces, not stored for later use. This is why we eliminate bright red, orange or yellow urine and feces after eating several beets or carrots or beta-carotene supplements but not after eating just one beet or carrot. It is just way more than our bodies can use and we might just as well throw our money into the toilet and flush it away.

Go To The Source

Rather than juicing vegetables, why not just eat the vegetables? Almost all of the commonly juiced vegetables and fruits can be eaten either raw or cooked. There is no need for an expensive, finicky and difficult to clean juicing machine. There is no loss of fiber or nutrients when vegetables are eaten whole.

When eating whole foods it is difficult to eat enough of any one nutrient to reach the “over the usable limit” point of excreting excess nutrients. We feel full and want to stop eating before we get there. This natural feeling of fullness when we have eaten enough also makes it much more difficult to become overweight on a healthy whole food diet.

For hundreds of thousands of years we ate only a whole food diet because it was the only diet available. Today there are many other options including juicing. I think that juicing is probably much less dangerous for our health than refined white flour or sugar or trans-fats and probably causes no real harm at all. I will still stick to my whole foods as the time-tested route to maximum health for our species.

2 thoughts on “My Thoughts On Juicing

  1. Wade Young

    Hi John…great getting back with you. Just found your card as I was using it as a bookmark in a book I had set down during the move. Great stuff with the juicing…really made me think.

  2. Michael Dahl

    I’ve never gotten into the juicing thing. The fruits and vegetables just seem more tasty as is. Thanks for laying out a concise case for why others should reconsider this fad that’s lasted far too long.