Benefits of Juicing: Eight Reasons to Replace Juice with Fruit for Optimum Health

Friday 23 January 2015

Benefits of Juicing: Eight Reasons to Replace Juice with Fruit for Optimum Health

Juicing health benefits vs fruit
Juice vs fruit - which one is healthier?
Juicing for health and vitality, detoxing, juice benefits and other big words keep popping up when we talk about leading a better lifestyle, but is juice really that great for us or it's just juicing "experts" and companies that are trying to sell Nutri Bullets, other blending and juicing machines, detox, cleansing diets and other stuff that are creating a havoc.

So, we are all going crazy about juice these days - everyone is buying new juicers and trying to be healthier. Off course, it is still January, so a lot of us still stick to our New Year's Resolutions to eat healthier, to exercise, to go to sleep earlier and so on. Well, if one of your resolutions was to start drinking more juice, why not to try and replace that wonderful idea with an even better idea? Eat the fruit and vegetables instead of juicing them! Not having to use a juice machine or a blender will save you time spent on juicing and washing the device, money as you will be wasting less food, but the biggest advantage is that you will be getting a lot more benefit by eating fruit instead of drinking it. What do you think?

There is, actually, quite a lot to think about, because, although the mentioned health drink seems to be super good for you, it has its flaws and replacing juicing machines with eating raw fruit can give you a lot more benefits.

So, why is processing our healthy food is not quite as amazing as it seems to be? What's my advice?

Juicing benefits
Juicing for health? Really?
  1. Eat fruit and vegetables instead of processing them to avoid gut related problems such as bloating, depression, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, lack of mental energy and even premature ageing. First of all, juice has no fibre that is crucially important for our health. Fibre helps avoid constipation by promoting good bacteria in your gut. Why do we care about constipation? Well, if you don't go to the toilet for a big one regularly, the chances are that you have imbalance between good and bad bacteria in your intestines. Bad bacteria produce toxins that leak into your bloodstream. What happens next? All of these are linked to bloating, depression, headaches, insomnia, less mental energy, anxiety, fatigue, predisposition to skin conditions and even premature ageing!!! So, sorting out your lower gastrointestinal tract is worth the effort, right? Some more reasons for keeping gut in good digestive order are as follows: it helps you minimise chances of getting bowel cancer, inflammatory bowel disease and others. Now, let's go back to the point, eating the fruit and vegetables instead of juicing it will give you so much needed fibre to keep your gut in good health and condition - something worth considering! Some people even suggest to put the pulp back into the juice as pulp has all the beneficial fibre, but that sounds quite yucky to me. Using a blender is better than a juice machine, but a blender also has some drawbacks which you will learn about if you carry on reading. 
  2. Avoid sugar crash by eating the whole seedy product instead of juicing it. Juice has lots of sugar. All sugar you take in with it goes right into your blood stream giving you a short peak of energy, then a massive slump. So, another advantage of eating a fruit instead of juicing it is that you will avoid a sudden loss of energy. Fruit and vegetables go through the full digestive cycle and they are not instantly absorbed. 
  3. Dump the juicing machine if you are trying to lose weight. Fibre in fruit and vegetables helps us feel fuller. If you are trying to lose weight, it is crucial to feel full. Fresh plant product takes longer to digest, so it stays longer in your stomach making you feel full whereas liquid bypasses the complex digestive process instantly without activating the satiety mechanism through the process of chewing and alike. Also, the above mentioned sugar crash makes you crave for sugar as soon as it wears off, thus, making you consume more calories than if you ate something else other than the healthy concoction, thus, the juicers are not helpful when trying to lose weight. By eating a fruit you will take in less sweet substance as you will eat less of it than the processed version of it would contain and avoid the sugar crash which results in hunger for more sugary products.
  4. Fibre in fresh produce aids absorption of nutrients, especially minerals such as calcium.
  5. Juicing and blending wastes antioxidants. Antioxidants keep arteries healthy and aid mental health. Even if you use a blender and make a smoothie instead of the juice, it is still not as good as eating the seed-associated structure of a plant itself. Why? Apples, pears and alike lose a lot of nutrients in the process of juicing or blending. As soon as the fruit is cut, it starts to lose it's antioxidant power due to exposure to light and air, so juicers are not an optimum solution. 
  6. Juicers are a breeding ground for bacteria. Most of them are very difficult to wash and, therefore, the drink associated with vitality, durability, energy and vigour turns into a contaminated concoction, if badly handled. If juice is stored, then bacteria multiplies even faster and the drink can become a cause for vomiting, diarrhoea and even worse problems.
  7. Another trivial thing - eating fruit and vegetables instead of juicing it will save you lots of cash. You won't need to spend money on a juicer and there will be no wastage of the valuable product that you have left after juicing. Something really worth considering!
  8. Don't add yogurt or any diary into your juice or a smoothie as milk binds and neutralises antioxidants. Ignore the sources that encourage you to add yogurt to make your juice tastier.
I personally think that drinking juice has it's benefits and if you like it, if it works for you, then there is no need to change your habit, but if you have any of the symptoms mentioned in the post, maybe you should consider dumping the juicer and taking advantage of eating raw fresh fruit and veg instead.

What about you? Do you juice, blend or eat fresh fruit and vegetables to maintain optimum health? What other advantages of eating fruit instead of using juicing machines do you know? Maybe you would like to claim that juicing has more benefits?

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