Juice by blender

So why would you want to make something, that in essence is a smoothie and turn it into juice? Maybe because sometimes, like me, you just feel like a juice, but you are put off purchasing one because of the price. If cost is the main point of consideration than you have to consider that your weekly fruit and vegetable costs will also increase because you need more vegetables and fruits to make the same volume as a smoothie. That being said, I still think the price of wellness beats the cost of sickness and the development of preventable lifestyle diseases.

Juice vs Smoothie

Essentially the difference between juices and smoothies comes down to the fibre and protein content. Juicing removes these components from your fruit and vegetables so you are left with just the water and nutrients. The benefits of this? Well, your digestive system doesn’t have to expend much energy digesting it, extracting and absorbing the nutrients. And because you have to juice a number of carrots, and/or stalks of celery and/or cucumbers etc., you greatly increase the amount of nutrients you are consuming and because the fibre has been stripped from them they are more easily taken up by the body. The stripping of fibre is the main reason I limit my use of fruits in my juices. To add such large quantities of fruit to your juice means you are delivering yourself a larger dose of fruit sugars without the fibre to slow the release. You end up with an insulin spike, which then leads to sugar crashes. Which leads to cravings.  Which leads to over eating and snacking. Which leads to added calorie intake that could be avoided by trying to maintain stable blood sugar levels. So I am all about vegetable juices. My daily juice generally includes:

• celery,
• cucumber,
• silverbeet,
• carrot (usually purple if I can get them),
• parsley,
• ginger and
• lemon.

Once I have juiced them, I then shake in some green algae mix (eg, spirulina, chlorella, for extra nutritional punch), cinnamon (to help stabilise blood sugar levels), dandelion (for detoxing) and slippery elm (for digestion). These additions really pack a nutritional punch. I usually have one just before my high protein breakfast making for a great delicious start to the day. I recently purchased invested in a cold-press juicer and the juice is seriously delicious. But what do you do if you don’t have a juicer? Well there are a few options and they start from blending.  You wouldn’t want to add carrots to this method though. Essentially all you have to do is blend up your vegetables (and fruit if you must), with some water (maybe half a cup, or try coconut water) then strain through a sieve, or preferably, a nut milk bag. Check out the video below where I show you how. http://youtu.be/7ZspzSq3pEE