Would like to start Juicing

[kathryn]

For the life of me I cannot figure out why anyone would choose to sqeeze the juice from fruits or vegetables and toss out all of the other good for you stuff. Cathe's link showed a juicer that cost over $500! I'm seriously baffled and hope someone can enlighten me on what benefits juicing provides.

It depends on what your needs and goals are.

Juicing highly concentrates the vitamins and minerals in foods, so some people have a daily green juice (leafy greens plus some apple or something else to make it sweet enough to be palatable) kind of like a vitamin supplement to get a concentrated boost of nutrients. Some folks who are battling cancer, for example, use green juices as a part of their nutritional therapy.

Also, the GreenStar or similar geared juicers (vs. centrifuge-type juicers) can also be used to homogenize nuts or nuts-and-dried-fruit combos to make a very smooth paste (either a nut butter or a 'dough' for making cookies or other things), or to homogenize frozen bananas and frozen fruits to make 'ice creams'.The problem is, as I mentioned above, fruit juices and carrot juice are too concentrated in sugars and the effect on the body is pretty much the same as if you ate sugar or processed carbs.

I have Green Star, but it's mostly a dust catcher, as it's a PITA to clean (they claim it's easy!) and I don't have the room on my counter for it along with my other more-used appliances.

ITA that in general, blending smoothies is better.

 

[CeciFifi]

juice everyday - it's so quick and efficient

I vitamix a spinach, carrot, apple, banana and green powder drink most mornings (and throw in D3, flax oil, calcium supplements etc) and juice a green lemonade when I get home from work. They are both quick and easy and clean up is 5 minutes. Google green lemonade. It's sooo good and good for you. You can't eat this many vegetables in a day! Your skin and general health will thank you - it's nature's botox.