The juicing trend continues to be popular, but it's important to understand the real benefits and how to incorporate it into a balanced diet. Here's a look at the advantages of juicing, along with some healthy juice recipes.
Juice as Part of a Balanced Diet
Juice shouldn’t replace meals. Devotees believe a juice cleanse is a healthy alternative to meals, sometimes for two to three days in a row. But most experts agree that it’s not good for you. Consider juice a complement to your diet, not a replacement for actual food.
Key Considerations
- Protein Intake: One downside of juice cleanses is not ingesting enough protein. While kale, spinach, and other veggies offer modest amounts, nothing matches a diet filled with lean proteins like chicken, fish, eggs, and cheese, among others.
- Fiber Loss: When you grind a solid fruit or vegetable into a liquid juice, you’re stripping it of insoluble fiber. It’s a valuable nutrient that aids in digestion and helps you feel satisfied. Again: Juice is a beverage, not a food.
- Toxins: There’s a misconception that a juice cleanse helps flush out toxins and waste in your system. Actually, your body does this cleansing on its very own-no juicing required. “If there are any bad things floating around in your body, your liver and kidneys work really well at excreting them,” says Natalie Rizzo, R.D. of Nutrition à la Natalie in New York City. Maintain a well-rounded, healthy diet and your body will operate as designed.
The Advantages of Juicing
Downing blended juice as part of a healthy eating M.O. is way healthier than chugging from the carton. When you stick with fresh-squeezed juices that aren’t packaged, you can avoid a bunch of added sugar.
Health Benefits
- Rich in Antioxidants: Juice is filled with vitamins A, C, and E, which act as antioxidants. These substances counteract pesky molecules in our bodies known as free radicals that can do cell damage. An overabundance of free radicals has been linked to heart disease and cancer.
- Easy Way to Get Veggies: Juicing may be the fastest and easiest way to get in nutrients from the vegetables you’d rather skip at dinner, such as kales, celeries, and spinaches. If you have a juice with a meal or otherwise, make sure you supplement with fiber to make up for what’s lost in the juicing process if you don’t leave the peel on.
- Hydration:A lot of people forget to drink enough water in the day. Juice at least ups your fluid intake-as opposed to dehydrating effects of coffee, soda, or alcohol.
- Beating Sugar Overload: You actually don’t need all those vitamins to a point. Just as when you take a vitamin pill, your body absorbs the necessary quantities and then you urinate the excess. Still, fresh juice helps you beat sugar overload.
- Alternative to Calorie-Heavy Drinks: Of course, juice is not free of sugar and calories, but compared to soda and other sweetened beverages like sports drinks, it has more nutrient density without added sugar and preservatives. Basically, if you have to choose between a vodka Coke and a screwdriver (vodka with orange juice), pick the latter. And make sure the juice is fresh, since carton juices can pack just as much sugar as the soda.
Maximizing Nutrients
You get more benefits if you leave the peel. A lot of the nutrients of fruits and vegetables live in the skin. Whenever possible, I suggest washing and juicing organic produce without peeling it. But if it isn’t organic, you should always peel. You’ll reduce your exposure to pesticides.
Produce to Juice with the Peel
You want the nutrients in the skin of apples, pears, bananas (believe it or not), beets, cucumber, peppers, eggplant, grapes, kiwis, watermelon, ginger, carrots, peaches, nectarines, and plums.
Read also: Kenyan Cranberry Juice and Health
Produce to Avoid Juicing with the Peel
Lemons and limes (“Some is good, but too much can upset the stomach,” says Sharp); cantaloupe (“The skin is one of the top sources of food-borne illness”); oranges and grapefruit (“Very bitter!”); mangos (“The skin can be eaten but causes adverse reactions in some people”); and pumpkin (“The skin is just too hard to juice”).
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Healthy Juice Recipes
Here are some tasty and healthy juice recipes to try at home:
Kale-Pineapple Juice
Kale is packed with antioxidants vitamins A and C; pineapple is also high in manganese, which helps your body regulate calcium absorption, bone formation, and metabolism.
What to blend:
- 6 large kale leaves
- 1/2 large cucumber, unpeeled
- 1/2 bunch cilantro
- 1/2 cup pineapple, cubed
- 1 medium apple, unpeeled
Strawberry-Lime Juice
Like kale, spinach is rich in vitamins A and C. Strawberries, lime, and apple add even more vitamin C, making this a real immunity-booster. Last, apples, kale, spinach, and strawberries are high in potassium, which helps to prevent fatigue and maintains healthy blood pressure.
Read also: Cosmeceutical Potential of Ethiopian Fungi
What to blend:
- 8 large kale leaves
- 2 cups spinach
- 12 strawberries
- 1 lime, peeled
- 2 Granny Smith medium-large apples, unpeeled
- 6 mint stems
Spinach Apple Juice
Spinach is filled with vitamins A and C; lemons have lots of C; apples contain C and potassium; and the ginger can help calm an upset stomach.
What to blend:
- 1 bunch of spinach
- 2 Yellow Delicious apples, unpeeled
- 1 lemon, peeled
- 2 oranges, peeled
- 1 chunk of ginger, unpeeled
- 6 stems fresh mint
Karela Juice: A North Indian Beverage
Karela juice, or bitter melon juice, is a popular North Indian beverage with several potential health benefits, including improved skin health and blood sugar regulation. Given that it’s made from bitter melon, it can be an acquired taste.
What is Karela Juice?
Karela juice is made from a fruit called bitter melon or Momordica charantia. It takes its name from translations of “bitter melon” in several Indian languages, like Gujarati and Nepali. The fruit has distinctly rough, bumpy skin and can generally be found in two common varieties:
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- Chinese bitter melon: This variety grows to nearly eight inches and is pale green in color. Its skin has smooth, wart-like bumps.
- Indian bitter melon: This variety is smaller at nearly four inches with pointed ends, spiked skin, and a dark green hue.
Both have white flesh on the inside that grows more bitter as the fruit ripens. Either variety can be used to make karela juice.
Nutritional Information
Karela juice is packed with several important nutrients. For instance, blending one cup (93 grams) of raw bitter melon with 1/2 cup (118 ml) of filtered water will deliver the following micronutrients:
| Nutrient | Amount | % DV |
|---|---|---|
| Folate | 17% | |
| Zinc | 7% | |
| Potassium | 6% | |
| Iron | 2% | |
| Vitamin C | 87% (RDI) |
Potential Benefits of Karela Juice
Karela juice has long been touted for its various uses and incorporated into many non-Western medicinal practices, such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese medicine.
- May help reduce blood sugar levels: A 2017 study suggests that karela juice may benefit people with type 2 diabetes by lowering blood sugar levels.
- May promote skin health: Karela juice is a rich source of antioxidants, including vitamin C and provitamin A, both of which are important for healthy skin and wound healing.
- May aide in weight loss: A 2022 study in mice found that bitter melon, when consumed for 40 days, could help positively alter metabolism levels, particularly in those on a high fat diet. However, further research in humans is still needed to understand the full effects on the metabolism.
How to Make Karela Juice at Home
Ingredients:
- One bitter melon
- Water or other juice
- Lemon juice, salt, or honey (optional)
Directions:
- Wash the bitter melon under cold water.
- Place it on a cutting board and slice off each end (there’s no need to peel it).
- Cut the melon crosswise and lengthwise. You should now have four pieces.
- Scoop out the seeds from each piece using a spoon and discard them.
- Place the remaining outer green flesh flat-side down on the cutting board. Slice these into medium-sized pieces.
- Add water to the blender to equal about one part water to two parts bitter melon. You can adjust these proportions to your taste, and you may replace water with another type of juice, if desired.
- Add the pieces of bitter melon to the blender. You may also add a few drops of lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon (5 ml) of honey or salt for taste.
- Blend until smooth.
- Pour over a wire mesh strainer to filter out chunks of fruit. Press a wooden spoon over the solids to strain out as much juice as possible.
- Serve immediately or chill.
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