Juicing: 5 Myths You Need to Ignore Starting Right Now!

Juicing: 5 Myths You Need to Ignore Starting Right Now!

Most of the negative hype surrounding juicing is purely false, while some juicing myths do contain some science, they often distort the important facts to make juicing sound evil and life ending.

Much of these falsehoods are a direct result of criticism aimed at “guru juicers” who claim their juicing protocols can cure everything from cancer to paralysis, if you stick to whatever expensive program or baseless hype they’re trying to sell you.

Regardless what you choose to believe, juicing is anything but bad for you. Nor do you have to go on a 30-day juice fast in order to get maximum benefit to your health. You can juice to your heart’s content, as long as you use the right produce and buy a juicer that offers the benefits you’re looking for.

Here’s 5 juicing myths you can start to ignore immediately:

Myth 1: Juicing isn’t the best way to consume healthy fruits and veggies.

There’s some truth to this, although detractors of juicing often distort this reality to serve their own agenda. The fact is, the juice extracted from fruits and vegetables doesn’t have the full amount of vitamins and minerals the food it originated from does.

However, here are some fast facts to consider:

• Very few people actually get the 8 – 10 servings of fruits and vegetables recommended by various health organizations worldwide.

• Most people cook their vegetables rather than eat them raw, thus removing vital enzymes that help our body absorb the various vitamins and minerals they contain.

• Essential nutrients like vitamin C, pantothenic acid, thiamine, and other B vitamins are diminished or destroyed when subjected to the heat from cooking.

So, unless you’re eating all your veggies and fruits raw, and consuming the daily recommended intake of each, refusing to juice just doesn’t make any sense. And, while it’s true that juicing leaves certain amounts of healthful nutrients in the pulp, if you’re not getting enough and refusing to juice, it’s no different than walking 10 blocks to the hospital with a broken leg when you live right next door to a bus station!

Myth 2: Juicing removes all the fiber.

This one is more fiction than fact, in most cases. However, there are some caveats to keep in mind, mainly referring to how you juice your fruits and veggies. However, regardless of what equipment you juice with, fiber will be left in the pulp (which most people end up discarding).

It’s important to always keep in mind that you’re not obligated, or even encouraged to throw the pulp out, and can add it back to a variety of dishes including soups, smoothies, desserts, and anything else you care to experiment with.

If you’re really worried about getting the most fiber possible in your juice, consider that masticating juicers leave much more pulp in the juice than centrifugal juicers, or juice made using a simple blender. They are more expensive, but definitely considered the best way to get the most vitamin and mineral content, particularly with the most nutrient dense of all vegetables; the mighty salad greens.

Myth 3: Juice is full of unhealthy sugars.

Yes, depending on what you juice you could be setting yourself up for diabetes and other sugar-related ailments by drinking too much juice. However, very few in the nutrition space recommend drinking concentrated fruit juices of any kind. And, starchy non-green vegetables like potatoes and squash certainly aren’t on anyone’s favorite list of things to juice.

That said, if you’re mostly focusing on nutrient dense greens like celery, spinach, collard greens, cucumbers, cabbage, broccoli, kale and many others, you’d have to juice several pounds of these foods to tip the glycemic scale into dangerous territory.

Mix a few berries, an apple, or citrus fruit in with your favorite juices every day, if you like. Just follow the 80/20 rule: 80 percent low carb greens, and 20 percent low-sugar fruit choices and you won’t have to worry about overdoing it on the sugar.

Myth 4: Juicing is just a silly fad that will be replaced by something else tomorrow.

Some day people will be calling smartphones a fad, too. That is, after something else replaces it that lets us talk telepathically to each other from halfway across the world! Everything new is called a fad until it becomes firmly established in the public eye.

While the act of juicing fruits and vegetables to make it easier to give our bodies the nutrition it requires is really anything but a fad, there are trends like juice fasting that could be considered a “fad diet”, and one that isn’t considered healthy by most experts.

Drinking a healthful glass of juice you make fresh yourself every day is just plain smart, when combined with enough protein to sustain the building blocks of life. Juicing is something many of us will be doing for the rest of our lives, and the generations that follow us will do the same until a better way to get highly bio-available nutrition surfaces.

Myth 5: Juice isn’t filling enough to be a practical diet choice.

If you’re one of the misinformed who feel they need to go on a juice fast to make up for all the poor dietary choices you’ve made previously throughout the years, then this myth will be very true to you. That is, when juice is all you consume and you don’t eat any solid protein sources or drink additional water throughout the day to stay hydrated.

When fresh, mostly green juices are added to complement the solid foods in your diet rather than replace them, you should feel fuller than you did before you started consuming them.

Juicing also aids all digestive processes and helps the body detoxify, meaning you might notice your appetite increasing because your health improves and metabolic processes increase as vitality increases.

Takeaway

In short, there are nothing but benefits that come from juicing with the right kinds of foods – as long as you remember to juice lots of leafy greens and avoid sugary/starchy varieties of either.

The best way to get around the myths associated with juicing is to buy a quality juicer of your own. Soon after you start getting more of the vitamins and minerals they offer, the sooner you’ll start seeing improvements to your health.

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