Juicing fruits and vegetables at home has become popular.  It helps people

get the maximum benefit from their produce in a delicious way. Juicing involves placing fruits and vegetables into a specialized machine that purees and separates the food into a juice and fiber. 

What are the benefits of juicing fruits and vegetables at home?

Most of us are aware that eating fruits and vegetables is important.  It decreases our waist size and lowers our risk for heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.  Despite this, 70% of Americans eat less than the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommended amount of five or more servings of fruits and/or vegetables daily. Here is where juicing can help:

• Juicing is a fun and delicious way to increase fruits and vegetables in your diet.
• Research shows that juicing fruits and vegetables significantly reduces the amount of pesticide residue that would otherwise be eaten. This is because the peel, where pesticides are found, becomes separated from the juice and discarded.
• Homemade juice includes the pulp, which is often discarded in the juices that you buy at the store. This pulp contains healthy fiber as well as minerals and vitamins.
• Drinking juiced vegetables such as beets has been shown to lower blood pressure.
• Some people have found juicing to be an effective way to lose weight by using juiced fruits and vegetables to help replace calorie rich foods at mealtime.
• Commercial juice is pasteurized (heated to high temperatures) to kill harmful bacteria. Unfortunately, this process also decreases some of the health-promoting compounds of the food. Juice made from raw vegetables retains these healthy properties.

What are the drawbacks of juicing?

• As raw juice isn’t pasteurized, it is prone to spoil quickly. It is best to drink the juice soon after it is prepared.
• Juicing mixes air into the fruit and vegetables, which can destroy some of the cancer fighting polyphenols that would be preserved if the food was eaten whole.
• Juicing is more expensive than eating the fruits and vegetables whole. Juicers range from between $40.00 to more than $1000.00.
• Juicing removes some of the healthy fiber that is found in fruits and vegetables. However, some juicers have a pulp filter that can be removed to increase the amount of fiber in the juice, or fiber can be added back into the juice with supplements like psyllium, guar gum, or ground flax seed.