Juicing is a fantastic way to boost your antioxidant levels. Fruits and vegetables are loaded with minerals, enzymes, and vitamins to support your body’s natural healing abilities. Veggie juices work so well because they’re easy to absorb, they’re like an intravenous infusion of nutrients.

Antioxidants in juices feed your cells, bind up toxins like free radicals and carry them out of your system so they don’t damage your cells. Juicing liberates those nutrients from the hard cell walls, so that you get a powerhouse of nutrients flooding your body. It helps you get more of those cancer-fighting nutrients that you couldn’t possibly eat. So, juices are rich in those phytochemicals that get in there and fight cancer.

With juicing the fibre is removed from fruits and vegetables. This allows your digestive tract to more readily absorb nutrients into your bloodstream for uptake into your organs and cells.

The nutritional content of juice is highest immediately following juicing. As time passes, air and light degrade the nutrients and the juice loses some of its nutritional value. Ideally you should use the highest quality ingredients possible such as organic fruits and vegetables. You should also always serve and store juice in glass versus a plastic container. This avoids hazardous xenoestrogenic chemicals (chemicals that mimic estrogen) which can interact with the hormones in your body and cause damaging effects over time.

In order to keep sugar content low, it is best to keep sweeter fruits and vegetables to a minimum. For example, I do not add more than two apples or at the very most five carrots into a single serving of fresh juice. When juicing high sugar fruits and vegetables (i.e. beets and carrots), combine them with foods containing citric acid. Sources of citric acid such as lemon or lime reduce the glycaemic load.

The best juicer for juicing is a cold press masticating juicer. Masticating juicers more gently and slowly extract the juice and don’t generate as much heat during the juicing process. This helps to preserve as much of the nutrients as possible and minimise oxidation.

Dark Green Leafy Vegetables

Chlorophyll is one of the greatest life-giving components on the planet. This compound gives foods their green colour and is a major component of the photosynthetic process which converts the sun’s energy into chemical energy.

A major indicator of the health attributes of any plant-based food is the chlorophyll content. Foods rich in chlorophyll are deep green and are highly capable of building new blood cells and purifying the body from the toxic effects resulting from cancer and radiation.

Chlorophyll is also extraordinarily useful in wound healing, detoxification, intestinal regularity, and deodorisation of the body. Some of the best chlorophyll-rich dark greens you can include in your green juice are spinach, collard greens, parsley, and kale.

Get an Added Health Boost from Bitter Herbs

Bitter herbs are not popular in western society and are not regularly used. Although they may not have a pleasant flavour, their nutrient content and health benefits are outstanding. Bitter herbs boost digestive enzymes and improve liver and gallbladder function. Studies indicate that the bitter reflex improves the structure and capabilities of all digestive organs.

A saying which describes the healing potential of these herbs is “bitter is good for the liver.” They cleanse the blood, digestive system, urinary tract, and kidneys.

Bitter herbs include parsley, dandelion, burdock root, artichoke, ginger, turmeric, milk thistle, and goldenseal. Try to include one or more bitter herbs into your juicing regimen for optimal detoxification.

The Best Juicer to Use

My favourite masticating juicer is the Oscar Neo DA 1000 Cold Press Juicer.

This juicer was specially designed to extract as much juice as possible from your fruit and vegetables produce.

The Oscar Neo's horizontal style of juice extraction means that you can juice a wider variety of fruits and vegetables including the trickier fiborous green vegetables which have a tendency to block up normal juicers. The Oscar Neo is well known for being the best juicer when it comes to juicing wheatgrass, celery, leafy greens, aloe vera, pine needles and other medicinal herbs.

Masticating juicers such as this one also juices with very little heat being generated. When a juicer generates too much heat in the juicing process it oxidises the produce and diminishes its nutrient value more quickly.

Another benefit of the Oscar Neo DA 1000 Cold Press Juicer is that it’s quiet. This makes it the perfect juicer for making juice first thing in the morning…… without waking up anyone else in your home.

Get Creative With Your Juicing Combinations

Combine some low-glycaemic fruits, hydrating vegetables, dark greens, and bitter herbs for a powerful super green juice.

Aim to drink 250-500 mL of fresh juice daily. Some popular combinations include the following:

Lemon/Ginger:

1 lemon
1 apple
2 handfuls of baby spinach
1 handful of dandelion greens
1 handful of coriander
1 cucumber
3 cm of ginger root

Lime/Ginger:

1 apple
1 lime
2 handfuls of watercress
1 handful of kale
1 handful of parsley
2 stalks celery
3 cm of ginger root

Super Detox:

1 apple
2 carrots
1 lemon OR lime
2 stalks celery
1 cucumber
2 handfuls of spinach
1 handful coriander
3 cm of ginger root
3 cm of turmeric root

*Add raw garlic to your juices when possible

Some of the best juicing fruits and vegetables include:

Celery, raw garlic, ginger, beetroot, parsley, coriander, lemon, swiss chard, apples, carrots, watercress, turmeric, spinach, milk thistle, dandelion greens, cucumber, kale, kiwifruit and pears.

Let’s Get You Juicing