Juicing is one of the most delicious, easy ways to add loads of fruits and vegetables to your diet. You can use homemade juices to help with weight-loss efforts and use up produce before it goes bad. You can use DIY green juices to detox and cleanse your system.
But what are the deeper health benefits of juicing vegetables? Are there any downsides?
What Is Juicing and How Do You Do It?
Most commonly, juicing is practiced for consuming larger servings of produce in a single sitting. This means you can consume three or four servings of produce in a single meal instead of trying to eat two salads every day.
Technically, there are several ways to juice, though they all result in the same thing: extracting juice from vegetables and fruits.
Juicing can be done via hand-squeezing, by using a small metal, glass or plastic manual juicing tool, with a blender, a machine called a juicer, or, on a larger scale, with a large industrial machine.
What Are the Biggest Scientific Benefits of Juicing?
There are loads of reasons to juice that range from improving heart health to losing weight or improving your skin. But the first, most basic health benefit of juicing is that juicing makes it easier for anyone to get more vegetable servings daily.
Two Medical Benefits of Juicing
There are two major medical benefits of juicing daily, along with others that affect energy, skin health, and others. Specifically, these benefits of vegetable juice in the morning come from consuming more vegetables high in potassium and antioxidants, all day long.
1. Antioxidants in Vegetables Lower Your Risk of Chronic Diseases
You’ve probably heard about antioxidants before. Tons of people taut their products as having these things.
But what are they, and what do they do?
Beta-carotene, phytonutrients, phenolic compounds, and lycopene are antioxidants that help your body battle against the effects of free radicals on your body.
These nasty things can mutate healthy cells into cancerous ones, as well as cause issues that make your body more prone to diseases like cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, and diabetes.
2. Potassium in Vegetables Improves Your Heart Health
When we think of potassium in natural sources, we usually pick that peel-able yellow fruit that monkeys like. But there are loads of veggies that have equal amounts of potassium, which helps our circulation systems, lowers the risk of damaged blood vessels, and can lower blood pressure and strain on the cardiovascular system.
Vegetables high in potassium include:
- Beet greens
- Lima beans
- Swiss chard
- Spinach
- Bok choy
- Button mushrooms
- Broccoli
- Artichoke
- Green peas
- Asparagus
- Fennel
- Summer squash
Benefits of Green Juice in the Morning
Green juice is one of the best ways to add some nutrients and satiety to your morning, without adding unhealthy sugars of cereals and donuts, while also helping your curb cravings.
Here’s why you want to go green in your juicing:
3. Juicing Veggies Can Help You Cut Calories and Pack Your Diet with Nutrients
One of the major benefits of green juice in the morning is that this stuff fills you up. You start out with a load of veggies and fruit all in one serving of delectable juice. This juice keeps you full for a while, but it also kick starts your day with energizing nutrients like Vitamin B.
4. Green Juice Can Help You Kick the Caffeine Habit
Since green juice is made primarily of vegetables, you’ll get that load of energy-boosting vitamins, like B-complex, which can help you kick the caffeine habit. It gives you the punch of energy and higher satiety than coffee does.
Also, if you drink your green juice first thing, on an empty stomach, your body can better use the nutrients since it doesn’t have to work as hard to digest the juiced vegetables and fruits as it does whole foods.
Vegetable Juice Benefits the Skin
If you struggle with skin conditions, like dry skin, eczema, or are facing those wrinkles in the mirror, vegetable juicing is your friend.
5. Vegetable Juice Can Re-Hydrate and Tighten Sagging Skin
If you’ve got flabby skin after weight-loss, or even natural aging, you’ll likely find that juicing will help tighten up that skin again. The nutrients given from that dense juice made at home provides your body with the collagen-building nutrients it needs. Vitamins A, C, E, K, and the B-complex all fight off the free radicals that cause your skin to break down and sag.
Plus, these nutrients give your skin a healthier, happier glow. For anyone who’s suffered from rashes, chronic sunburn, or dry skin, this is a huge deal.
What Are the Cons of Juicing?
There are three main negatives of juicing. If done properly, these negative effects can be controlled or avoided, and you don’t need to have issues with them.
Juicing Doesn’t Provide as Much Fiber as Eating the Produce Whole
One of the main nutrients we get from vegetables is fiber. If you juice primarily with a juicer, you lose most of the fiber content due to the liquids being extracted from the solids, which is where the fiber is.
Combat This Issue:
- Use a blender instead – leaving in the pulp.
- Reintroduce the pulp from the juicer into the juice before drinking.
Juicing Makes Fruits and Veggies Higher on the Glycemic Scale
When a vegetable or fruit is juiced, the natural result is the sugars of the plant are broken down before your body gets the chance to process them. This then means your body doesn’t have to work as hard to break the sugars down, and, therefore, you absorb more of the sugar in fruit juices than in the whole food.
An easy reminder:
The starchier the food, the higher the Glycemic Index.
Combat This Issue:
- Use low-glycemic fruits and vegetables only for juicing
- Make sure you only juice some of your produce and eat the rest whole
Juicing Is More Time-Consuming than Eating the Food Whole
If you’re wanting to get into juicing for convenience sake, unfortunately, you’re kind of out of luck. Juicing can be a fairly time-consuming process.
First, you have to prepare your work area and the vegetables and fruit before you even start.
Next, you have to do the juicing itself – which doesn’t take long.
But then, you have to do clean-up right away or your equipment becomes difficult to clean.
And you really shouldn’t juice ahead, as the freshness of ingredients is vital because the juice quickly becomes home to bacteria growth. That means you can’t cut down on time by juicing the whole weeks-worth on Sunday.
Combat This Issue:
- Find recipes ahead of time and plan properly for each day of the week you plan to juice
- Include shopping every couple of days and the clean-up time each juicing session
The Best Things About Juicing: Feeling Better and Being Healthier
The scientific benefits of juicing everyday are many, like helping your heart health, add energy to your day, and help with skin and lower your risk for certain chronic diseases. You feel better, you eat better, you even look better when you juice.
Juicing has five amazing key benefits of vegetable juice in the morning:
- Antioxidants in Vegetables Lower Your Risk of Chronic Diseases
- Potassium in Vegetables Improves Your Heart Health
- Juicing Veggies Can Help You Cut Calories and Pack Your Diet with Nutrients
- Green Juice Can Help You Kick the Caffeine Habit
- Vegetable Juice Can Re-Hydrate and Tighten Sagging Skin
Just make sure that you’re mixing your juicing habit with eating whole foods and adding in some supplements that have protein. Also, make sure you consume some of that pulp to up the fiber in your daily diet.
Have you been juicing vegetables? What benefits of juicing have you experienced so far?
Share with us in the comments below!
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