Taking Stock of “Juicing”

My favorite yoga teacher likes to use "juice" as a verb, as in, "I try to juice every day." When I did a Google search for "juicing," something like 1.4 million citations came up, so I guess it’s not that great an extension to say, "I juice" and "They are juicing." Anyway…the yoga teacher, Pat, has lots of useful health tips she shares, and she’s been pushing juicing for a while, so I tried one of her recipes a couple months back. (I purchased a juicer a few years back, but didn’t use it much till recently.)

The recipe is: a bunch of kale (or spinach or chard, or something else real leafy green), four or five celery stalks (or cucumber), a piece of fresh ginger, half an apple, half a lemon. You put them through the juicer and, wow,  you have quite a wake-me-up in the two-plus cups of juice. Pat recommends drinking it first thing in the morning, but I usually can’t manage it till late morning. That ginger and lemon give it a real pop, and you can almost feel instant energy as you sip it down.

I can’t prove anything about the benefits, but I feel as if I have more energy, and I also feel as if it dampens my appetite some. It certainly seems more relevant as the U.S. government encourages us to eat as much fruit and vegetables as we can every day. As I said, when I looked up "juicing," much of what I came across was speculative. One article pointed out that juicing likely contributes to health on several levels–via high dosages of phytogens (thought to be cancer-inhibiting component of certain vegetables and fruits), chlorophyl, enzymes, and a wide variety of nutrients.

But my guess is that we’ll be hearing more about juicing. According to the article I mentioned in the previous paragraph, raw juice (the real vegetable-based juiced, as opposed to the sweetened fruit juices in so-called juice bars that are fairly widespread) is appearing in certain restaurants in San Diego and Seattle, so the trend will likely move west to east.

The challenge of fresh juice is keeping it fresh. It is best consumed immediately after being produced, and generally loses its punch as it is stored or pasteurized or shipped. I’ll keep an eye out for studies and such on this subject. We absolutely want to be up on what’s trendy.