The health benefits of juicing vegetables and fruits go far and deep. The sheer level of nutrition you achieve from drinking fresh fruit and vegetables is unparalleled. So lets take a look at why this is the case.
Enzymes, minerals and especially antioxidants bind tightly to the tough insoluble fibers in fruits and vegetables. When we eat fruits and vegetables our teeth are only able to release a very small amount of the mentioned nutrients from the insoluble fibers. This means that many of the nutrients just pass right through us undigested.
Now, when we put vegetables and fruits through a juice extractor, the insoluble fibers get broken down extensively, freeing a large percentage of the enzymes, minerals and antioxidants. And this is one of the fundamental health benefits of juicing. These insoluble fibers are also discarded by juice extractors and therefore don’t make it into the juice; so the digestive system has almost nothing to do!
A fresh vegetable or fruit juice is essentially a highly concentrated cocktail of nutrients that digest almost instantly. All of the nutrients absorb from the juice into our bloodstream within 15 minutes of drinking it, compared to an hour or more if we eat whole fruits and vegetables. This is why the nutrients in fresh juices are the most bio-available of all.
Bio-availability refers to the percentage of nutrients that we absorb from any one food source. The higher the bio-availability the more nutrients that are absorbed. Vitamin, mineral and other supplements have low bioavailability compared to whole vegetables and fruits and especially to fresh juices. Whole vegetables and fruits and their juices come with other plant chemicals that are naturally present in fresh produce that help digest the key nutrients. While supplements can still be a very useful addition to our diets, they can never replace whole foods!
It is also important to state that the health benefits of juicing fresh vegetables and fruits should never replace eating whole vegetables and fruits. Even if the fresh juice contains a lot more antioxidants, minerals and enzymes that need next to zero digesting. Insoluble fibers are vital to our well-being and should be an essential part of our daily diet: they keep our colon functioning properly, keep us regular, remove toxic substances from the body and greatly reduce our risk of developing colon cancer.
Simply put, drinking fresh vegetables and fruit juices is one of the best way to achieve an abundance of nutrients and an excellent addition to any diet. No where else will find such a richness and diversity of nutrients in such a highly bio-available format, all combined in a tasty drink.
