6 Tips For Becoming A Juicing Pro
JAMES COLQUHOUN
Juicing shouldn’t replace the intake of beautiful vegetables and fruits in your diet but when you are on a mission to feel your best and get as much nutrition as possible, it’s a heck of a way to add in more of the good stuff!
We are lovers of at-home juicing. Store-bought juices are becoming more popular but they are often pasteurized, leaving them with little nutrition. When you juice at home you know exactly what’s in it, where your ingredients came from, you can control the flavor, and it’s a whole lot more affordable.
Follow Our 6 Tips To Juice Like A Pro
1. Choose The Right Juicer For You
With so many juicers on the market, it sure is hard to decide which is the best for you! For starting, the best juicer is the one you already have. Though if you are on the hunt for a new juicer, we prefer cold press juicers over centrifugal
Centrifugal juicers are most common and are cheaper when comparing to a cold press juicer. The benefits of a cold press juicer include high yield of juice, enzymes last longer due to the masticating of the cold press method, minimal juice separation, quieter, and some models can even do nut milk. Read more about centrifugal vs cold press in our juicer buying guide here.
2. Know Your Juicing Goals
Most of us choose to juice because we are short on time and often the thought of getting extra vegetables and fruits into our diet on top of all of the vegetables we are already including doesn't seem achievable, so it’s important to maximize our juicing time to suit our health goals.
Juicing is a process which extracts water and nutrients from produce and discards the indigestible fiber. Without all the fiber, your digestive system doesn’t have to work as hard to break down the food and absorb the nutrients. In fact, it makes the nutrients more readily available to the body in much larger quantities than if you were to eat the fruits and vegetables whole. When this fiber is removed it’s important to know that your body will absorb the liquid faster, so aim to keep your juices high in vegetables and only use a little fruit to naturally sweeten. Prefer smoothies to keep the fiber? Read more about juices vs smoothies here.
3. Choosing The Best Produce
For maximum results from your juicing (and the best tasting!), try to use organic, fresh produce, aiming to stock up at your local farmers' market. A good tip is to buy more of the ingredients in bulk that have a higher yield. This will help you get more bang for your buck when you’re juicing up a storm!
Higher yielding produce includes cucumbers, carrots, beets, tomatoes, melon, citrus, carrots, ginger, greens, pineapple, fennel, pears and apples.
4. Fresh Is Best
The longer you leave your juice, and the more exposed to oxygen it becomes, the fewer nutrients will be available for your body to absorb, so aim to drink your juice immediately or soon after you make it. Using a cold press juicer will help to retain as many nutrients and enzymes as possible. Read more about why in our juicer buying guide.
5. Love Your Juicer
You’re investing in a juicer, therefore your health, so you want to make your juicer last for as long as possible! Give it some love, aiming to wash immediately after use. It’s a given that your juicer will get stained (looking at you, turmeric!), gunk will build in tiny crevices and it might even end up scratched. Washing it straight after use will help prevent these things from happening, and make sure you use that little brush that comes with it!
6. Re-Use Your Pulp!
Juicing is incredible for our health, but when you’re doing it regularly, you’re going to create a lot of pulp! Instead of tossing it out you get creative with all that leftover fiber and nutrition. Use it in homemade burger patties, add it to muffins when baking, DIY face-scrub or use it in sauces. You can find more uses in here for ways to use your leftover juice pulp.
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James Colquhoun is the filmmaker behind Food Matters, Hungry For Change, and Transcendence Seasons 1 & 2 and founder of Food Matters and FMTV. Along with Laurentine ten Bosch, James founded the Food Matters community following the release of the 2008 documentary, giving people the tools (films, books, articles, and guided programs) to take charge of their own health. From here, FMTV was born! It was designed as a place where you can access vital information by watching all of your favorite inspiring documentaries, expert interviews, & recipe videos in one place, and in early 2020 FMTV found it's new home on Gaia.