The Juice on Juicing

I LOVE JUICING! It is the fastest way to literally FLOOD your body with vital nutrients. Be careful that you’re not flooding your body with sugar though (as you would if you’re buying juices from juice bars).

Drinking a ‘fruit juice’ from one of these places, could mean the equivalent sugar from say 6 oranges, 5 apples, 1 beetroot. That’s A LOT. The sugars in fruit are designed to be eaten AS fruit, the fibre helping slow down the process and not overload your poor old liver with fructose!

So, the juice I have 90% of the time is GREEN, chock full of chlorophyll which has the same make-up as human blood except blood has iron in the middle and chlorophyll has magnesium. It is the fastest way to get the body going in the morning, (I venture faster than the fastest espresso!) because it goes straight into the blood stream, starting I the mouth (through the porous mucosal tissue) and then from the stomach. Sure, you need to EAT greens too, but when you juice them, you can juice LOADS more than you’d ever eat, and it’s a super way to get the best out of some veggies that are harder for some people to eat- such as kale.

If you don’t have a juicer, don’t worry, I can show you the cheapest way to juice on the planet!

But here’s a couple of notes on juicers:

1)     Centrifugal juicers (like the Breville Juice Fountain) are not a bad starting point but the centrifugal juicers don’t break down the cell wall fully and A LOT of goodness is sent away with the pulp. They are also next to useless with green leafy veggies.

2)     Cold press juicers are good, they are a bit $$ and a bit slow, but essentially, they crush the goodness out of the plant. I have one but I don’t use it because I find the pulp is too wet, which makes me wonder how many nutrients I’m not getting. You also have to put hard veggies through to keep it moving and I mostly ONLY have greens.

3)     A juicing bag (sometimes called a nut mylk bag) made from tulle (from the fabric shop or you can buy them ready made). Use a good high speed blender such as an Optimum or Vitamix which will break down the cell wall, add a cup of water and fill with your greens. Strain them through the bag, wringing the bag well and you’ll get a nice dry pulp.

If I’m training hard or have a special occasion, I’ll make other than green juice for different times of the day.  Here are some ideas:

Green Means Go Juice!

First thing in the am, this baby will flush out your cells with goodness, enrich your blood and get you ready to go go go! I would drink about 1 litre of this and I would keep a litre in the fridge for the next day.Your’re looking for a total of about 1.5kg of greens but you’ll work it out based on how much you make as you experiment. Most important note here is VARIETY, don't juice the same thing every time.

• ·      Kale
• ·      Spinach
• ·      Lettuce
• ·      Bok choy
• ·      Coriander
• ·      Fennel tips
• ·      Parsley
• ·      Mint
• ·      Dill
• ·      Celery
• ·      Edible weeds!
• ·      Ginger
• ·      Turmeric
• ·      Cucumber
• ·      Lemon (your worm far or compost won’t like the pulp with citrus I it so add at the end)

·      You may want to add an apple to sweeten this up the first few times.

Purple Monster

A great tonic before a big night out (and after), beetroot is great for your liver!

• ·      2 Beetroot
• ·      1 little apple
• ·      ½ Carrot
• ·      Ginger
• ·      Lemon

Cheeky Tart

Small amounts of this one will suffice, but I LOVE it after a big ride with some ice cold water. You’ll feel it hydrating you instantly and it’s so refreshing on a hot day!

• ·      1 whole grapefruit
• ·      1 peeled grapefruit
• ·      1 peeled orange
• ·      1 whole orange
• ·      1 whole lemon
• ·      1 peeled lemon
• ·      ginger

·      You could add some fresh herbs to this if you like.

Please, where possible MAKE SURE YOUR PRODUCE IS ORGANIC or at the very least, reliably spray free. With the quantities I juice in, I sure as hell don't want to be exposed to all those chemicals in a concentrated form. I grow heaps of veggies, it's not that hard, I totally recommend it!

The juice bag method takes max 15 minutes, but you can make 2-3 days in advance and keep in a sealed jar in the fridge. Yeah, sure, in an ideal world, we’d juice every day, and of course, it’s not as good on day 3 as on day one, but do you have time to juice every day? if you do, good for you! Remember our mantra at Raw Ambition: Do what you can do, and what you WILL do. Don’t raise the bar so high you give up on it.