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There are a lot of good reasons to choose locally grown, organic produce when possible.
However, organic food is admittedly more expensive. If you want to maximize the good you
do to your body while minimizing the cost,
you could choose to purchase organic produce for the fruits and vegetables which tend to
have the most pesticides in the United States.
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In Seattle, Washington or in trendy Southern California, on
any given evening you can find men and women, still dressed in their business attire,
sitting at a bar, unwinding after a long day's work. They place their orders, with choices
ranging from straight carrot juice to combinations of all sorts of fruits and vegetables:
wheat grass, kale, dandelion, cucumber, cabbage, celery, beet, lettuce, parsley, mango,
papaya, pineapple, watermelon, cranberry, grapefruit, and apple. Juicing, meet the baby
boomers. Welcome to yuppiedome. Say hello to the mainstream. "Can I get you a papaya,
mango cooler?"
Once confined to the fringes, to earthy
smelling health food stores, to wooden floored co-ops, to the infrequent vegetarian
restaurant, juicing and fresh juice have finally stepped out into the open. Rather than
having to search for freshly juiced fruit and vegetables in specialty stores, today in San
Diego, California, you can have fresh carrot juice delivered to your door every morning.
And in many grocery stores across the country, you can now buy pints, quarts, and half
gallons of fresh squeezed orange juice or recently pulped carrot juice.
The trend couldn't come at a better time.
Recently, the National Cancer Institute began a campaign to get people to do one simple
thing - EAT MORE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. Specifically, the recommendation was to eat five
servings of vegetables and three servings of fruit a day, and their reasoning was simple:
a diet high in fruits and vegetables will prevent or cure a wide range of ailments.
Breast cancer,
cancer of the colon, esophagus, stomach, lungs, ovaries, and rectum - pick an ailment
these days, it seems, and researchers somewhere are searching for chemicals in plants that
will prevent them, or offer a cure. These plant chemicals, known as phytochemicals, are
the cutting edge of nutritional research because they hold the keys to preventing some of
our most deadly diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as some of our most
common, like asthma, arthritis, and allergies.
These are the questions that led
researchers at the National Cancer Institute, at the Department of Agriculture, and
elsewhere, to begin looking for specific substances in foods that could be providing
protection against disease. In the process, they have found quite a few.
A tomato, along with vitamin C, vitamin A,
and several minerals, also has 10,000 other chemicals in it, most of which researchers are
trying to isolate, identify, and study.
The phytochemicals that researchers have
uncovered are changing the way we think about food, especially fruits and vegetables. For
example, broccoli contains a substance that may prevent, even cure, breast cancer. Citrus
fruits have substances that make it easier for your body to remove carcinogens, thus
decreasing the chance of contracting cancer. Grapes contain a phytochemical that appears
to protect each cells' DNA from damage. Similarly, a number of green vegetables contain
phytochemicals that appear to offer protection against cancer causing substances. The list
goes on and on: bok choy, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots,
collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens, rutabaga, turnip greens, red beets, peppers,
garlic, onions, leeks, and chives are but a few of the vegetables that appear to have
cancer preventing phytochemicals.
The
problem, though, is that most of us don't eat enough fruits and vegetables to reap the
benefits they offer. For example, although the National Cancer Institute recommends five
servings of vegetables and three of fruits each day, the truth is this: The average
American eats only 1 1/2 servings of vegetables and, on average, no fruit on any given
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Maybe the business men and women who frequent trendy
juice bars, the company that delivers carrot juice, and the grocery
stores that are beginning to carry fresh fruits and vegetable juices
are on to something. Possibly, juicing could provide the answer
to fixing our fruit and vegetable deficient diets.
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Really, it
isn't a new idea. If you study the traditions of most juicing programs, you discover that
the vegetables being studied at various facilities around the country are often the same
vegetables that have been juiced for years. Collard greens, kale, kohlrabi, mustard
greens, rutabaga, peppers, carrots, and cabbage are not only vegetables being studied for
their phytochemical content, they are also the vegetables that are most commonly juiced.
Not only are researchers looking into the cancer prevention capabilities of citrus fruits,
grapes, and apples, these are also the fruits that we most often associate with fruit
juicing.
All of this
raises the question, what else is there in the wisdom of juice therapy that, up until now,
have traditional nutritional research overlooked or ignored? For example, juice programs
often tout the value of adding chlorophyll to your daily diet. Chlorophyll, a substance
found exclusively in plants, has a structure similar to hemoglobin, the substance in blood
that is responsible for transporting oxygen. During the 1940s, researchers found that
consuming chlorophyll enhances the body's ability to produce hemoglobin, thus improving
the efficiency of oxygen transport. Since the 1940s, however, there has been little
research into the value of chlorophyll.
Or, for another example, consider fresh
juice's ability to deliver another important group of nutrients, know as enzymes. Enzymes
are your body's work force. Acting as catalysts in hundreds of thousands of chemical
reactions that take place throughout the body, enzymes are essential for digestion and
absorption of food, for conversion of food stuffs into body tissue, and for the production
of energy at the cellular level. In fact, enzymes are critical for most of the metabolic
activities taking place in your body every second of every day.
 Fresh
juices are a tremendous source of enzymes. In fact, the "freshness" of juice is
one of their key features, because enzymes are destroyed by heat. When you eat cooked
foods, whether its meal, grains, fruits, or vegetables, if the food is cooked at
temperatures above 114 degrees, the enzymes have been destroyed by the heat. Since fruits
and vegetables are juiced raw, the enzymes are still viable when you drink the juice.
Coincidentally, many of the phytochemicals
that nutritional researchers are focusing their attention on are either enzymes, or more
often, they are substances that help build or activate enzymes that play essential roles
in protecting cells from damage.
In addition, fruit and vegetable juices are
good sources of the traditional nutrients. Citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, etc.)
provide healthy portions of vitamin C. Carrot juice contains large quantities of vitamin
A, in the form of beta carotene. A number of green juices are a good source of vitamin E.
Fruit juices are a good source of essential minerals like iron, copper, potassium, sodium,
iodine, and magnesium, which are bound by the plant in a form that is most easily
assimilated during digestion.
Plus, since juicing removes the
indigestible fiber, these nutrients are available to the body in much larger quantities
than if the piece of fruit or vegetable was eaten whole. For example, because many of the
nutrients are trapped in the fiber, when you eat a raw carrot, you are only able to
assimilate about 1% of the available beta carotene. When a carrot is juiced, removing the
fiber, nearly 100% of the beta carotene can be assimilated.
Finally, fruits and vegetables provide one
more substance that is absolutely essential for good health - water. More than 65% of most
of the cells in the human body are made of water, and in some tissues, for example the
brain, the cells can be made up of as much as 80% water. Water is absolutely essential for
good health, yet most people don't consume enough water each day. Plus, many of the fluids
we do drink, coffee, tea, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and artificially flavored
drinks each contain substances that require extra water for your body to eliminate. Fruit
and vegetable juices are free of these unneeded substances and are full of pure, clean
water.
The remaining question is how far will the
trend go? So far, the National Cancer Institutes attempts to promote the health benefits
for fruits and vegetables have only affected a relatively small segment of society. |
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As more and more is written about the long term health benefits of fruits
and vegetables, as increasing numbers of people learn about the possibility
of preventing and curing cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and a host of other diseases by
making dietary changes, the fruit and vegetables trend and the popularity of juicing will
continue to grow. Who knows, maybe someday it
will be hard to find a seat during happy hour at your local juice bar.
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