Is Juicing Healthy on a Raw Food Diet?

Juicing fruits and vegetables has become quite popular amongst both raw and cooked food health enthusiasts. Many see it as an easy and tasty way to increase their consumption of fresh produce and help cleanse the body.

You’ve probably even encountered “juice feasting,” in which people live on raw fruit and vegetable juices alone for days, even months at a time.

But is it necessary or even helpful to include juicing as part of your raw diet?

Juicing for Assimilation

Supporters of juicing often claim that it helps the body absorb and assimilate the nutrients from the foods. The juicer essentially “digests” the food for you.

Yes, juicing fruits and vegetables does make the nutrients in them more readily available to the body. However, this is unnecessary when you are *only* eating foods that we humans evolved to eat, i.e. whole, fresh, ripe, raw fruits, tender leafy greens, and nuts and seeds. We can digest these foods in their whole states without any trouble.

In addition, juiced foods have had the all-too-important fiber removed, which means that the nutrients from the food will enter the bloodstream much too quickly. Loss of fiber also means that you won’t feel as satiated as you would eating the food whole.

Juicing for Variety

Proponents also claim that juicing allows you to add more variety into your diet by juicing foods that would be difficult to eat in their whole state.

Variety is very important in a diet. By variety, I mean eating from the wide range of foods that humans have evolved eating. These are foods that can be eaten with relish in their whole state. I do not mean juicing otherwise inedible foods in order to gain their somehow superior nutrients.

Juicing for Green Consumption

Lastly, juice lovers believe that juicing allows people to eat enough greens during the day.

This is valid, but instead of juicing, I would advise you to blend your greens. You will retain all the fiber and nutrients from the whole food, but in an easier-to-digest form.

An excellent way to do this is to make green smoothies. Just take your favorite fruit smoothie and add greens to it. Be sure to taste as you go, otherwise the smoothie may turn out bitter or just too “green” for your liking.

My Experience

Personally, I have not juiced any foods in quite a while. The only fruit juice I like is orange juice and I never juice greens or vegetables because I find the taste horrible and the color completely unappealing.

And to be quite honest, I’m lazy. I’d rather eat a giant bowl of peaches or a few bunches of bananas and be done with it.

There was one winter in particular when I consumed orange juice pretty regularly. During this period, I experienced pretty strong cravings for cooked foods. I was getting plenty of calories, but I still never felt satisfied.

It finally dawned on me that it might be all the juicing, so I stopped. My cravings reduced substantially just like that. This makes perfect sense because, as I mentioned above, juicing removes fiber, which is necessary for satiation.

The Final Word

I do not recommend juicing foods that you would otherwise never eat whole. If these foods are unappetizing to you in their original state or hard to digest, this is a sign not to eat them at all!

Just because bitter foods like kale have higher levels of certain nutrients than other greens does not mean that they are nutritionally superior or even appropriate for human consumption. More is not always better in terms of nutrition.

With that said, I see no problem with occasional juicing of fruits and tender greens. If it is a practice that you enjoy, indulge every now and again! Just know that there is no need to juice. It does not offer any nutritional benefit and actually removes some important components from your food.

Last but not least, PLEASE don’t feel compelled to buy one of those huge, expensive juicing machines. A nice little electric juicer for around $30 will do just fine.

Go raw and be fit,

Swayze

P.S. There are some uber tasty and nutritious smoothie recipes in my recipe book Low Fat, Fruit Filled, High Fun Raw Recipes and you can easily add greens to any of them.  The “Bananas Foster Smoothie” would be particularly scrumptious with some romaine or bib lettuce.

You can purchase ‘em here:

www.fitonraw.com/low-fat-raw-vegan-favorites