The Juicing Benefits Provided By Fruits And Vegetables

There are a wealth of reasons why you should be drinking fruit and vegetable juices, ranging from receiving your daily recommended requirements of nutrients to improved health and physical well-being. They supply an easily assimilated source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and other essentials nutrients from bioflavonoids to phytochemicals.

The great thing about juicing is that these required essential nutrients can be readily absorbed by the walls of the small intestine and into the bloodstream where they can begin to do the most good all in a relatively short span of time.

This is possible because the fibrous part of the fruit or vegetable has been broken down, the juice extracted and the fiber removed. What we are left with contains all the nutrients you need including the enzymes needed for absorption. The fiber can be gotten from whole grains or just from fruits and vegetables you eat whole without juicing. This will lead to improved health, a better quality of life, and more energy.

When foods are juiced and not cooked or processed using heat, they are better able to retain their vitamins and minerals. The body can now also make better use of them faster because it doesn't have to break them down. It also has the added value of more energy available for you, especially if the juice is taken on an empty stomach.

Another juicing benefit is in the realm of weight maintenance and weight reduction. Juicing can help in the area of maintaining you optimum weight. They are very low in calories and are satisfying. Just substituting one meal a day with a fruit and vegetable juice can reduce your cravings for those fattening junk food snacks. With proper eating and an exercise routine, you can lose weight with juicing because you won't be taking in more calories than you burn off.

Juices have the added benefit of keeping you hydrated. When it's difficult to drink the amount of water necessary to stay hydrated, juices can make it a pleasant experience with the added side effect of providing needed vitamins and minerals. Fruits such as melons and grapes and vegetables like cucumbers and celery have high water content. When these are used in your juices you not only receive the water you need, but also vitamin C, B vitamins, calcium, iron, and magnesium to name a few.

An important nutrient that our body needs are the antioxidant compounds. These antioxidants help protect the body from free radicals. These free radicals are basically electrons that are given off, when atoms, which compose the food, are broken down into the basic building blocks of life to nourish the body. These free radicals full of energy from being released from their orbits, then bounce around inside the cells doing damage.

Picture it as if you took one of those high bouncing rubber balls and then bounced it hard on the floor of your living room. As it bounced around the room, it would do some damage, especially to fragile items like china, glassware, figurines and the like.

This is important as that damage wears out the cells, even destroying them, and as we grow older those cells are not replaced as readily, if at all, which leads to faster wearing out of our bodies.