Juicing-is it worth the fuss?

essexsi_2

Hi all,
I have started to juice vegetables every morning using an Equipe centrifugal juicer. I would like to get some extra vitamins and minerals in my diet. Usually its based around kale,spinach,celery,ginger,cuecumber and carrot. Now the juice is quite nice, but when I clean up there is an awful lot of pulp left and I can't help but think that all the fuss is just not worth it! Am I getting anything worthwhile, as I use a good few handfuls of spinach and kale and the amount of juice just seems meagre. But is it packed full of the good stuff?!?
Now I know that if I was serious I would get one of those fancy and expensive masticating juicer. I also do try and eat healthily as well and the juice was really just a top up.
It just seems I may as well save all the money I'm spending on the vegetables and get some vegetable juice in a carton and mix in some spirulina powder for example. How would this compare to the fresh juice?

Any thoughts or advice.

Cheers Si

Ted_Hutchinson

I think vegetables are good for you but I don't think it is necessarily true that raw is best and I really don't think juicing helps. One of the things eating veg provides is fibre . I also don't think having a highly concentrate fast source of nutrients is best.
If you eat veg as whole as possible then the nutrients will be available over a longer period. Vitamin c for example has a half life in the body of 30 minutes so you juice your veg and drink it and half of the Vitamin c content is in your bladder before you've cleaned up the mess from juicing. So I think you get more value for money consuming your veg steamed where necessary and eaten as whole as possible not juiced. I'd say soup would be better as when you blend that you don't have much waste but a chunky farmhouse soup made with home made bone stock would be more nutritious than a glass of juice IMO (haven't time to check for references)

essexsi_2

Thanks for taking the time to reply Ted.
So maybe worth saving the veg from the morning and having it as soup at lunch or dinner. I was led to believe that heating veg destroyed much of the vitamins etc. So are soups or casseroles the way to go?

Cheers for your input. Si

Ted_Hutchinson

essexsi wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to reply Ted.
So maybe worth saving the veg from the morning and having it as soup at lunch or dinner. I was led to believe that heating veg destroyed much of the vitamins etc. So are soups or casseroles the way to go?

Cheers for your input. Si

I was surprised as well when I found out that cooking actually preserved the nutrient value of some veg.
Effects of different cooking methods on nutritional and physicochemical characteristics of selected vegetables.

Effects of different cooking methods on antioxidant profile, antioxidant capacity, and physical characteristics of artichoke.These results suggest that some common cooking treatments can be used to enhance the nutritional value of vegetables, increasing bioaccessibility of health-promoting constituents.

I'm not against raw veg or juicing. (just found it wasn't worth the hassle) anything that encourages greater veggie consumption is probably a good thing. But a quick stir fry isn't going to ruin the vit/min content and if it's easy to eat and prepare then its fine to do that.
I like soups/stews because all the nutrients stay in the meal and don't get poured down the drain in the boiling water. Mind you it's also because I'm lazy and can quickly knock up a batch of soup and that's lunch sorted for the week.

essexsi_2

Very good of you to post the info and the links Ted. However I don't like artichokes!!!!! Certainly given me something to think about.
Have been looking around this forum and reading some interesting things about vitamins and minerals, especially vit D.

All the best Si