The Juicing Book: A Complete Guide to the Juicing of Fruits and Vegetables for Maximum Health - Couverture souple

Blauer, Stephen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 089529253X ISBN 13 : 9780895292537

Editeur : Avery, 1989

Synopsis

Book by Blauer Stephen

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Preface
The Elements of a Long and Healthy Life

Fresh juices are fantastic! As Nature’s own nutrient-packed thirst quenchers, cleansers, and tonics, they can’t be beat. Yet, as good as fresh-squeezed juices are, they are but one aspect of a healthy lifestyle. The greatest benefits of fresh juices are derived by combining them with a wholesome diet and a regular exercise program.

Most of us are born with the potential to live long, healthy, and happy lives. Why then do some of us fall short? There are at least three reasons.

The first reason is our belief system. We believe that as we age we become helpless and sickly—even though we see examples of youthful and energetic seniors all around us. It is important to believe in the examples of people whose health and longevity at advanced age seems remarkable. Their vitality is not an anomaly. It is our birthright.

The second reason we fall short of our potential is our lack of consistency. By not adhering to a lifelong regimen of wholesome diet and regular exercise, we do little to foster our own health and longevity. It is not what we eat or drink occasionally, but rather what we consume on a daily basis, that determines our level of health. That’s why it is important to choose the freshest, most wholesome foods; those that are locally grown are best. It is equally important to find fresh, clean, spring water with which to drink and cook. And we must try to be active each day.

Our bodies thrive on moderate exercise, sunshine, and fresh air. That’s why we should try to go outdoors daily and, whenever possible, go to places where we can marvel at the wonders of Nature. We can walk, run, play tennis or basketball, swim, mountain climb, or ski. Or we can try gardening, chopping wood, building, or other active and enjoyable hobbies.

The third reason we may fall short of our potential is that many of us hold an unfocused picture of the quality of our lives. For as the quality of life becomes unfocused, often so does life itself. Therefore, being conscious of the quality of our life is essential if we wish it to improve. A life filled with quality in work, thoughts, companions, and activities can strengthen our natural immunity to germs, viruses, and negative hereditary influences.

Lessons on longevity and happiness can be found by studying the lives of modern-day peoples who live in traditional cultures. Perhaps the most prolific examples of long life are found among the Hunzakut of Pakistan, the Vilcabamban of Ecuador, and the Abhasian of the Soviet Union. As individual groups, these societies enjoy a greater degree of immunity from illnesses of almost every type. They live closer to Nature in the foods they eat, in their work, and in their play habits. Conversely, Western society has strayed from Nature and somewhat from the intuitive ability to choose the foods, work, and habits that will bring its members true health, happiness, and long life.

The return to wholesome foods and fresh juices can be your first step on the journey to a more healthy and happy life. I hope this book will help you to take that first step.

Foreword
Variety is Key

I am delighted with the publication of The Juicing Book.

During my more than fifty-eight years in the healing art as a clinical nutritionist, I have seen hundreds of dietary fads come and go. Juices were not among them. Why? Because juices are not a fad. Juices are here to stay.

The fresh juices of fruits and vegetables are a food—an important, nutrient-rich, health-enhancing food. I’ve recommended fresh juice to my patients from my earliest days, and I still recommend juices, for very good reasons.

In my professional experience, I consider nutritional deficiencies to be among the most common and least acknowledged contributors to the development of disease and illness in our time, because so many people are not using balanced food programs centered around whole, pure, and natural foods, as they should.

Fresh fruit and vegetable juices contain a broad array of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and various co-factors that both enhance and complement individual nutrients, so your body gets the most good from them. Because juices are assimilated with very little effort on the part of the digestive system, their nutrients have a health-building impact at a relatively low cost in energy. What this means is that juices are excellent for you whether your health and energy are at a low ebb right now or whether you’ve never felt better in your life.

This is not to say that adding more fresh juices to your diet will compensate for poor day-to-day nutrition habits. Rather, by adding fresh juices to a balanced food regimen, you will help accelerate and enhance the process of restoring nutrients to chemically-starved tissues. It is on these very tissues that disease and illness thrive. In terms of prevention, therefore, the importance of juice cannot be overstressed.

I believe in fresh juices. I have always considered fresh juices to be a necessary part of my Health and Harmony Food Regimen, a nutrition program that has helped thousands of my patients get well and stay well.

Perhaps because I live in the heart of California’s citrus belt, people expect me to recommend orange juice over everything else. Let me share an important secret with you.

Variety is one of the most important, yet least practiced, food laws of Nature. We need to eat a variety of proteins, starches, fruits, vegetables, and juices to prevent disease and build health. Our bodies need a broad array of nutrients to defend against disease and to sustain well-being. We need a variety of juices!

My advice to you is this: enjoy reading this book, make practical use of this book, and use the many different varieties of fresh juices featured in this book to supplement and enhance your diet. You’ll be glad you did.

Dr. Bernard Jensen

Escondido, California

Introduction
Juice Fact and Fiction

Americans are well acquainted with juices. We begin our days with orange juice, or grapefruit juice, or maybe a taste of prune juice. Both canned and bottled juices are popular at snack time and meal time. Quality-conscious consumers have created a market for commercially produced, 100-percent-natural juices. To round out their juice lines, manufacturers now offer several all-natural fruit juice blends from concentrate.

With all this attention focused on juices, why write a book on them? And, for that matter, why read one? Because drinking fresh juices is an excellent health habit that cannot be reinforced enough. Fresh juice is more than an excellent source of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, purified water, proteins, carbohydrates, and chlorophyll. Because it is in liquid form, fresh juice supplies nutrition that is not wasted to fuel its own digestion as it is with whole fruits, vegetables, and grasses. As a result, the body can quickly and easily make maximum use of all the nutrition that fresh juice offers.

Most of us already know that fresh juices are far more healthful than soft drinks, coffee, tea, and alcoholic beverages. But consumers may not be aware that many canned, bottled, and cartoned juices are not what they appear to be.

Did you know, for example, that Beech-Nut Nutrition Corp. was recently indicted on charges of selling millions of bottles of flavored sugar-water labeled 100-percent apple juice between 1978 and 1983? Executives of the food company allege they did not know about the phony contents of thousands of imported barrels marked “apple concentrate.”

Or did you know that “Florida-Squeezed” juices may be made from fruit treated with banned pesticides? To save money, some juice manufacturers import cheap citrus fruit to the United States, where it is then “Florida-Squeezed.” This advertising fib might be forgivable if it ended there. It does not. Consumers should be aware that imported produce—and juices made from imported produce—may carry traces of banned pesticides. Several countries that export fruits and vegetables, including Mexico, continue to use pesticides such as dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), though the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has banned the use of DDT and several other such carcinogenic pesticides on U.S.-grown produce. (Read more about pesticides in Chapter 7.)

Other little-known juice facts center on the new “juicey” type “natural” juices. Did you know, for instance, that these are made from fruit concentrates and not whole fruit juices? Though many concentrates are of the highest quality—if not the highest nutritional value—they are only as good as the liquids with which they are reconstituted. Enter industrial water. Consumers who prefer to drink spring water, or who are sensitive to the many chemical resins found in municipally supplied water, might want to know that both imported and domestic fruit concentrates are reconstituted with filtered tap or well water from factory property in industrially zoned areas.

Finally, to this ample list of caveats, the caution on additives is attached. By now, it is common knowledge that food manufacturers routinely add artificial colors and flavors, sugar, corn syrup, salt, and chemical preservatives to their products—and juices are no different.

But are commercially manufactured juices really the bad guys of nutrition? Granted, the results of drinking less-than-fresh juices are not fatal. But by advertising their products as “natural” or “health” beverages, juice manufacturers often mislead consumers who seek to build vitality with alternatives to chemical-filled, carbonated soft drinks. At the very least it is ironic that many consumers don’t realize many packaged juices are as nutritionally vapid as the soft drinks they would replace!

For those seeking more healthful alternatives, this book advocates drinking pure, fresh juices made at home with an electric juice extractor. The key word here is “fresh.” For, as we recommend several high-quality bottled juices in this book (see Chapter 8), fresh juices remain the superior choice in both taste and nutrition. Just one pint of fresh carrot juice, for example, contains more than 20,000 international units (IUs) of pro-vitamin A in its purest and most natural form. That is four times the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin A. (Read more about RDAs in Chapter 1.)

Because of their nutritional excellence, juices may prevent diet-related illnesses. A growing body of research reveals that juice may even cure a variety of illnesses and conditions, as well. For instance, cabbage juice contains vitamin U, which has been shown to heal peptic ulcers; while fresh apple and prune juices are excellent laxatives. Green juices contain enzymes that foster weight loss by stimulating the metabolic system. Alfalfa sprout juice supplies vitamin K, a blood coagulant important to the health of pregnant women. Watermelon and cucumber juices have a safe, natural diuretic action. Studies done by the National Academy of Sciences conclude that the pro-vitamin A content of orange, yellow, and green vegetable juices may help prevent some forms of cancer.

While the list of juice therapies continues to grow, it’s only half the story. Granted, eliminating disease is a worthy goal, but should it be our only aim? Or, rather, should we strive with equal resolve to achieve and maintain optimal healthfulness? If we choose the latter course, we cannot ignore the effects of daily nutrition on long-term health. And although fresh juice provides excellent nutrition, it is not a “magic bullet.” The maximum long-term health benefits will be achieved by incorporating fresh juices into a nutritious and balanced diet.

Unfortunately, our diets often sabotage our best health interests. Most people living in the Western world today eat too few fresh fruits and vegetables and too many overcooked, processed foods that contain excess fat and protein. To be truly healthy in this age of fast foods, environmental pollutants, and stress, many nutritionists now recommend that we get two to five times the RDA for several key vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, many of these nutritionists prescribe the high-tech solution: synthetic multi-vitamin/mineral pills. Why is this the wrong approach?

Most vitamin/mineral pills are synthesized from coal tar or other petroleum derivatives. For this reason, while they may be chemically identical to vitamins found in foods or fresh juices, they may have only a fraction of the biological activity of vitamins found in live foods. Synthetic vitamins are not absorbed as well as those found naturally in foods. One laboratory study revealed that, when mixed with non-nutritive synthetic food bases, synthetic vitamins are unable to sustain human life. They are missing “something” that scientists have not been able to synthesize in their labs. That something includes live enzymes. It is called the “life force.”

Compared with synthetic vitamins, naturally derived vitamins from fresh fruits, vegetables, sprouts, grasses, and their juices were designed by Nature to supply high-quality nutrition capable of sustaining human life. One pint of fresh vegetable juice, for example, supplies the same live vitamins, minerals, and enzymes found in two large vegetable salads. The human body assimilates these nutrients in minutes. If a large vegetable salad is added to this juice intake daily, along with healthy portions of lightly-cooked vegetables and plenty of whole grains, it will exceed the RDA for several key vitamins and minerals by as much as 500 percent. (We will discuss these key nutrients in Chapter 1.)

Beyond their healthfulness, fresh juices are simple to prepare. And many people agree that their uniform consistency makes them even more delicious than the fresh fruits or vegetables from which they are made. To prove it, I have included dozens of my favorite fresh juice recipes in Chapter 7. Once you try them, you’ll see why juicing is such a simple good habit to develop. The conclusions on the nutritional benefits of fresh juice deserve a place with none other than the greatest health discoveries this century. You can prove this to yourself over the next few weeks. Read this book from cover to cover, purchase a juicer (the better models are reviewed in Chapter 3), and drink one or two glasses of fresh juice daily. In only a few days you will begin to look and feel better, all the time gaining valuable confidence in your ability to reach optimal health and well-being. Then you’ll know firsthand the difference between juice fact and fiction.

1

Juice and Nutrition

Though advances in the natural and technological sciences have catapulted humanity forward, the science of nutrition remains at a comparative standstill. Perhaps not regarded as “high-tech” research, the study of nutrition is nonetheless equally capable of unlocking mysteries that hold men hostage to ignorance.

At present, relatively little documented research exists on the nature and importance of food enzymes or the role of digestion in disease prevention. The United States Food and Nutrition Board’s Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) are sorely in need of revision, health advocates say. More mainstream rese...

Biographie de l'auteur :

Stephen Blauer attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After graduation, he traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, observing the differences in cultures as they relate to health. Upon returning to the United States, Stephen joined the staff of the famed Hippocrates Health Institute of Boston, working under its founder, Ann Wigmore. He served as director of the institute for two years. Since leaving the institute, Stephen has continued to travel, observe, and learn. He has written five books in the field of holistic health and has coauthored the bestseller The Macrobiotic Way. Stephen and his family currently reside in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Avery
• Date d'édition: 1989
• ISBN 10: 089529253X
• ISBN 13: 9780895292537
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 176