Five Things: Juicing

With The Wellness Hub’s Tanya Ellison – 

The Beautiful Benefits
Juices are easily digested and absorbed. It’s much easier to drink a juice than chew your way through large amounts of fibrous raw vegetables. They’re easy on your intestines – packed with living enzymes to assist the digestive process, meaning that your gut, liver and pancreas don’t have to work too hard to provide you with vital nutrients. This conserves body energy, so you don’t feel heavy or weighed down after drinking. It is also believed that you can absorb up to 90-odd per cent of their nutritional value with juices providing a concentrated supply of vital nutrients.

Juices are unique because they allow the gut to receive very concentrated amounts of phyto-nutrients that could not be obtained by eating a normal amount of raw vegetables and fruits. With many diets these days high in processed foods, tea, coffee and alcohol, a build up of acids and metabolic waste products in the body can cause a lot of inflammation. This can be known as an acidic state of the body, which can be reduced by drinking raw juices. Raw juices can also stimulate the function of the bowels, liver and kidneys increasing the breakdown and elimination of toxic chemicals and waste products from the body.

To Cleanse Or Not To Cleanse
I love juice cleanses as long as you are doing it for the right reason – which is to give your body a huge nutrient-rich influx of goodness but for no longer than two days. I’m not one for doing a juice cleanse if the motivator for doing so is to lose weight or for some ‘quick fix’. In my opinion that’s not really a great way to lovingly taking care of ourselves because the reason for consuming such an abundance of nourishment is being done out of fear.

Our cleanses do include our cold-pressed juices but they’re more focused on creating healthy eating patterns and really learning to incorporate an abundance of whole foods daily.

Having said that, juice-only cleanses do have their place. They really do! And I’m actually doing one over the Easter break but only for two days to give my body an extra boost while I have the ability to rest and meditate more than usual.

Daily Dose
I’m a huge fan of having at least one cold-pressed juice each day. Our cold-press machine extracts the highest levels of vitamins, minerals and enzymes from the produce. This results in minimum oxidation of the juice, which means that your juices stay fresher, better tasting and more nutritious for longer (up to three days).

You can freeze juice if you’re making a heap of it at the beginning of the week to get you through until you can next make more. Freeze as soon as you press so the maximum amount of nutrients are preserved, and be careful not to fill whatever you are storing your juice in too much as liquid expands when it freezes.

Team Juice
Juices over smoothies … They are both great at supercharging your nutrient intake, I believe. They use different methods (juicing – extracting juice from fruits and vegetables, and smoothies – blending whole fruits and vegetables together) and there is quite the debate for and against both but I’m all about going with what your body is telling you. There are days where I need more than just a cold-pressed juice so I make a smoothie using one of our bottles as the liquid base for it. That way I get the consistency of a smoothie but an extra hit of goodness from our cold-pressed juice.

Home Practice
Everyone (I think!) should have a juicer in their kitchen. I think it’s one of the best investments you can ever make for your health. There are several types available, which of course vary in their abilities, quality and price. I’d recommend these:

• Centrifugal Juicer
This type of juicer chops the produce into small pieces and then throws them against a spinning bowl that separates the fibre from the juice. They’re easy to clean and relatively inexpensive. On the contrary, they can be noisy, have a shorter life span and the juice isn’t completely extracted leaving a lot of waste.

• Grinder-Strainer/ Masticator Juicer
This type of juicer grinds the produce into very small particles, and presses or mashes them through a screen, which separates the juice from the fibre. This type of juice has a longer lifespan due to its high quality machine parts, is quite versatile with the ability to make nut and seed spreads/butters, dairy free

A great rejuvenating juice, which will give you a boost to begin the day and leave you feeling invigorated is carrot, apple and ginger. This is actually the recipe that Ben, my partner and co-director of The Wellness Hub, began making for me nearly eight years ago as an introduction to freshly pressed juices.
It’s really simple, and very delicious. Not too daunting for someone new to juicing yet still providing you with great nutrients.

Use equal portions of carrot and Granny Smith apple, plus 1cm of fresh ginger root. You can reduce the amount of ginger root if its zing is too much for you but at least have 1/2 cm.

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Thank you so much, Tanya!

Tanya is one half of The Wellness Hub, a cold-pressed juice and wellness company based in Auckland. If you’ve tried one of their juices (I LOVE Green Glow) you’ll know those bottles pack a hefty punch of goodness and not one jot of preservatives or additives. And perfect to follow a juicy yoga class!

(So, tell me, do you juice? Are you excited that you can freeze it? I am, because I’m all for less cleaning.)

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Connect here: http://www.thewellnesshub.co.nz

Tanya highly recommends this company for a juice-only cleanse: http://greenleaforganics.co.nz

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© The Yoga Connection 2015