Is Juicing Your Fruits and Veggies Really Worth It?

A good number of people are joining the juicing trend, and so far, the trend isn’t showing any signs of letting up. A teeming number of devotees even believe it is a healthy alternative to meals. Some even go a step further — they say it’s the best way to eat fruits.

While there’s definitely a lot of clever fabrications about the benefits of juicing, the concept itself is not without great benefits. Just like every other thing you can think of, juicing has its merits as well as its downsides.

When you shove your solid fruits or vegetables down a blender — blending it into liquid juice — you’re stripping it of insoluble fiber. Just so you know, fiber is an immensely important nutrient that aids in digestion and gives you the feeling of satisfaction. Apart from missing out on the digestive benefits, with the fiber removed, the fructose contained in fruit extracts is absorbed more quickly by the body. That might sound like a benefit, but sudden spikes in blood sugar levels will instigate the pancreas to release insulin to bring it back down to a stable level. If this happens only a few times, you’re on the safe side. The problem occurs when this becomes the new normal, probably due to constant excessive intake of fresh juice. Over time, the “spiked – stabilized, stabilized – spiked cycle” can cause the organs responsible to wear out, indirectly increasing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Also, taking too much juice, specifically, as an alternative to meals, really isn’t good for you. This would mean you end up feeling filled, but missing out on your daily intake of other important nutrients.

With that said, is juicing worth it? Does it really pay to spend additional time grinding those apples and oranges into liquid?

First of all, eating fruits and vegetables is a great way to immensely enrich your body with vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys eating whole fruits. If you’re not really into eating whole fruits, juicing is a good way to ensure your body gets those important nutrients nonetheless.

In the same vein, some veggies we often diss — sometimes due to unpleasurable taste — are packed with a huge amount of nutrients. Juicing these veggies alongside other sweet-tasting fruits then becomes one of the easiest ways to ensure a steady intake of the nutrients they offer.

Gulping on juice from a plant-based diet is linked to a lower risk of heart disease as well as cancer. Similarly, different research conducted on juicing and the human immune system reveals some major benefits of juice made from fruits and veggies on the immune system.

Similarly, fresh juice is a much healthier and taste-quenching alternative to calorie-packed drinks. Though fresh juice from fruits and veggies isn’t without its own fair share of sugar and calories but compared to sweetened taste-quenching beverages, juice saves you the stress of ingesting processed sugar and unhealthy preservatives in drinks. When compared to soda and sports drinks, fresh juice has much more nutrient density and little or no trace of potentially destructive substances. After a workout or stressful activities that could get you tasty, eating whole fruits may not quench your taste but juicing them for liquid becomes probably the safest source of replenishing liquid after water.

Likewise, a lot of us are guilty of taking too little amount of water daily. Juice at the very least augments our daily fluid intake, helping us stay hydrated as opposed to the dehydrating effects of commercial beverages like soda, coffee, and alcoholic drinks.

Most of us eat a lot of fruits with the skin peeled off. While it definitely seems more hygienic, we end up missing out on the surprisingly immense amount of nutrients packed in the peels of these fruits and veggies. Some fruits don’t particularly have sweet-tasting peels, some could even be outrightly bitter. However, cutting them all up and juicing them together is the easiest way to get every inch of nutrient the entire fruit has to offer.

Lots of people are currently trying to lose weight and a number of them are increasingly turning to juice because it can be used as alternatives for unhealthy foods that were previously part of their diet.

So, is juicing worth it?  As long as you are doing it right and not gulping down on too much of it. While there are lots of misconceptions about juicing, some borne out of sheer ignorance and some out of pulp fiction, juicing offers a lot of benefits to loyal devotees of the trend. Luckily, with a blender or a juicer, just about anyone can join the trend. So, when next you’re about to grind those watermelons and strawberries and probably thinking whether juicing is really worth it — just go ahead anyway, because it is.