Juice is a great way to add fruits and vegetables to you and your family’s diet to give you healthy nutrients that can help fight disease. Since fresh juices are made from raw fruits and vegetables, all components remain intact, so they contain more nutrients than when cooked. Recent research has shown that a diet that includes regular citrus juice can help prevent strokes, while the phytochemicals abundant in fruits and vegetables help prevent cancer.

Fresh fruit and vegetable juices can be enjoyed by young and old and are ideal for those with small appetites and there are always plenty of recipes to please the whole family.

It is believed that a good variety of different fruit and vegetable juices is recommended: at least 2 glasses a day to maintain health and more to speed recovery after illness. With calorie controlled or diabetic diets, vegetable juices are preferred as they have a lower sugar content. The juice contains all the fruit and vegetables except the fiber which retains all the goodness. Vitamin C and other water-soluble vitamins are easily damaged by cooking, so juicing allows them to be easily digested and absorbed.

The body cannot make vitamin C or ascorbic acid, so it must be obtained from the diet. It is essential for collagen formation, body growth, tissue repair, and wound healing. It protects against infections and helps the absorption of iron in the body. Smokers and people who drink a lot of alcohol have trouble absorbing vitamin C. Antioxidants are abundant in fruits and vegetables and destroy harmful substances called free radicals that build up in the body.

Good sources of vitamin C are strawberries, oranges, melons, mango, kiwi, cabbage, asparagus, broccoli, bell peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, bananas, blackberries, and grapefruit.

Ideally, all juices should be homemade, as store-bought products can contain additives, sugar, and preservatives. They tend to be heat treated to lengthen shelf life, so avoid the ones that aren’t kept in the cold cabinet. This heat treatment can destroy nutrients reducing their health benefits.

Even when you make them fresh from your own juicer, it is recommended that you drink them right away, as nutrients are also lost when the juice sits for a long time.

There are some guidelines to follow to increase the benefits of juicing:

• buy organic produce when possible
• Wash products well
• The peel can be left apart from the bitter or inedible peel, like pineapple.
• Remove pips, especially apple pips, as they contain small traces of toxins.
• Remove carrot and rhubarb leaves as they are toxic.
• Eliminates potato eyes and toxic green dyes
• Puree soft fruits like papayas, bananas, and raspberries in a blender, then add them to juices.
• Use a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Vegetable juices can include beets, carrots, kale, turnip greens, spinach, and watercress and can be absolutely delicious. Garlic can be added to improve the flavor. A great purifying juice is watermelon with the skin intact. Otherwise, the ideal is to use local seasonal fruit to give variety. In summer they can be mixed with ice to make fruit ice creams and yogurt and milk can be added to make smoothies and increase children’s calcium intake.

There are many juice recipes available today and it is a great way to improve your health and provide your family with all the nutrients they need. If your child doesn’t like one type of juice, there are always many more. It’s a great way to use up leftover fruits and vegetables and use seasonal produce.