The FAST Hurom Slow Juicer

JUICING!

Juicing is awesome.  Why juice?  And what's the difference between green juices and green smoothies?  Fruits and veggies are detoxifiers, remember?  The main difference, here, is fiber and concentration.  When we eat a piece of fruit, we must macerate the fruit in the chewing process to break down the fiber so the juice can be accessed.  As you and I both know, we're not the most thorough of chewers, and often swallow chunks of food figuring our digestive juices will take care of the rest.  When we do this, we're not separating the juice from the fiber before it hit our digestive system, therefore causing our digestive system to waste energy breaking down food instead of repairing our cells/bodies.  Therefore, only a small amount of concentrated juice actually hits our system.  Also, juicing allows you to consume a larger amount of fruits/veggies in a more concentrated form.  Instead of eating a whole head of romaine lettuce, you can juice it and only have to consume a 1/2 cup of liquid.  See the difference?

Don't get me wrong, fiber is good for you, and hopefully you are getting a good amount of it in other areas of your diet throughout the day.  Fiber acts as a bottle brush to our intestines, cleaning them of the plaque build-up they've acquired over the years of eating highly refined foods.  Fiber also keeps our metabolism high and working, and sustains hunger.  So, make sure to still eat high amounts of fiber in other aspects of your daily diet...just not in your juicing regiment :-)

When you juice raw fruits and vegetables, you deliver a highly concentrated amount of raw enzymes, vitamins, fatty acids, chlorophyll, etc. straight to your blood stream.  Think of it as liquid medicine.  The key to juicing is RAW.  Pasteurized bottled juices you buy at the store are almost void of all the goodness they started with.  The pasteurization process heats the juice to a high temperature in hopes of killing bacterias that cause fast spoilage so to extend the shelf life of their product.  That high temperature not only kills bacteria, but also a vast amount of the good stuff you WANT in juice.  Buy a juicer, and make your own high quality raw juices!  Pasteurized juices are crap.

I love juicing; it has almost taken the place of my morning smoothie.  I will make smoothies every now and then if I feel my diet has been lacking in fiber lately, which is rare now that I'm a veggie.  For Christmas (early Christmas present, that is), my folks bought me the new big bad Hurom Slow Juicer.  It is awesome, and I use it daily!  It's a single auger slow juicer that's actually really fast!  Slow juicing?  Why slow?  Slow juicing is thought to be best because it oxidizes and heats the least during the juicing process, and oxidation/heat can destroy the vital nutrients.  No matter what, slow juicing or fast centrifugal juicing....both are way better for you than pasteurized juices.

My favorite daily green juice I consume consistently, always a minimum of wake through lunch, is called Green Lemonade.  I got this particular recipe from Natalia Rose's Detox Diet book, but all raw foodies drink some sort of version of this green juice.  It's great!

• One head romaine lettuce
• 3 or 4 stalks of kale
  
• 2 lemons peeled
  
• 2 large apples (more or less depending on your personal sweetness level)
  
• 1 small cucumber
• chunk of ginger (optional)

*side note*  Some juicers require peeling lemons and oranges, and some do not.  The Hurom juicer does not require you to peel, but know that if you leave the peel on, the oils from the rind can be very intense.