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There are many benefits to juicing, especially if you prepare them yourself:

1. If drank fresh, the juice is full of live enzymes, which is helpful the body.

2. Unlike coming out from a packet, the juice is fresh and not pasteurized. Pasteurization many have its conveniences but it has resulted in nutritionally dead foods. During pasteurization, high heat is used and this destroys the vital nutrients within the juice.

3. You consume more vegetables by drinking than by eating. As you probably have experienced, it’s not always possible to eat as many vegetables as you would like. Drinking fresh vegetable juice helps take care of this problem.

4. Digestion and assimilation of the vegetable nutrients is much easier. Your body is in fact, like a juicer. When you eat a celery, your body will digest the celery by extracting the juice to get the nutrition. The fiber is eliminated via the colon and bowel movements. However, if you juice, you have already extracted the juice for the body thus making it easier for your assimilation. Nevertheless, it’s still important to eat whole vegetables and fruits because you need some amount of fiber as well.

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There are many advantages to eating fruit and vegetables raw. Water-soluble vitamins (such as vitamin C) are destroyed by heating, so there will be less vitamin C in a cooked carrot than in a similar raw carrot.

But for some nutrients, cooking (and juicing) is more nutritious, because it makes the nutrients more easily assimilated. Cooking and juicing breaks down tough fibres and allows the digestive juices to work more effectively on the vegetable. This is particularly important for someone who is elderly, ill or who has impaired digestion.

For example, research has shown that we absorb approximately 3-4% of carotenoids from raw carrots and 15-20% from cooked carrots. Carotenoids are plant pigments that give yellow, orange and red fruit and vegetables their colour. Carotenoids are powerful antioxidants, so have a role in helping us fight old age and cancer.

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