Open Magazine - Index

Open Magazine - magazine - Index

36 Open Magazine Summer 2008
By Christine Gingerich
Cover Story
your life !
Juice! Raw, living, freshly pressed
and full of an array of bioavailable
nutrients. Many of us have heard
about the health benefits of juicing but
few of us have really experienced the
value of this incredible therapy.
Juicing fruits and vegetables began in the 1920s, but as
a health therapy, it became popularized by Norman Walker,
considered by many to be the “father of juicing.” Walker lived
an incredibly healthy, disease-free and active life, right up until
his death at the age of 99. 1
Walker, and many others since, have dedicated years of
study and research into the health benefits of juicing. It really is
an incredible way to impact your health, especially
within today’s modern world of the standard
North American diet where people are consuming
far too many processed, packaged, and altered foods.
Combine this with our depleted soils and stressful living,
and you end up with many nutrient-deficient Canadians.
Most people feel that they are eliminating these
deficiencies by popping daily vitamins. However, some
nutritional supplements are in synthetic form and not
chemically balanced as they are in nature. The body
cannot easily absorb these
supplements and they
may actually cause
other problems
As explained
by Dr. Ben Kim,
“Anyone who
studies
biochemistry learns that vitamins do not exist as single
components that act on their own. Vitamins are made up of
several different components—enzymes, co-enzymes, and cofactors—that
must work together to produce their intended
biologic effects. Many synthetic vitamins deplete your body
of other nutrients and tax your kidneys before being excreted
through your urine.” 2
This is why juicing is such a wonderful
way of supplementing!
All of the nutrients that you absorb are from natural, whole
foods. Juicing offers a concentrated form of exact nutrients, as
they were designed, which means they are easily digested,
absorbed and utilized by the body.
Norman Walker, in Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices, 1970,
indicates that eating our fruits and vegetables results in three
to five hours of arduous digesting, which actually consumes
up to 50 per cent of the nutrients as fuel for the digesting
and assimilating process. When we consume fresh juices, the
nutrients are assimilated in 10 to15 minutes with minimal
digestion effort, leaving the nutrients to regenerate, rebuild
and repair.
No one is suggesting, however, that you should exclusively
juice, while eliminating your intake of whole fruits and
vegetables. When fresh fruits and vegetables are consumed,
the cellulose, or fibre, is also ingested. The body requires this
soluble and insoluble fibre to effectively brush the colon and
keep it clean. As well, this fibre is important for a host of
other physical benefits, from increasing
satiety, to assisting with weight
loss, normalizing blood sugar
levels and decreasing
the development of
disease.
Juicing is also
about ingesting raw, lifegiving
enzymes. Because we
consume predominantly cooked,
processed food in North America, we
are missing some of the living enzymes
necessary for optimal living. This may have
a detrimental effect on our health. Juicing
brings back these living elements to the
body. Juices that
you purchase
Photo by Robert Nolan