This blog explores the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of total health with some children's stories thrown in to break the intensity.

Archive for the ‘Juicing’ Category

Juice Lady on Why to Juice


Juicing is a powerful tool that can accelerate your progress towards optimal health, and Cherie Calbom, aka “The Juice Lady,” is an expert on this subject.

Virtually every health authority, even conventional doctors, recommend 6-8 servings of vegetables and fruits per day but very few of us actually get that. I’ve found juicing to be a simple and easy way to virtually guarantee that you’ll reach your daily target for vegetables. Juicing also allows you to add a wider variety of vegetables to your diet that you might not normally enjoy eating whole, and makes it easier for your body to absorb all those wonderful nutrients.

Cherie Calbom earned her nickname “The Juice Lady” back in 1991, when she worked for the Juiceman company.  But her passion about juicing began way before that, as she healed herself from a multitude of disabling health problems through juicing in her late 20′s.

Using Juice to Detox

Juicing is one way to detox your system and is in fact one of the reasons why some people start juicing in the first place. This detox effect no doubt helped Cherie recover from many of her ailments, which included chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, allergies and candidiasis.

Wheatgrass is particularly helpful in this respect. It provides nutrients that accelerate and facilitate detoxification, especially in your liver where most of your body’s detox occurs.

Depending on how toxic you are, you may experience detox reactions and actually feel worse, before you get better. In Cherie’s experience, most people need three months of regular juicing before significant improvement becomes apparent. Interestingly, three months is also the average lifespan of red blood cells. So in three months you should have renewed most all of your red blood cells, which would help explain the reason for this typical time frame.Common cleansing reactions include diarrhea, flu-like symptoms and headaches.

Once you get over that initial hurdle, however, the benefits can be nothing short of miraculous for many, such as:

Sleeping better
Improved memory, mental energy and cognition
Improved focus
Reduction in aches, pains, and headaches
Eliminating cravings
“This is one exciting thing that I’ve heard from so many people: in a week or two, their pain subsides,” Cherie says.  “I had one young woman who had plantar fasciitis; suffered with it for years. The only thing they had been able to do for her was a special shoe. She got started juicing, lost 18 lbs, and got rid of her plantar fasciitis.”

Detoxing Fat Stores Typically Requires Expert Help

It’s worth noting, however, that about 100-times more of the toxins are stored in your fat than in your blood. And although juicing may help you shed excess fat, which would reduce toxic stores, it will not in and of itself draw it out of your fat. More aggressive intervention is required for that, and likely needs to be done through a qualified physician.

For example, I recently met a surgical oncologist who uses high dose niacin to cause lipolysis (breakdown of fat), in conjunction with exercise to raise your core body temperature, followed by 40 minutes in an infrared sauna. Doing this process daily for a month causes your body to excrete stored toxins from your fat.

However, this is not a detox cure you can dabble with at home. First of all, 20 to 25 percent of people cannot tolerate niacin. It causes massive flushing. Second, although it’s a vitamin, at the doses required for detox, it’s treated as a drug. He starts his patients out at about 100 mg and progresses all the way up to 5,000 mg, which is a massive dose. You’ll be beet red from the niacin flush! So intense detoxes like these have to be used with extreme caution under a physician’s care.

Weight Loss—An Added Boon of Juicing

Cherie’s book, The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet, is in large part oriented towards weight loss. Obesity is one of the primary health challenges here in the US. Technically, more than a third of American adults are obese, and nearly 80 percent of Americans are overweight! However, she didn’t set out to recommend juicing specifically as a weight loss aid. This, she found out through countless clients and readers, was a side effect of juicing.

She decided to look into it further, and her investigation eventually led to the creation of her book.

“There were two studies completed in 2009– last year, I believe it was one at Baylor College of Medicine and the other at UC Davis using Vegetable Juicing and for Weight Loss. which They found that the people who included one to two glasses of vegetable juice a day lost four times the weight of the non-juice drinkers. I thought that was rather interesting and significant…

In one of the studies, the majority of the people in it had metabolic syndrome; insulin resistance. I found that very interesting because that’s a tougher condition to work with and still see weight loss results… I really got excited and that’s when I put this book together, giving people the whole program of how to integrate vegetable juicing into their lifestyle with menu plans, shopping list, and recipes.. Since that time, I’ve heard from people all across the country who have said they’ve given this diet a try, and they’re losing weight—many times where nothing was working for them before.”

Juicing Alone is Not the Sole Answer for Weight Loss, You Must also Alter Your Food Choices

However, juicing in and of itself likely will not solve your weight problem. Your overall diet is just as important, if not more so, and her book prescribes a low-glycemic diet together with juicing to achieve maximum results. She essentially combined the diabetic diet with vegetable juicing.

According to Cherie, this combination has been the most effective for people with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, or diabetes. She also recommends including coconut oil, as it too can help with weight loss. Cherie recommends using about one teaspoon to one tablespoon a day for this purpose.

Other Reasons for Using Coconut Oil

“I was absolutely shocked when I first started reading about coconut oil because I, like so many people, have been told that it’s a saturated fat, and to avoid all tropical oils,” Cherie says. “When I got awakened to the truth, I wanted to know more and, eventually, wrote the book, The Coconut Diet.

I discovered that coconut oil, even though it is saturatued, is a very healthful oil. is marvelous. The body prefers to burn it rather than store it in fat cells. It is rich in lauric, acid, caprylic, and caproic fatty acids, which are short- to medium-chained fatty acids that work on breaking down the outer wall of yeast cells. There was a study done not too long ago in Nigeria at University College Hospital. They used coconut oil for treating people even with Candida albicans, which is one of the toughest yeasts to destroy, and it worked even on that yeast.”

However, when you first start out on coconut oil, you may feel ill.  Why is that?

“The yeasts are dying off,” Cherie explains. “So just cut back on the amount of coconut oil you’re taking and then work back up.”

You could do as much as one to three tablespoons of coconut oil a day as a therapeutic dose to kill excessive yeast, although you will need to work your way up to that amount, and It is probably safer to start with one teaspoon.. Your level of tolerance depends on how well your liver functions as it is a fat. But it may be too many calories for some people, as three tablespoons would give you about 400 calories just from coconut oil.

Additionally, many individuals who chose to be a vegetarian or vegan will have dangerously low cholesterol levels and coconut oil can be very effectively used to increase cholesterol levels.  If you already have high cholesterol levels though it is not dangerous unless you take very large quantities.

You always want to make sure you’re using organic, virgin, unprocessed coconut oil, and avoid the refined kind as the processing eliminates many of the healthful fatty acids. Cherie and I also agree on the recommendation to use it for all your cooking needs as well, in lieu of other cooking oils.

“It has a medium smoke point of about 350 degrees,” Cherie explains. “Most of the sautéing that we do in our home kitchens aren’t over 350 degrees. I always say if you see it smoking, pull it off the burner right away because that’s the point where your oil is starting to break down and will start to oxidize. It’s a durable oil because it’s saturated. The very fact that it’s saturated makes it more durable than your polyunsaturates, which will oxidize much more easily. I don’t recommend polyunsaturated oils at all.”

For high-heat, such as baking around 400 degrees or so, you can use almond oil instead.

How Much Juice Do You Need?

Cherie’s program calls for juicing twice a day. If you’re diabetic, hypoglycemic or insulin resistant, you’ll want to focus on dark greens. Cherie also recommends diluting all your juices with cucumbers instead of water, to gain the extra nutrients. This way you’ll also avoid any and all potential toxins, such as fluoride, in your tap water.

If you’re juicing for weight loss, Cherie recommends a minimum of 16 ounces of juice a day. Ideally, you’ll want to strive for a full quart of juice, split up between the morning and the afternoon.

When juicing that much, I recommend juicing it all at once, to save time. Then use a FoodSaver, or put it in a glass jar filled to the very top so there is no oxygen, and put it in the fridge immediately. You’re probably going to retain well over 90 percent of the nutritional value if you do it in that way and consume it within 12 hours.

Juicing to Perk You Up, or Calm You Down

Besides juicing for detox and weight loss, other reasons to juice include boosting your energy, or alternatively, calming you down at the end of the evening.

“I talked with one young woman who had a two-year old and was coming home after work, tired but still lots to do, and would have a glass of wine. She said, “I was ready to just lay on the couch and go to sleep.” Now she comes home and makes juice for the whole family instead, and she’s energized to make a healthy meal.

So it’s excellent to make your juice for the next day and your evening cocktail all at once. Have a glass of juice while you’re making dinner to perk you right back up,” Cherie says.

“So many people say they come home just dead tired and starved. Maybe they didn’t eat for a good portion of their day. Maybe they skipped lunch or ate something really fast at their desk. Instead of grabbing a bag of chips or some awful snack when you run in the door and you’re hungry, go right for your juicer and make a glass of juice. It’s going to be energizing. It’s going to send a signal to your body that you’re not as hungry now. You’re fed. You’ve got all these nutrients now. So hopefully, then you’re not going to eat as much at dinner.”

You can also make a small amount of calming juice to drink just before you go to bed. Celery and romaine lettuce are very calming and will help you sleep.

Nutritional Typing and Food Sensitivities

Nutritional typing, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a concept that really seeks to divide people in three different types:

Protein types benefit from large amounts of protein and fat, and small amounts of carbs
Carbohydrate type need high amounts of vegetable carbs, and lower amounts of proteins and fat
Mixed type need a little bit of everything and can tolerate most foods
Your genetics and biochemistry determines which group you fit in. Paradoxically, even the healthiest of foods, such as dark green leafy vegetables, are not as well-suited for everyone.

Dark green leafy vegetables are very high in potassium, and for protein types, potassium-rich foods tend to drive your biochemistry in the wrong direction. Hence, care must be taken to select the most appropriate foods, even when we’re talking about something as healthful as vegetables.

A giant clue is to check how different foods make you feel. Listening to your body is one of the KEY elements of nutritional typing. If something makes you feel worse (sleepy, gassy, or lethargic, for example), it’s a sign it’s not beneficial for you—even though it might be generally considered a very healthful food. A healthful food for YOU will make you feel better. It will raise your energy level and suppress your appetite. Typically, if you’re still hungry, it may be a sign that you need a little more fat and protein in your meal, or with your juice.

Must All Your Veggies Be Organic When Juicing?

Organic produce has been shown to have a much higher nutrient-content than conventional fresh produce, which should offer plenty of incentive to locate organic produce that has also been grown locally. On average, conventional produce has only 83 percent of the nutrients of organic produce.

However, pesticide contamination is another important issue when it comes to juicing, since you’re using higher quantities of fruits and vegetables than you would normally eat whole. The Environmental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide is an excellent resource to help you figure out what to buy organic, and what conventionally-grown veggies you can get away with buying with the least amount of health risk. The guide is now also available as an iPhone application.

The produce ranked the highest in terms of pesticide load, making them the most important to buy or grow organic are:

Celery Peaches Strawberries Apples
Blueberries Nectarines Bell peppers Spinach
Cherries Kale and Collard greens Potatoes Grapes
Meanwhile, the produce below has the lowest pesticide load when conventionally grown. Consequently, they are the safest conventionally grown crops to consume:

Grapefruit Avocados Onions Pineapple
Mangos Sweet peas Asparagus Kiwi
Cabbage Eggplant Cantaloupe and honeydew melon Watermelon
By paying heed to the typical pesticide load, you can put your money where it’s going to be the most beneficial. However, ideally ALL your foods should be organic if you can afford it.

What Can You Do with the Pulp?

Many are concerned about wasting the pulp and throwing it away. Well that can easily be solved by composting it into your vegetable or ornamental garden. However, an even better solution would be to eat it.

From a nutritional perspective it is far more useful to eat the whole vegetable as the fibers actually serve as a prebiotic and raw fuel for your good bacteria to grow, and as a weed killer that actually helps to eradicate harmful organisms like yeast and pathogenic bacteria. You are probably thinking “how disgusting,” and “why would I ever want to do that?”

Well if you dress up the pulp with some Himalayan salt and other condiments that you may enjoy, like balsamic vinegar and crushed red peppers, it becomes far more palatable. What I have recently figured out though is if I put a few lightly poached eggs over the pulp with some melted fresh raw organic butter, it really is turns it into a delicious meal.

The butter and eggs provide fat and protein that actually balance out the meal. I used to feel hungry after juicing but since I started eating the pulp with poached eggs I feel very full and satisfied.

Some might ask why I don’t just use a powerful mixer like a Vita Mixer and have less mess to clean up and prepare it quicker. Well there are several problems doing it this way as the speed of the Vita Mixer is too high and will actually damage some of the nutrients in the vegetables. More importantly is it is MUCH less palatable as it becomes a thick, almost undrinkable slurry rather than a tasty meal and refreshing thin juice you can drink right down.

What about Pre-Made Vegetable Juices?

Many people don’t want to go through the hassle of juicing from scratch and instead opt for supplements like Juice Plus+, which purports to have all the same benefits as fresh juice. However, there are significant drawbacks with these conveniences. When you look at the cost/value equation, to get the same amount of nutrition from a glass of high quality organic vegetable juice, you probably have to take a bottle or two of these Juice Plus+ tablets and the cost would extraordinary.

“There is also something else that’s missing,” Cherie says.

“People have asked me about Juice Plus+ for years. But you don’t have biophotons in there. How could you? It’s processed. So you’re losing the LIFE of the plant. That’s probably my number one reason to juice—to get that life into my body.”

Aside from the lack of biophotons, processing may also destroy complementary co-factors that you get when you juice a whole food and drink it fresh. In a nutshell, you simply cannotJuicing is a powerful tool that can accelerate your progress towards optimal health, and Cherie Calbom, aka “The Juice Lady,” is an expert on this subject.

Virtually every health authority, even conventional doctors, recommend 6-8 servings of vegetables and fruits per day but very few of us actually get that. I’ve found juicing to be a simple and easy way to virtually guarantee that you’ll reach your daily target for vegetables. Juicing also allows you to add a wider variety of vegetables to your diet that you might not normally enjoy eating whole, and makes it easier for your body to absorb all those wonderful nutrients.

Cherie Calbom earned her nickname “The Juice Lady” back in 1991, when she worked for the Juiceman company.  But her passion about juicing began way before that, as she healed herself from a multitude of disabling health problems through juicing in her late 20′s.

Using Juice to Detox

Juicing is one way to detox your system and is in fact one of the reasons why some people start juicing in the first place. This detox effect no doubt helped Cherie recover from many of her ailments, which included chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, allergies and candidiasis.

Wheatgrass is particularly helpful in this respect. It provides nutrients that accelerate and facilitate detoxification, especially in your liver where most of your body’s detox occurs.

Depending on how toxic you are, you may experience detox reactions and actually feel worse, before you get better. In Cherie’s experience, most people need three months of regular juicing before significant improvement becomes apparent. Interestingly, three months is also the average lifespan of red blood cells. So in three months you should have renewed most all of your red blood cells, which would help explain the reason for this typical time frame.Common cleansing reactions include diarrhea, flu-like symptoms and headaches.

Once you get over that initial hurdle, however, the benefits can be nothing short of miraculous for many, such as:

Sleeping better
Improved memory, mental energy and cognition
Improved focus
Reduction in aches, pains, and headaches
Eliminating cravings
“This is one exciting thing that I’ve heard from so many people: in a week or two, their pain subsides,” Cherie says.  “I had one young woman who had plantar fasciitis; suffered with it for years. The only thing they had been able to do for her was a special shoe. She got started juicing, lost 18 lbs, and got rid of her plantar fasciitis.”

Detoxing Fat Stores Typically Requires Expert Help

It’s worth noting, however, that about 100-times more of the toxins are stored in your fat than in your blood. And although juicing may help you shed excess fat, which would reduce toxic stores, it will not in and of itself draw it out of your fat. More aggressive intervention is required for that, and likely needs to be done through a qualified physician.

For example, I recently met a surgical oncologist who uses high dose niacin to cause lipolysis (breakdown of fat), in conjunction with exercise to raise your core body temperature, followed by 40 minutes in an infrared sauna. Doing this process daily for a month causes your body to excrete stored toxins from your fat.

However, this is not a detox cure you can dabble with at home. First of all, 20 to 25 percent of people cannot tolerate niacin. It causes massive flushing. Second, although it’s a vitamin, at the doses required for detox, it’s treated as a drug. He starts his patients out at about 100 mg and progresses all the way up to 5,000 mg, which is a massive dose. You’ll be beet red from the niacin flush! So intense detoxes like these have to be used with extreme caution under a physician’s care.

Weight Loss—An Added Boon of Juicing

Cherie’s book, The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet, is in large part oriented towards weight loss. Obesity is one of the primary health challenges here in the US. Technically, more than a third of American adults are obese, and nearly 80 percent of Americans are overweight! However, she didn’t set out to recommend juicing specifically as a weight loss aid. This, she found out through countless clients and readers, was a side effect of juicing.

She decided to look into it further, and her investigation eventually led to the creation of her book.

“There were two studies completed in 2009– last year, I believe it was one at Baylor College of Medicine and the other at UC Davis using Vegetable Juicing and for Weight Loss. which They found that the people who included one to two glasses of vegetable juice a day lost four times the weight of the non-juice drinkers. I thought that was rather interesting and significant…

In one of the studies, the majority of the people in it had metabolic syndrome; insulin resistance. I found that very interesting because that’s a tougher condition to work with and still see weight loss results… I really got excited and that’s when I put this book together, giving people the whole program of how to integrate vegetable juicing into their lifestyle with menu plans, shopping list, and recipes.. Since that time, I’ve heard from people all across the country who have said they’ve given this diet a try, and they’re losing weight—many times where nothing was working for them before.”

Juicing Alone is Not the Sole Answer for Weight Loss, You Must also Alter Your Food Choices

However, juicing in and of itself likely will not solve your weight problem. Your overall diet is just as important, if not more so, and her book prescribes a low-glycemic diet together with juicing to achieve maximum results. She essentially combined the diabetic diet with vegetable juicing.

According to Cherie, this combination has been the most effective for people with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, or diabetes. She also recommends including coconut oil, as it too can help with weight loss. Cherie recommends using about one teaspoon to one tablespoon a day for this purpose.

Other Reasons for Using Coconut Oil

“I was absolutely shocked when I first started reading about coconut oil because I, like so many people, have been told that it’s a saturated fat, and to avoid all tropical oils,” Cherie says. “When I got awakened to the truth, I wanted to know more and, eventually, wrote the book, The Coconut Diet.

I discovered that coconut oil, even though it is saturatued, is a very healthful oil. is marvelous. The body prefers to burn it rather than store it in fat cells. It is rich in lauric, acid, caprylic, and caproic fatty acids, which are short- to medium-chained fatty acids that work on breaking down the outer wall of yeast cells. There was a study done not too long ago in Nigeria at University College Hospital. They used coconut oil for treating people even with Candida albicans, which is one of the toughest yeasts to destroy, and it worked even on that yeast.”

However, when you first start out on coconut oil, you may feel ill.  Why is that?

“The yeasts are dying off,” Cherie explains. “So just cut back on the amount of coconut oil you’re taking and then work back up.”

You could do as much as one to three tablespoons of coconut oil a day as a therapeutic dose to kill excessive yeast, although you will need to work your way up to that amount, and It is probably safer to start with one teaspoon.. Your level of tolerance depends on how well your liver functions as it is a fat. But it may be too many calories for some people, as three tablespoons would give you about 400 calories just from coconut oil.

Additionally, many individuals who chose to be a vegetarian or vegan will have dangerously low cholesterol levels and coconut oil can be very effectively used to increase cholesterol levels.  If you already have high cholesterol levels though it is not dangerous unless you take very large quantities.

You always want to make sure you’re using organic, virgin, unprocessed coconut oil, and avoid the refined kind as the processing eliminates many of the healthful fatty acids. Cherie and I also agree on the recommendation to use it for all your cooking needs as well, in lieu of other cooking oils.

“It has a medium smoke point of about 350 degrees,” Cherie explains. “Most of the sautéing that we do in our home kitchens aren’t over 350 degrees. I always say if you see it smoking, pull it off the burner right away because that’s the point where your oil is starting to break down and will start to oxidize. It’s a durable oil because it’s saturated. The very fact that it’s saturated makes it more durable than your polyunsaturates, which will oxidize much more easily. I don’t recommend polyunsaturated oils at all.”

For high-heat, such as baking around 400 degrees or so, you can use almond oil instead.

How Much Juice Do You Need?

Cherie’s program calls for juicing twice a day. If you’re diabetic, hypoglycemic or insulin resistant, you’ll want to focus on dark greens. Cherie also recommends diluting all your juices with cucumbers instead of water, to gain the extra nutrients. This way you’ll also avoid any and all potential toxins, such as fluoride, in your tap water.

If you’re juicing for weight loss, Cherie recommends a minimum of 16 ounces of juice a day. Ideally, you’ll want to strive for a full quart of juice, split up between the morning and the afternoon.

When juicing that much, I recommend juicing it all at once, to save time. Then use a FoodSaver, or put it in a glass jar filled to the very top so there is no oxygen, and put it in the fridge immediately. You’re probably going to retain well over 90 percent of the nutritional value if you do it in that way and consume it within 12 hours.

Juicing to Perk You Up, or Calm You Down

Besides juicing for detox and weight loss, other reasons to juice include boosting your energy, or alternatively, calming you down at the end of the evening.

“I talked with one young woman who had a two-year old and was coming home after work, tired but still lots to do, and would have a glass of wine. She said, “I was ready to just lay on the couch and go to sleep.” Now she comes home and makes juice for the whole family instead, and she’s energized to make a healthy meal.

So it’s excellent to make your juice for the next day and your evening cocktail all at once. Have a glass of juice while you’re making dinner to perk you right back up,” Cherie says.

“So many people say they come home just dead tired and starved. Maybe they didn’t eat for a good portion of their day. Maybe they skipped lunch or ate something really fast at their desk. Instead of grabbing a bag of chips or some awful snack when you run in the door and you’re hungry, go right for your juicer and make a glass of juice. It’s going to be energizing. It’s going to send a signal to your body that you’re not as hungry now. You’re fed. You’ve got all these nutrients now. So hopefully, then you’re not going to eat as much at dinner.”

You can also make a small amount of calming juice to drink just before you go to bed. Celery and romaine lettuce are very calming and will help you sleep.

Nutritional Typing and Food Sensitivities

Nutritional typing, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a concept that really seeks to divide people in three different types:

Protein types benefit from large amounts of protein and fat, and small amounts of carbs
Carbohydrate type need high amounts of vegetable carbs, and lower amounts of proteins and fat
Mixed type need a little bit of everything and can tolerate most foods
Your genetics and biochemistry determines which group you fit in. Paradoxically, even the healthiest of foods, such as dark green leafy vegetables, are not as well-suited for everyone.

Dark green leafy vegetables are very high in potassium, and for protein types, potassium-rich foods tend to drive your biochemistry in the wrong direction. Hence, care must be taken to select the most appropriate foods, even when we’re talking about something as healthful as vegetables.

A giant clue is to check how different foods make you feel. Listening to your body is one of the KEY elements of nutritional typing. If something makes you feel worse (sleepy, gassy, or lethargic, for example), it’s a sign it’s not beneficial for you—even though it might be generally considered a very healthful food. A healthful food for YOU will make you feel better. It will raise your energy level and suppress your appetite. Typically, if you’re still hungry, it may be a sign that you need a little more fat and protein in your meal, or with your juice.

Must All Your Veggies Be Organic When Juicing?

Organic produce has been shown to have a much higher nutrient-content than conventional fresh produce, which should offer plenty of incentive to locate organic produce that has also been grown locally. On average, conventional produce has only 83 percent of the nutrients of organic produce.

However, pesticide contamination is another important issue when it comes to juicing, since you’re using higher quantities of fruits and vegetables than you would normally eat whole. The Environmental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide is an excellent resource to help you figure out what to buy organic, and what conventionally-grown veggies you can get away with buying with the least amount of health risk. The guide is now also available as an iPhone application.

The produce ranked the highest in terms of pesticide load, making them the most important to buy or grow organic are:

Celery Peaches Strawberries Apples
Blueberries Nectarines Bell peppers Spinach
Cherries Kale and Collard greens Potatoes Grapes
Meanwhile, the produce below has the lowest pesticide load when conventionally grown. Consequently, they are the safest conventionally grown crops to consume:

Grapefruit Avocados Onions Pineapple
Mangos Sweet peas Asparagus Kiwi
Cabbage Eggplant Cantaloupe and honeydew melon Watermelon
By paying heed to the typical pesticide load, you can put your money where it’s going to be the most beneficial. However, ideally ALL your foods should be organic if you can afford it.

What Can You Do with the Pulp?

Many are concerned about wasting the pulp and throwing it away. Well that can easily be solved by composting it into your vegetable or ornamental garden. However, an even better solution would be to eat it.

From a nutritional perspective it is far more useful to eat the whole vegetable as the fibers actually serve as a prebiotic and raw fuel for your good bacteria to grow, and as a weed killer that actually helps to eradicate harmful organisms like yeast and pathogenic bacteria. You are probably thinking “how disgusting,” and “why would I ever want to do that?”

Well if you dress up the pulp with some Himalayan salt and other condiments that you may enjoy, like balsamic vinegar and crushed red peppers, it becomes far more palatable. What I have recently figured out though is if I put a few lightly poached eggs over the pulp with some melted fresh raw organic butter, it really is turns it into a delicious meal.

The butter and eggs provide fat and protein that actually balance out the meal. I used to feel hungry after juicing but since I started eating the pulp with poached eggs I feel very full and satisfied.

Some might ask why I don’t just use a powerful mixer like a Vita Mixer and have less mess to clean up and prepare it quicker. Well there are several problems doing it this way as the speed of the Vita Mixer is too high and will actually damage some of the nutrients in the vegetables. More importantly is it is MUCH less palatable as it becomes a thick, almost undrinkable slurry rather than a tasty meal and refreshing thin juice you can drink right down.

What about Pre-Made Vegetable Juices?

Many people don’t want to go through the hassle of juicing from scratch and instead opt for supplements like Juice Plus+, which purports to have all the same benefits as fresh juice. However, there are significant drawbacks with these conveniences. When you look at the cost/value equation, to get the same amount of nutrition from a glass of high quality organic vegetable juice, you probably have to take a bottle or two of these Juice Plus+ tablets and the cost would extraordinary.

“There is also something else that’s missing,” Cherie says.

“People have asked me about Juice Plus+ for years. But you don’t have biophotons in there. How could you? It’s processed. So you’re losing the LIFE of the plant. That’s probably my number one reason to juice—to get that life into my body.”

Aside from the lack of biophotons, processing may also destroy complementary co-factors that you get when you juice a whole food and drink it fresh. In a nutshell, you simply cannot compare a processed juice supplement to the real thing, because you simply will not receive all the benefits of whole, fresh juice. A supplement is going to be better than nothing in circumstances when you don’t have access to a juicer, such as when traveling, but cannot be recommended as a substitute for regular juicing.

Hopefully, this interview has been able to inspire you to start exploring the world of juicing, if you haven’t already, as juicing can massively facilitate the improvement of your health.

Related Links:
Juicing index
Juicing For Protein Types — NOT Off-Limits!
Can Juicing Really Lead to Happiness?
compare a processed juice supplement to the real thing, because you simply will not receive all the benefits of whole, fresh juice. A supplement is going to be better than nothing in circumstances when you don’t have access to a juicer, such as when traveling, but cannot be recommended as a substitute for regular juicing.

Hopefully, this interview has been able to inspire you to start exploring the world of juicing, if you haven’t already, as juicing can massively facilitate the improvement of your health.

Related Links:
Juicing index
Juicing For Protein Types — NOT Off-Limits!
Can Juicing Really Lead to Happiness?

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Juicing, Nutrition

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How to Use All Those Garden Tomatoes


Grape tomatoes.

Image via Wikipedia

I juice my tomatoes.  They are delicious alone or you can add zucchini or yellow squash.  Or whatever you have in the garden that you think would be good with it–  a little spinach,  a pepper, etc.  I use a Breville Fountain Juicer.  Here is a sample of what I juice.

8 to 10 ripe tomatoes.

1 zucchini or yellow squash

1 small banana pepper

handful of spinach, swiss chard or kale

 

After you have juiced, use the pulp to make tomato soup.  Put the pulp in a large saucepan.  Add 2 16 oz. cans of organic tomato sauce and 2 cans of water.  You may add 1 cup of almond milk or any other kind of milk if you like your soup creamy and leave out 1 can of water.  Chop an onion and a clove of garlic and add.  Add 1 cup of fresh basil removing large stems.

Cook on stove top on medium heat for 30 minutes.  Use an immersion blender like the Cuisinart Smart Stick ($30 at Bed, Bath and Beyond) to mix it until it is creamy.  Serve with garnish of basil if desired.  I freeze extra soup for later.

 

 

 

 

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Juice Pulp recipes, Juicing, Juicing recipes, Nutrition, Product info

Comparison of Diets Promoting Health


This is a brief summary.  I will do an element by element breakdown in chart form when I have more time.

Dr. Lorraine Day-- Eat organic vegan, no processed food, as much raw as possible, no dairy, no eggs, no sugar, low grains.  Do fresh juicing.  Stay away from medicines, chemo and radiation.  No end point to this diet.  She does not recommend supplements.  She had stage 4 breast cancer and beat it.  She also includes other practices like exercise, prayer, cleaning out the toxins from your environment and other disciplines.

Dr. Max Gerson– Eat vegetarian, no salt, low sugar, low fat, low grains.  Both raw and cooked.  Includes frequent fresh juicing, vegetable stews, supplements and coffee enemas.  Stay away from foods that are common allergens, like berries and wheat.  No eggs or dairy.  Very regimented and difficult diet.  It is recommended for a limited amount of time –3 years or so then is less rigid.  It also recommends other life style changes like detoxifying your cleaning cabinet and make up.

Hulda Clark’s program–This is a very complicated way to address parasites through eating, supplements, teas, and zapping (which I will not even attempt to explain).  She feels that parasites are a large component in causation of cancer.

Asparagus diet–  Eat asparagus daily to de-acidify your body.

Lemon diet–Eat lemons as they are anticarcinogens.

Jalapeno diet– Eat jalopenos every day as the populations that do this have lower rates of cancer.

Block Diet–by Dr. Keith Block– Eat vegetarian for the most part, low fat, high in raw content, low in sugar, low in processed foods.  Use supplements.  Exercise.  Create an environment that is conducive to healing and not to cancer.

Clean diet by Dr. Alejandro Junger–  Do periodic 3 week long cleanses. ( once or twice a year, or more if desired).   These include foods that alkalize the body for the most part, in raw, juiced and smoothie forms except one meal a day.  This meal is  to be in the middle of the day.  He advises the elimination diet which is a very restricted list of foods that you can have which are for the most part alkalizing.  He eliminates grains, common allergens, most meats and most fat.  The idea is to make the food easy to digest as well as alkalizing so that your body can focus on detoxing.  The really crux of his diet is giving your body a long period of rest every day without having to digest so that toxins can be ejected.  There is no eating from dinner to breakfast.  He has extensive recommendations on other ways to detox your life including meditation, exercise, and right thinking.

GAPS plan– Gut and Psychology Syndrome plan developed by Dr Natasha Campbell McBride.  This is the diet that I am currently on with some modifications.   It is my understanding that this diet is to correct the balance of good and bad flora in the gut and thereby achieve health in the other organs also.  It involves eating cooked veggies and broth made from boiling bones for many hours.  It also involves supplementation including probiotics in food and supplement form.  The idea is to let the inflammation in your gut heal by providing healing nutrients while also eating food which is easy to digest.  It is also a no sugar, processed food, dairy, grains, potatoes, or simple carbs diet.     http://www.gapsdiet.com/GAPS_Outline.html

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Cancer info, General Health, Juicing, Nutrition

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Great and Healthy Juice Pulp Bread Recipe


Pulp Muffins(stevia sweetened)-Made with Processor

(These contain only 1/8 cup sugar per loaf.  It requires a little sugar to brown .)

Makes 12 large muffins / 18 small ones / Or 2 loaves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees convection oven or 350 degrees conventional.  Grease muffin tins or 2 bread loaf pans.

Mix together following ingredients in large food processor:

4 Eggs

1/2 cup Canola Oil, Coconut oil, Olive Oil, or Ghee (I use olive oil)

1/2 cup Water

2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 c Each of Carrot and Apple Pulp from Juicing (Loosely packed.  You can use 2 cups of any pulp–I use the pulp from the Great Juice Recipe in a previous post.  I use a Breville Juicer for my juicing.)

1 teaspoon Salt

2 teaspoon Cinnamon

1 teaspoon Nutmeg

3 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1/4 c Brown Sugar (packed)

3/4 cup stevia (kind that you substitute equal amount for sugar)

2 cups Freshly Ground Whole Wheat Flour (I use spelt and grind it in a Wonder Mill)

Process all above ingredients well for at least 2 full minutes:

Add:

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts–pulse briefly to mix in.

Split batter between the 2 grease loaf pans.  Smooth the tops as it is a thick batter.   Bake for 35 minutes on the lower oven rack then 25 to 30 minutes on the higher rack.  These muffins or loaves will look done and a toothpick will come out clean before they are really done.  They should be toasty brown on top and bottom but not burned.  Cut one open to test it to make sure they are cooked through.  The hardest part of this recipe is determining when the muffins are done.


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Healthy recipes, Juice Pulp recipes, Juicing, Juicing recipes

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More juice recipes


More Juice Recipes

Here are some sample juices–always trim ends and cut off bad parts of your produce. Peel citrus fruits. Make sure the produce is clean. I scrub it in filtered water with a little vinegar. You can vary these recipes–they are just ideas. You will soon learn the combinations that you like. I try to include something green in most juices. I also juice any produce that I am not going to be able to use before it goes bad. I experiment and make new recipes. You must take out any big seeds or pits. You cannot juice soft things like bananas or avocados. Spinach or parsley may be added to most juices if you need something green. Use baby spinach–it is healthier. It has less oxalic acid which inhibits absorption of calcium and magnesium.

Your goal in juicing is to get a wide variety of nutrients, vitamins and live enzymes, so you need to drink the juice when It is fresh. Supposedly it is good for 24 hours. I find it only tastes good for a few hours.

Use your pulp to add to meat loaf if you eat meat. I am working on some healthy pulp recipes which will be in a later entry.

Apple, Carrot and Celery juice

3 to 4 sticks of celery / 4 tart green apples / 3 carrots

Beet, Carrot and Orange Juice

2 carrots / 2 to 3 beets / 4 oranges / handful of baby spinach

Carrot, Celery, Cuke, and Lime Juice

1 carrot / 2 celery stalks / 1 peeled lime / 1/2 inch ginger root / 1/2 cucumber

Zucchini Juice

1 zucchini / 1 cuke / 2 sweet apples / 1 lemon

Lemonade

6 sweet apples / l lemon / 1 stalk celery

Grape, Apple, Celery juice

Seedless grapes of any type–l large bunch / 3 stalks of celery / 2 sweet apples / 1 lemon

Parsnip, Celery, Apple Juice

2 parsnips / 4 celery stalks / 3 apples–sweet or tart

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Juicing

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Once More on Juicing


We just went to Seattle area and Olympic National Park so you will see many related pics in upcoming blogs (one is above.). Because the area has such a reputation for heathy lifestyles, we did not worry about finding food there for me. As it turns out, finding freshly made juice was a problem in the Olympic National Park and in Victoria.

Lee suggested getting a bottled organic juice. That is what stimulated this blog.

Bottled and pasteurized juice have very little value in fighting disease in that the live enzymes and the vitamins are destroyed by the heat and storage. Juice inherently is very high in calories because of its concentration. Pasteurized juices or those stored more than 24 hours are not nutritionally dense while they are calorically loaded. Hence, I would say, don’t bother with bottled or boxed juices.

Now, my goal is to find a good, light travel juicer. Any input?

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Juicing, Juicing recipes, Nutrition

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Great Juice Recipe


This is the best juice I have made–there have many assenting votes to this.

Just to review, I use a Breville Juice Fountain juicer. If at all possible I use organic ingredients. Here is the recipe:

Cut one inch of fresh ginger in small pieces and soak in enough filtered water to just cover it.

Soaked ginger root with filtered water
2 peeled oranges
2 apples (not peeled)– core and cut out seeds if you desire
1 peeled lemon
1 bunch of celery(about 7 to 8 pieces) washed and trimmed (don’t trim the leaves just the root)
1 to 1 1/2 pounds organic carrots (use only organic or it ruins your juice)
2 handfuls of fresh organic spinach

This should make 1 and 1/2 to 2 quarts of juice. Drink it all within 24 hours. After that the live enzymes are gone and it does not taste fresh anymore. I soak the veggies up to n hour in water with a tablespoon of fermented vinegar with the “mother”.

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Gerson Therapy Made Personal


Here is my take on Gerson after a week of doing it imperfectly. This is a complex and restrictive diet, difficult to do. But it gave me the most amazing results that I have ever gotten in my body by changing my diet. In one week:
1. I lost 7 pounds.
2. My right shoulder stopped hurting enough that I could sleep on it without awakening and without increase in pain the next day after sleeping on it.
3. My left foot plantar fascitis pain decreased enough so that I could start exercising again.
1. My right knee did not start hurting with exercise like it usually does.
2. My sleep got better at night.
3. I did not need naps during this whole past week. Naps have been part of my life for quite a while. I have been living in a state of constant fatigue.
4. An itchy irritated patch of skin on my back cleared up.

I consider the information about Gerson Therapy coming into my life to be a gift from God. Will it heal my cancer ( which the blood tests show is still active)? I don’t know, but I pray so. I know it is making my life more vital and pleasurable right now.

Would I recommend this to people as an altenative to conventional medicine? No. I feel that each individual must determine their unique path with God’s guidance, but I personally feel like you should use every weapon. Medicine does not offer me a cure– they can only do repeated chemos to beat back the lymphoma and maybe extend my life a little. That puts me in a unique situation–I can try anything.

The basic premise of this diet is to change the body at a cellular level. Here are some of the changes demanded in this program:

1. No salt except what is naturally in fruits and veggies. This has to do with getting nutrients into the cell and aiding in healing damage.
2. No fats except flaxseed oil and that in very limited quantities. Gerson says fats feed cancer.
3. No meats. They are infused with fats.
4. No processed foods. Gerson is all about organic and unprocessed.
5. No white flour, sugar or white rice.
6. Only oats and rye as grains–both in limited quantities. These are the least allergenic and the most easily digested. He advocates making it easy on the body and aiding it in getting the most nutrients easily.
7. Unlimited fruits and veggies, except pineapples, berries, and avocado.
8. Oatmeal for breakfast and special soup and salad for other 2 meals.
9. No nuts.
10. No dairy for at least 3 months then only fat free.
11. Some spice limits, including pepper and paprika.
12. 1 glass of freshly made juice every waking hour /carrot and apple, orange or green juice.
13. No water– only peppermint tea and that is to be made with distilled water.
14. No baking soda or other products with salt.
15. No fish. Again, this is related to fats.
16. No coffee, teas except peppermint tea, chocolate or desserts.
17. Coffee enemas 4 times a day.
18. Various supplements including potassium, iodine, selenium, niacin, and a few others. Armour thyroid is also recommended. These are basically to rev up the metabolism so the body can fight cancer or whatever it has to battle.
19. No chlorine or fluorine

I checked with 2 doctors about the diet part–not including the supplements and the enemas. They had no problems with the diet. I think many doctors might have issues with the Armor thyroid and the coffee enemas.

There are more things to this program but I will stop at that. Needless to say, I could not do all of these things. This would become my whole life.

I had two big lapses in following the program this week. One was 2 nights ago when I was going crazy with a craving. Finally, I got some sushi and that was what I needed– some protein. And the second was last night, I did some emotional eating of some salty crackers.

During the night I woke up with both my shoulder and foot hurting again, plus my sinuses were stopped up. (I had not even noticed that my sinus congestion had cleared up.) The long term skin irritation also started itching again the morning after the salt. This is anectodally positive that the low sodium is the major effective component of this diet.

Here are the modifications that I have made to customize this therapy to me:
I started potassium supplements but they made my urine burn. Potassium in too high of a dosage can cause kidney damage. Now, I am just using potassium salt substitute on my food without supplements.

Instead of taking iodine which is dangerous and poisonous at certain doses, I am putting it on my skin after I shower. It is absorbed through the skin.

Gerson juicing is supposed to be done with a masticater then extractor, instead of a centrifuge juicer. This is because the centrifuge heats up the juice and destroys vitamins and enzymes. But the centrifuge is what I have, so I am using it. The other process also sounds more laborious and time intensive. The juice is supposed to be carrot and apple. I have added a lemon to this to cut the sweetness. And I alternate it with homemade V8 juice so that I don’t go crazy having so much carrot juice. I also just add greens to this juice instead of making a separate green one. And I eat my oranges instead of juicing them. Furthermore, I am just making 1 quart of juice and drinking it throughout the day in place of making fresh juice every hour.

I drink some very well filtered water in opposition to Gerson’s instructions. This is partly because I am not drinking as much juice as they instruct.

In all fairness towards Gerson and the Gerson Institute, they recommend that each program be customized by licensed practitioners. They would not recommend doing this the way that I am.

And to give the opposing view, there are no controlled studies–just anecdotal evidence. I doubt for these dietary cures there will ever be the large scale controlled studies to prove them. They would have to involve big numbers and long follow ups which of course means big costs. Who would benefit from such a study? Gerson Institute would not have such funds and pharmaceutical companies would have no desire to fund it. As for the danger of some of the supplementation, I agree it is dangerous. These are not supplements that can be played around with. I have no answer to that part of it except that people with terminal cancer will try anything. So I would add a strong caution to that part of the program. It makes sense, but be careful with it.

And lastly, I address how to have a life with this program. This is very difficult, but I am learning how to adapt and still have a life. For instance I went to a party at a restaurant. I ate my special soup before I went. And I made my own dressing (maple syrup, flaxseed oil and balsamic vinegar). Then I ordered a naked house salad.

This is know–I need a little wiggle room. And I will not beat myself up if I don’t do this perfectly. Feeling good again is a great motivator. Three things to remember:
1. My taste buds and my stomach are not my God.
2. Temporary pleasure is not worth long term pain.
3. If food gets near you, it will get in you. Start your resistance at the grocery store.

Three books give the complete program. Dr. Max Gerson’s A Cancer Therapy–50 Case Studies, The Gerson Therapy by Charlotte Gerson, and Healing the Gerson Way by Charlotte Gerson. Their website is: http://www.gerson.org/com

Addendum 2/2/10: No more weight loss has happened after 3 weeks on the diet. The interesting thing is that my blo
od counts have improved. I have further changed some things as I continue to study. I have decreased the kelp supplements to 1 per day. It also seemed reasonable to switch to distilled water with occasional Perriers to make sure I get the minerals I need. I deleted the Wikipedia entry as it was not totally factual.

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Cancer info, General Health, Juicing, Nutrition

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