Ginger, garlic and onion all have antibacterial properties to help clean out your system. Grapefruit, Kiwi, Orange and Lemon give you the super doses of Vitamin C to boost the whole immune function. Carrots add the essential beta-carotene to help the body utilize all that goodness.
Are you starting to see the overlap here? The truth is, yes, all of these juices do the things they are designed to do in these groupings, but they all do so much of everything that any juicing you do is going to be so good for your overall health, you’ll notice it in all of these effects.
Healthy looking skin, shiny hair, strong nails, normalized weight, increased energy and improved memory all come along with improved energy and stamina and a general sense of increased well-being.
Vitamins, Minerals, Produce and Juicing – Making the Connection for Better Health
Vitamins and minerals are two of the major building blocks when it comes to the operating system of the human body. Together they provide the energy exchange and cellular nutrition functions which run all systems. These systems allow us to see properly, build strong bones, blood, organs, muscles, cell walls, vascular systems and everything else that our bodies do to keep us functioning. They regulate our blood pressure, insulin and blood sugar levels, blood clotting and thinning and internal acid/base balance.
Vitamins and minerals work together to give us all the essential components of our enzyme, amino acid and cell, bone, blood, tissue and organ support systems.
The trick to their proper functioning is that they cannot accomplish the complex tasks of building all the internal systems which run our bodies without each other. Vitamins without certain minerals cannot be utilized by our bodies, no matter how much of the vitamin is provided.
While it is true that modern nutritional science goes far beyond vitamins and minerals into such complex systems as phytochemicals and accessory nutrients, it all starts with these two partners, vitamins and minerals, if we are to maintain good health.
The power of juicing really shines when we look at intake of vitamins and minerals for two reasons. First, we can juice the equivalent of many servings of fruits and vegetables and consume them as one juice, with a very low relative caloric intake and a super-high nutritional density.
Second, we can juice much larger quantities of certain herbs and vegetables than we would otherwise normally eat.
Parsley is an excellent example of this. In most nutritional analysis, parsley is measured in tablespoon amounts. 2 tablespoons of parsley provide 3% of the daily intake of folate, for example. But one cup of parsley contains the full 100 percent of the daily intake amount, and is easy and delicious to add to any juice. The same is true for iron in parsley. Additionally, fresh herbs are loaded with volatile oils which make them particularly potent healing foods, so juicing one bunch of cilantro, parsley, or a handful of mint or basil along with your veggies and fruits adds a significant healing boost to your diet.
Vitamins
Vitamins can be broken into two groups:
Fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E and K
Water-soluble vitamins: all the B vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, Folate, Biotin, Choline), and vitamin C.
Fat-Soluble Vitamins
Vitamin A
Vitamin A is actually a complex group of nutrients: retinoids and carotenoids. These nutrients are best known for their importance in eye health but are also critical to proper growth and development, immune function and the health and vitality of the skin. Vitamin A is important to reproduction; manufacture of adrenal and thyroid hormones. It is also essential to proper immune function and supports the function and maintenance of nerve cells.
Juicing Ingredients with high values of vitamin A include:
Sweet Potato
Carrots
Collard Greens
Kale
Spinach
Parsley
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is considered by some researchers to be more of a hormone than a vitamin as it is manufactured by the body in response to exposure to sunlight on the skin. It is essential to the absorption of calcium and healthy bones and teeth. Because vitamin D is manufactured in the body it is not a vitamin which is found in fruits and vegetables. It is found in high amounts in cod liver oil, fish, eggs and organ meats.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E acts primarily as an antioxidant providing protection to the cells of the body against oxidation. Diets high in vitamin E have been shown to protect against heart disease, stroke, cancer and other degenerative diseases. While the highest sources of vitamin E are found in whole grains and seeds (as it is an oil based vitamin) it is also present in high values in some fruits and vegetables.
Juicing ingredients with high values of vitamin E include:
Wheatgrass/Barley Grass/Oat Grass
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Turnip Greens
Vitamin K
Vitamin K is found in green leafy vegetables (K1) and is also synthesized in the body (K3). It is critical to bone health and bone growth, and is important in the mineralization of bones. Deficiencies lead to poor mineralization of bones which can result in susceptibility to bone injury and breaks of bones being more severe and difficult to heal. K1 is superior in this mineralization to K3 and thus the dietary requirement for vitamin K.
Kale
Turnip Greens
Spinach
Broccoli
Lettuce
Cabbage
Water-Soluble Vitamins
B Vitamins
The B vitamins can be confusing because they often go by other names. Here is a table to make it simple:
Folate, Biotin, and Choline are all considered “members of the B vitamin family”, as they are key components in how the B vitamins work in the body, and also have other names in the nutritional sciences, which are shown in the chart but are much less commonly called by B vitamin names.
Vitamin B1 (Thiamine)
Vitamin B1 is crucial to enzyme function and the metabolizing of carbohydrates. It is also critical to nerve cell function. Vitamin B1 deficiency is relatively uncommon.
Foods containing the highest sources of vitamin B1 are tuna, black beans, sunflower seeds, navy beans, pinto beans, sesame seeds and other members of the bean, pea and seed groups.
Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin)
Vitamin B2 is critical to energy production and metabolism. It is critical to the function of two key enzymes in the energy production system. Deficiencies result in decreased energy in cells, particularly replicating cells. Early symptoms of B2 deficiencies include cracking of the lips, and skin in the corners of the mouth, visual disturbances and loss of visual acuity as well as dryness and itching of the eyes.
Juicing ingredients with a high value of vitamin B2 include:
Spinach
Collard Greens
Asparagus
Zucchini
Swish Chard
Broccoli