Science behind Organic Juicing

Juicing has gained large popularity in last 15 years.  Nowadays is loosing it a bit to blending, as blending is a bit faster, and easier, and no waste being left over.  Many studies between juicing and blending benefits, around the internet also contradict each other, so consumer is left to the mercy of a sales man usually.  But then again, you can easily find studies that will try to convince you that eating fruits and vegetables is even more efficient than blending or juicing.  All for the purpose to promote their agenda => product. There is no clear winner between those two methods.  To get true benefits, you just have to take time and study, what is optimum solution for your intent.

Squeezed Juice vs Smoothie:

When talking about juicing, most newbies firstly ask, why not making smoothie?  Why discard all this pulp?  The main difference between squeezed juice and smoothie is that, there is no fibers in juice, and thus is much easier to digest.  Juicing is dominantly popular in healing diets, as it is nearly like intravenous infusion, for it’s easy digestion, and instant boost.  Nowadays popularity of juicing is getting ground in other fields, besides healing and healthy enthusiast, more and more sportsmen are adding squeezed juices to their diets, especially for endurance sports.  It is more powerful than isotonic beverages or some carbohydrate booster jellies, especially with proper ingredients and if all organic.  It doesn’t put strain on the digestive system.  The only down side is that it should be squeezed and consumed right away or at most 20min after squeezing, and that is usually not practical for practice or competition, but some smart sportsmen get around it.  For example in cross-country skiing competitions, they normally use the “wax-man” to do the squeezing after he finishes with skis, so they have fresh supply for the competitors.

Organic vs conventional:

Most of us know, that organic is the way to go, but there is a cost factor, which can still be in the ratio of up to 5:1.  That cost difference is not justified for lots of potential users.  When talking healing, there is no question, organic is the only way.  There are many reasons behind it, pesticides, being the most obvious one.  But there are many more reasons.  Let’s take apples for example, when grown organically they produce salvestrols as a defense mechanism to fend off fungal attacks.  It turns out that this salvestrols selectively targets cancer cells and kills them, as the cancer cells all contain activated CYP1B1 Enzyme, which salvestrols in organic apples are able to bind to.  When it comes to regular users, one can still see the benefit of juicing, even if only with conventionally grown fruits and vegetables.  Many believe that just washing regular fruits and vegetables with baking soda and vinegar, will get rid of most pesticides, which is more or less a myth.  Especially when dunk in the water which was added baking soda and vinegar at the same time, it looks very reactive with all this foam being created.  Unfortunately it’s just a chemical reaction between alkaloid and acid, and it just looks great, but effect is far less greater, as they almost mutually cancel each other.  It’s true that pesticides can be partially removed with both organic (apple) vinegar and baking soda, but it should be done in consecutive manner.  You have to realize, that you will remove bacteria and pesticides only from the skin of the fruit or vegetable and partially  shallow depth under the skin.  There is another noticeable aspect to this, to be considered.  Most of pesticides also lose their toxicity with oxidation, so when fruit is cut open and let out on the air it will benefit in terms of toxicity, but will also rapidly lose nutrients and healthy enzymes.  So drinking freshly squeezed non-organic juice will optimize nutrition absorption, but unfortunately also toxins absorption, and add to this easier digestion, of squeezed juice, and you end up with enhanced benefit and enhanced down side.  Another quickly overlooked fact is that certified organic produce, has also been exposed to chemicals and also pesticides, so it’s not totally safe either, but still much safer comparing conventional produce.  The best option, especially when you are juicing for fighting disease, is to find local organic supplier that you can trust not using chemicals.

Nutrient absorption facts:

According to several studies which show different absorption of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients via different methods of delivery (administration), nutrient retention in body varies significantly.  For example, when taking Vitamin C in form of pills or tablets, absorption rate is merely around 10%, whereas in form of capsules absorption rises up to 20%.  Eating raw fruit and vegetables say in a serving size of 250g (50g apples, 50g carrots, 50g cellery, 50g Kale, 50g orange) , you can expect to have around 37mg of Vitamin C.  Digestion absorption rate is normally nearly 32%, so you can expect to retain around 11.8mg of Vitmain C in your body, which is approximately 26% of RDI which is 45mg.  When putting the same serving size of fruit-vegetable mix into blender, you will end up with 12.7mg of Vitamin C preserved in the smoothie, and with absorption rate just north of 65%, you can expect to get in your blood 8.2mg of Vitamin C which is roughly 18% of RDI (so 8% less than eating raw).  Using slow juicer, with same 250g mix of fruits and vegetables, will retain 28.2mg of Vitamin C, and with absorption rate for squeezed juices being from 82-88%, our body would receive in modest case 23.1mg of Vitamin C which is 51% RDI, nearly twice as much as with eating and 3x more than with smoothie.  Results for different nutrients vary, and may show more favorable results with blending, but general picture still stays the same.

dr. Max Gerson and Gerson’s therapy:

Although dr. Max Gerson was active in 20s and 30s and later of previous century, when there wasn’t really any market for blenders and juicers, he was testing different forms of nutrient uptake for his patients.  Through thousands of cases, he established his therapy with fresh organic squeezed juices, and to this day it is one of the most powerful natural methods to fight cancer, chronic disease, and many other illnesses.  He established that type of illness is not really the factor for different diet, as his method supply body with energy and necessary nutrients for immune system to fight illness.  Gerson’s therapy is much more than just juicing.  It is also quite strict regime, and lifestyle, which many patients maintain even after they been cured from their illness.  So even if you are healthy and your digestions works fine, fresh juicing will still be a great benefit to you.  It is important that you base your juicing on mainly vegetables rather than fruits, as you will get also lots of sugars with fruit juices.  Juicing only, is not enough as full nutrition program.  It can be for some time when body needs to recover, but later it’s good to add light fresh vegan food to it.

Healing with juicing:

Apart from mentioned Gerson protocol, which uses freshly squeezed organic juices as a base for it’s therapy, there are many others.  Most noticeable is Rudolf Breuss 42 fasting diet which is also based on juicing (beetroot, carrot, celery, potato and radish), Cellect/Budwig protocol, which also relies on green juicing besides flax seed oil and cottage cheese mix.  So juicing is key supporting element in alternative healing of cancer.  It’s very reach in nutrients, very high rate of absorption, very easy on digestive system, fast acting, and relatively easy to do.