How To Make The PERFECT Green Juice For Your Health + Our Daily Greens Recipe!

I have had a green juice every single day for the last 2 & a half years of my life. True story.

Why?

When I first started my health journey by body was just THAT undernourished that I needed to amp up my nutrient intake ASAP.

Queue in Green Juice.

2 & a half years later, it’s now one of my daily non-negotiable’s when it comes to my health regime… because it’s just that damn good!

Contrary to what some people think, juices & smoothies are not the same thing…

Oh… & you can’t make a juice in a blender! (Unless you blitz up the greens and squeeze it as hard as you can through a nut milk bag… then some juice should come out…maybe don’t do this.)

Although I do love a green smoothie every now & then (& Anth has one daily for his brekky – recipe up soon!)…
The difference is that the juicing process takes out all the indigestible fibre, allowing the vital nutrients from the produce to be released into your blood stream straight away.

This gives the digestive system a nice break + allows you to consume a HEAP more veggies than if you were to eat them whole (or if you were to blend them into a smoothie).

…Imagine chowing down on a head of lettuce, cucumber, bunch of parsley, a bunch of chard + let’s throw in some kale… not bloody likely.

When we consume a juice, (given the produce was grown in mineral packed soil – find out more here) we get a powerful shot of minerals vitamins, antioxidants & phytochemicals straight into our blood stream, giving us a nice boost of energy & of course allowing us to incorporate a lot more greens into our daily diet.

You may have heard of a ‘juice detox cleanse’ before? This is because they help our body with the detoxification process (helping to remove toxins like pesticide residues which can get stored in our fatty tissue :S)

Will adding Raw Kale to your diet mess up your hormones?

You’ve probably heard that cruciferous veggies like kale can mess with your thyroid & you SHOULD NEVER have it raw… Well here’s the deal…

Over millions of years of evolution, plants have developed chemical compounds that are designed as defence mechanisms to stop the plants being eaten by bugs, basically these chemicals act as natural pesticides – hey the plants want to survive just as much as you & I do! – these substances don’t generally kill the pests, they just mess with their nervous system so they’ll leave the plants alone.

Kale – along with other cruciferous veggies- contains one of these chemical compounds called isothiocyanate (that’s: eye-so-thigh-o-sigh-an-aid).

Isothiocyanate is the reason people are flipping out over raw kale.

So what’s the deal with poor old Iso?

First off, it’s been shown to reduce the risk of cancer by stopping pro-carcinogenic cells from becoming carcinogenic, & reducing the damage caused by activated carcinogenic cells. <– That’s right… it’s a good thing!

So why all the bad press?

Isothiocyanate has also been shown to cause thyroid problems by interfering with the absorption of iodine which can lead to hyperthyroidism – but only in INCREDIBLY HIGH DOSES – that last part is key. You would need to consume an insane amount for it to affect your thyroid like that, in fact, the only case study where hyperthyroidism actually occurred, was in an 88 year old woman who ate almost 2kg’s of raw bok choy every day for months!!

So don’t stress about adding a few leaves to your juice every day.

What else do green juices do?

More than anything, they help protect cellular damage from free radicals in our bodies.

What can free radicals do? They are nasty little guys which can cause wrinkles, damage our arteries, contribute to a host of health issues like bowel disease, arthritis, diabetes… oh & the biggie – speed up the ageing process!

Amp up your greens to neutralise free radicals – do this by drinking green juices!

So how do we create the perfect juice?

JUICING RULES

Don’t add more then one piece of fruit to a juice as this will cause blood sugar spikes – if you want fruit in your juices, aim for around 80% veggies and 20% fruit.

Add a whole lemon or lime (we prefer lime), skin & all (providing it’s organic!!) as this combats the bitter taste of the greens! What’s more – even though they are technically acidic, they are ‘alkaline’ inside our bodies & help to get rid of the corrosive effects of the acids in our body.

Drink it all up within the first 15 minutes to reap the full benefits! After this timeframe the live enzymes start to get destroyed from the light & air.

Pick fresh leaves from your edible garden just before juicing, or if they are store bought, wash leaves the night before & leave out on the bench.
This will make your juice room temperature which helps with digestion.