For the past 2 weeks I have written about the pros and the cons about juicing but now its time to give my own personal opinion on juicing.
As someone who participated in this kind of diet for an extended amount of time, I can say that that this diet can be very creative. However it was only because of my parents that I was somewhat forced into partake in this kind of diet. At the time, my mother had recently been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and because of the seemingly large amount of treatments that she had to go through, she had to make a few life style changes. One of the changes were the foods that she could but not only did she have to change her diet, she had also became consistently less hungry which didn’t help her constitution. We eventually tried to counteract this by making smoothies that had a large amount of leafy greens, oatmeal for the slow release carbs and other supplements that would help her have energy to get through the day. This is also around the same time that my parents decided that it would be good for them and for the rest of the family to begin juicing. At first it was something that we did because it was “good” for us or because it was very convenient to have. But over time, for my mother, juicing became something that she would do at any point of the day. She would refuse to have an actual meal or a snack because she thought that just drinking the mixed juices would be enough for her to get through the day; and because of this unfortunate misconception, my mother suffered quite a bit for it. The lack of any solid food left her unable to do any physical work or allow her to leave the house, or even her bed, because she was so tired or feeling sick.
This in fact, is the main reason why I took a slightly more negative side when talking about juicing but, over time I slowly began to acknowledge the good that can come out of using this diet to cleanse your body or just so that we can consume more nutrients and vitamins.
Therefore for me today, Juicing is something that can be both helpful and at the same time detrimental to our health. (But at the same time, most things are this way) Helpful in that through juicing we can increase the amount of vitamins and nutrients that we consume per day, which will lead to an even healthier life style than we had prior to partaking in the many different odd-colored juices. It can also serve as a cleansing technique for our bodies should we feel the need to detox our bodies and internal organs after a heavy night of drinking and such. However we should also be mindful of the amount of juicing that we do or the kinds of juices that we make. We do not want to end up in a weaker state than what we were in prior to beginning a juice diet, similar to how my mother became weaker and weaker as the days went by because of the lack of energy that the juices provide for the body. The juice is just juice, no carbohydrates or proteins for our bodies to use in order to turn into energy for us to use throughout the day. That is why it’s mostly recommended that juicing be supplemented with balanced meals in order to maximize the amount of nutrients that our bodies get.
We also don’t want to murder out taste buds through consuming hellish juices created from the oddest most disgusting fruits and vegetables to ever grow on the planet earth. Namely kale. Kale plus anything is just terrible . Why would you do that. Ever.
Just kidding. However I can say that waking up on the weekend and being forced to take a sip of something that has a very odd and sometimes nasty color to it, is something that I could have less of.
(By the way, beats are pretty bad too)
At the end of the day, juicing is something that is good for us but we have to be responsible for the amount of juicing that we do.