Juicing has gained a lot of popularity in the health community over the years. In fact, it’s gained so much momentum and popularity that it’s not uncommon anymore to hear of people that only consume juices for several months to a year + usually in hopes of solving their health issues.
I’ve listened to several videos about people sharing their ups and downs during yearlong juice cleanses. I’ve also listened to others that have juice cleansed for several months and we seem to hear nothing but positive results most of the time.
When I so much as dare to mention the realities of juicing – people simply don’t want to hear it. Today I wanted to dive a little deeper into the topic of juicing and explain why the Natural Hygienic approach does not consider juicing, or long / short term juice cleansing health promoting.
Most individuals that jump on the juice cleansing bandwagon typically do so coming from a wide range of dietary disciplines, because when they learn about juicing and the reported benefits, the allure is that miraculous quick fix for their health issues requiring minimal effort or changes in habit. There are certain well known health gurus that promote juice cleansing for their protocols, some are even charging thousands of dollars for juice cleansing support.
You mean to say that all I have to do is make delicious juices to drink all day for an extended time period and my health issues will go away? Sounds too good to be true!
So why does juicing seem to help people with their health problems if it is not considered a health practice among Natural Hygienists?
- The juices get all the credit instead of the body, yet the benefit to one’s overall health isn’t from the juices but from the foods that the juices replace. Individuals that use juicing in hopes healing their health issues generally come from less-than-ideal dietary habits which often include animal products, cooked foods, processed vegan foods, herbs, spices, etc. so the main benefit that the body receives during a juice “cleanse” is the elimination of the non-ideal, burdening foods and substances from the diet.
- It’s not the juices that are healing the body as most believe, it’s the absence of everything else that caused their unhealthy condition to begin with. Consuming only juices (although not ideal) places less burden on the body than a less than ideal meal, however, this doesn’t mean that juicing is super healthy, it just means that juicing is less damaging than their regular overall diet.
- Juicing is a diet of hydration and rest assured, most people are chronically dehydrated, so turning to a diet of only hydration helps to hydrate and loosen wastes. Juicing is not an ideal way to hydrate the body, however, it’s going to help someone who is dealing with chronic dehydration issues. The ideal would-be water combined with our natural diet to overcome chronic dehydration issues.
But what are some of the downsides of juicing that no one talks about, knows, or will address?
- Juicing our meals replaces the chewing of our food. Chewing is important for maintaining strong teeth and jaw muscles and for releasing the nutrients and healthy sugars from our food slowly instead of the body being suddenly flooded by the juices without any warning. Chewing is also an integral part of the digestive process, in fact mastication is the first stage of the digestive process that gets completely bypassed with juicing.
- When we are coming from any less-than-ideal diet than juicing is going to be somewhat of an improvement, but replacing whole meals with juices is nowhere near as health promoting, or beneficial as learning how to build and sustain healthy dietary habits and routines. We must learn and practice how to properly feed ourselves to sustain long term health and juicing is a step back from healthy habit building which is what we aim to teach in this group.
- Juicing teaches extremes. Extremes do not lead to health. Depraiving the body of it’s requirements for health is not an improvement. People view juicing long term as an improvement but what happens when they begin the refeeding process? What we don’t always hear about are the struggles and cravings that arise during the refeeding process that inevitably lead to binge eating. I just read about someone that is well known in the juicing/fruit community that plans to go a year on juices. She was past 100 days and her daughter wanted her to eat on her birthday, so she ordered a salad. That salad didn’t have a vegan dressing on it, she ended up eating fried foods and some other heavy complex meals which went on for a day or two and now she’s back at juicing. That is not healthy.
The goal shouldn’t be to go on one extreme to counteract previous extremes. What really gets me is that our Natural Human diet often seems extreme to people that are used to actual extremes! It seems extremes are accepted Moreso than taking the time to build healthier habits longterm.
The goal should always be to move towards healthier habits that build health because after the juice fast is over, what have they truly learned to sustain their health long term?
It’s common for people to lose weight (waste) on a juice “cleanse” only to gain the weight back when they begin chewing again because nothing truly changed aside from taking a solid food vacation break from their ingrained habits – but those habits will still remain because they didn’t put in the work to make the necessary dietary / lifestyle changes, in fact it’s likely that they do not know what healthy changes to make if they are still swimming in the world of “cleanses” and quick fixes.
Another reason why we hear of so many reported benefits to juicing is because although the juices are far from ideal from a health standpoint, they experience the hydrating effects of the juices in their chronically dehydrated state. Loren Lockman stated that he’s tested the hydration levels of long-term “fruitarians “that come to fast at his retreat, and they are almost always dehydrated. If I had to take an educated guess, they were probably not drinking enough water daily due to the longstanding belief (that I once held as well) that if we are eating a diet high in fruits than our hydration needs are being met – which all of us here know that is simply not the case!
The juices still contain some nutrients; however, no one talks about the nutrients that are lost before the juice is consumed. Juicing our fruits and vegetables also breaks down our fruit (oxidization) and juicing removes the fibre almost entirely from the juice which is essential for optimal digestion and assimilation. This is why we suggest that if you’re going to make an orange juice, leave some of the fibre / pulp in the juice to help with digestion and chew your orange juice while drinking to help with the assimilation/digestion.
What is never discussed, and if you do try to discuss it, the attacks are endless, is that the juices themselves are not a “health food”. Juices are fractionated, they are processed and can no longer be considered a whole food. Juices are inferior to whole fruits and vegetables. It is the whole foods in their natural form that promote health in the human body. Juicing is much less of a burden on the digestive than eating cooked food but in reality, neither is ideal and for building true health we must learn how to feed ourselves properly so that we don’t have to resort to juicing extremes. People do not realize that we heal slower while juicing than we would if we were to eat whole raw foods in their natural form – without turning them into something that they are not before consuming.
I’ll also note that over the years I’ve noticed the juices that people consume have become more complicated, almost like a well-seasoned meal. Instead of juicing one or two foods at a time we now see complicated juice recipes combining fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices in one drink! We humans simply cannot keep anything simple, can we?
We also witness plenty of raw foodists or plenty of “fruitarians” (fruit only eaters) turning to juicing because after months, or even years of eating fruit-only diets for example , they are not healing, or have plateaued, or are simply not getting the results from their diet that they think they should be so they turn to other extremes for answers instead of recognizing that they could benefit from the addition of greens to their diet combined with other health promoting practices.
As for the raw foodists, they don’t always get the results they expect from their diet due to the over-complication of the raw food diet. The more spices, ingredients and different types of foods that we include in one meal, the more of a burden that meal is on the body so when they turn to juicing, they lift some of that burden not realizing that juices are still somewhat of a burden on the body.
I’m not saying that variety is bad, we absolutely want variety in our overall diet, however, we do not need to eat everything in one meal everyday feed our “microbiome”, or to receive the benefits from those foods. Building our health is about our overall diet over the course of time, not how much variety we can cram into one day of eating. Raw foodists tend to burden the digestive with complex meals. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we need a complex meal of raw foods to get us through a family gathering or a special occasion but when we eat that way day after day the body is continually burdened with excess which translates to heavy digestive burden which equals less opportunity for the body to heal.
Raw foodists tend to eat for taste, and to keep up with the culinary world re-creating every recipe people normally eat in a raw food version- which is a great introduction into the world of raw foods, however , if we keep eating garlic, ginger, curry, and using all the perceived tasty spices – the body will be repairing and healing itself from the onslaught of damaging culinary spices and herbs each evening instead of doing other important work.
Now if you’ve been eating a Hygienic diet of whole raw fruits, greens & vegetables for some time, and you do a juice “cleanse “, you will likely experience a decline in your overall health which would be the opposite end of the spectrum because bombarding and flooding the body with sugars rapidly causes unnatural highs -followed by lows, which we do not experience when we are eating a balanced, healthy raw food diet of fruits, greens and some nuts/seeds, plant fats.
No one in the health realm wants to face the fact that juicing is not a health food, it is another quick fix crutch that people become reliant on in hopes of solving their health issues.
“All nutrients die off at different rates, so the blended fruits are out of balance from what nature originally intended to be in the fruit”.
– Lauren Whiteman
I’m not saying to never drink a homemade juice – I certainly enjoy a refreshing tasty orange juice myself from time to time but I am not reliant on juicing as my main form of sustenance, far from it and you will never catch me juicing multiple ingredients for my tasting pleasure!
People do find juicing helpful in the transition process, and that’s ok, it’s just important to understand that juicing is in no way superior to eating whole raw fresh foods in natural form.
Many people in the vegan and raw food community do not realize that they hardly chew anything for long extended periods because they get into these popular routines where they begin their day with a juice, drink a couple of smoothies for lunch and by the days end, all their sustenance came from homemade drinks rather than whole foods!
Most people don’t even eat salads anymore, they are too time consuming and too much work, they prefer to juice or blend them because they feel it’s easier and more convenient to get their greens that way but they are losing nutrition and the important chewing action in the process which can go on for years until they begin wondering why the results that they desire are not coming, or why they are experiencing teeth issues.
The original raw food diet has been overcomplicated and blended (pardon the pun) into something that doesn’t promote superior health but is still a step up from other diets- but not too many people recognize this fact because the people promoting juicing and complicated raw food diets often look flawless and healthy.
Unfortunately, Juicing is another crutch, or promise of a quick fix that can only deliver so far until it doesn’t anymore because the human body has specific dietary and nutritional requirements that juicing alone cannot provide longterm – like every species on earth, we must realize that we humans were also created to eat specific foods for optimal health and there is no improving upon or altering our diet no matter how hard we try. Like the truth, it just is and we cannot improve upon it.
I’ll leave you with these TC Fry quotes:
“Foods should not be juiced for use as a beverage but should be eaten in their whole state. If exceptions to this rule are occasionally made, it should be with the full awareness that this fragmented food does not contribute anything “extra“to your health or nutrition, and is definitely a compromise of hygienic principles”
“In fact, this bombardment of the body with concentrated portions of fragmented foods may actually cause unpleasant, even serious problems. If carrot juice is consumed in large quantities, it may cause carotinemia and discolor the skin – the liver cannot handle too much of it. I have seen yellow palms (a symptom of carotenemia) that, fortunately, disappeared when the juicing habit was discontinued (prior to irreversible damage).”
“It is well to repeat that food is rapidly destroyed when cell walls are burst, whether by cooking, blending, juicing, mashing or freezing. Oxidation occurs when cell contents are exposed to the air, and if temperatures are favorable, the cells own lysosomes self-destruct its components.”
Mariah 🍉 Heal Thyself
Healthy Self…
