Tips on Juicing Fruits and Vegetables

If you are planning to nourish yourself with home-made fresh juices there are a few things that you should know.

First off, you should use organically grown, unsprayed produce when it is available. This is because almost all of the produce that you find in the supermarkets is sprayed with either a coloring agent or a pesticide of some kind. Look for a label on your fruit or vegetable that says that it is “Certified Organic.” If organic produce is not available in your area then it is a good idea to peel all of your produce before juicing it or wash it well first.

You should also wash everything well. The molds and bacteria that are part of these bruises can make you ill. To be safe don’t juice older fruits or vegetables and stay away from ones that have blemishes or bruises in the first place.  Organically grown produce is not necessarily that clean!

Don’t juice citrus skins. The skins of grapefruits and oranges contain a toxic substance.  You should also peel tropical fruits like pineapple, kiwi, mango and papaya because they are grown in countries where toxic pesticides are still legal.

Some fruits and vegetables are more likely to be tainted with insecticides. The produce that is most likely to contain poisons are apples, pears, avocados, peaches, pineapples, bell peppers, parsnips, turnips, cucumber and tomatoes. You might also want to remove the outer leaves of lettuces, cabbages, kale, collards and other leafy vegetables in order to reduce the risk of juicing pesticides into your glass.

You must remove all the pits from fruits such as peaches, plums and avocadoes before juicing them as they contain cyanide. They can also clog up and ruin the inside of your juicer.

Your juicer will last longer if you slice the fruit or vegetable into smaller pieces before you put it into the hopper. Take the time to cut the produce up into chunks that are easy for your machine to accommodate.

It is very old school to say that you should juice vegetables together and fruits together but that you should never juice both fruits and vegetables together. This comes from an old food-combining concept that says fruits are for cleansing and that vegetables are for bodybuilding. In this modern day and age there is no reason why you can’t accomplish both at the same time.  Feel free to combine your lime juice with celery juice and your orange juice with carrot juice or whatever you like!