Responsible juicing — what is it?

Responsible juicing is what juicingbook.com is all about. But, what does this mean to you?

Well, quite honestly, it means you need to juice in a non–reckless way. You need to become aware of what you are doing when you juice and what impact it can have on the body.

Unfortunately, there have been a lot of infomercials, books and other promotional tools which only purpose is to sell a juicer rather than to promote responsible juicing. These infomercials, as an example, make juicing look exciting and fun. To be quite honest, responsible juicing is boring and dull.

The problem with the infomercials that make juicing exciting and fun is that their only purpose is to sell juicers. Not only is it their job to sell juice machines, but to sell as many as they can and as quick as they can. The result can be information that doesn't promote responsible juicing.

Responsible juicing is important because when you juice, you are drinking concentrated nutrition. In a way, you are drinking a herbal concoction when you drink fresh juice. This is because herbal medicine works by providing your body with nutrition. It is the nutrition in the herbs that helps your body heal, recover and stay healthy.

If you juice irresponsibly then you can potentially overwhelm your body with nutrition causing you to stimulate something in your body too much, feel not so good, create negative effects, etc. Nutrition is fuel for the body and it is said that the difference between medicine and poison is all in the dose:

"All things are poison and nothing is without poison. It is the dose that makes a thing poisonous."

Paracelsus, 16th century pharmacologist

Many people, when trying wheatgrass for the first time, drink too much and then get a headache. I know because I experienced this headache the first time I drank wheatgrass juice, as have many others. But I thought to myself — "What am I doing? A headache is a sign that I am drinking too much wheatgrass causing my body to detoxify faster than it is capable of eliminating the toxins. A headache is not what I want. I want to experience positive benefits, not negative."

When we juice, we do not want to juice recklessly and with abandonment of good, wholesome common sense. We do not want to overwhelm our body with nutrition. Instead, we simply want to provide our body with extra, easily assimilated nutrition.

Ultimately, we want to become consciously aware of the power that the vegetables and fruits can and do have on our body. Certain vegetables can have profound affects. For example, celery is a natural diuretic as is parsley. Dandelion leaves really stimulate the liver. Beets can move your bowels in a way you never knew was possible. If you juice these and other vegetables or fruits in an irresponsible manner then you will be doing your body no favours and instead of experiencing the positive benefits, you will be experiencing negative benefits.

Coming from Canada, a place with lots of wildlife, I am reminded of an interesting statistic — believe it or not, but more people are killed every year in Canada by deer rather than by bears! But how could this be considering that deer are herbivores (vegetarians) while bears are omnivores (eat everything and anything).

Well here's why more people die from deer attacks — people think that because deer are herbivores that they can walk up and pet them. But this is a wrong thought and belief. While a herbivore, such as a deer, may only eat vegetation they can and do kill for protection. So the deer, seeing the human as a potential threat, uses their antlers to stab the human. Now granted, the deer won't eat the human like a bear potentially would, but the human is now dead because the human saw the deer as a cute and friendly vegetarian eating animal and underestimated its true capabilities. The human was blind as to why the deer had antlers — for protection.

Bears, because they are known for their strength, power and ability to hunt and kill, are avoided by most humans. When a bear sees a human, the bear will usually walk away and the human will do the same.

How does this all apply to juicing? Well, responsible juicing means you don't underestimate the power of the vegetables and fruits you juice — just as you should not underestimate the deer. It's so obvious that you should avoid the bear, but not so obvious that you should avoid the deer more so than the bear.

Vegetables and fruits seem so innocent, but always remember — the difference between poison and medicine is in the dose.

While many that sell juicers and juice machine may make juicing sound exciting and a miracle cure for all that ails you, I could not, in good consciousness tell you this is the case. Juicing is part of a healthy lifestyle when done responsibly. Juicing is not the cure, but rather part of the solution.

"Let thy medicine by thy food and thy food be thy medicine."

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine

When juicing responsibly, we become aware of the amount of sugar in the juice we are drinking. Juicing responsibly means you emphasize vegetable juices and only juice fruits occasionally as a treat or as needed.

Juicing responsibly means you generally focus more on vegetables that grow above ground rather than below ground. The vegetables that grow below ground are higher in sugar content than those that grow above ground.

Juicing responsibly means you do not stop eating food.

Juicing responsibly means you don't expect juicing to cure you but rather realize it's part of the solution and not the solution itself.

Juicing responsibly means you don't drink too much juice too fast. Instead your start slow and juicing responsibly means you do not become fanatical nor do you juice with a kamikaze attitude.

Juicing responsibly means you become aware of good food combining and don't mix fruits with vegetables.

Juicing responsibly means nothing more than common sense.

Juicing responsibly means you might only drink half a pint (200 mL) of vegetable juice daily. While this might sound like common sense, I have received multiple emails over the years of people who are drinking 2 pints (1 liter) or more a day and to make things worse, the people are primarily drinking only fruit juice which is high in sugar.

When purchasing a juicer, I tell people to be cautious of the information and recipes provided with the juicer because the information usually promotes irresponsible juicing rather than responsible juicing.

Few people are aware, as an example, that juicing while pregnant can actually cause your newborn problems. Why might this be? Because while the mother is carrying the child, if she juices, then the fetus is getting extra nutrition. First, this nutrition can be too much of a certain vitamin or mineral which could possibly cause harm. But more importantly, it can also cause the newborn child to become nutritionally deficient fast. Studies have shown, as an example, that a mother who takes a lot of vitamin C while pregnant may give birth to a child who then suffers from scurvy. Why would this happen? Because once born, the child is getting less vitamin C than it is used to causing it to be vitamin C deficient.

Responsible juicing is the approach I like to encourage. When you juice responsibly, then you don't overload the body and instead, you allow the body to work gently and smoothly