Words Fail Me

There just is nothing to say that could meaningfully express the loss we have been dealt today. RIP Michael.

Newsflash: You Have Allies in The Juicing For Health War!

Hi gang. I just wanted to quickly share something I've recently read about juice pulp, fraudulent behaviour, and the bloody outstanding people of New Zealand. It would seem that when you're juicing for health you can end up with friends in high places.

Let me momentarily digress. You see, as it has always been secretly known to nutritionists and juicing enthusiasts, there is an important difference between juices that are prepackaged and sold in the supermarket, and the juice that we all make at home using our super sexy juicing machines. For us nutritionists, trying to explain the in's and out's of how commercial juice companies dilute and bulk up their products is akin to trying to explain Paris Hilton's rise to fame. It's a losing battle on both counts. This is why we in the know normally keep quiet and patiently prod on about the superior benefits of juicing at home.

Anyway, back to the story. The long and short of it is that yes, a good deal of companies use the pulp from the fruits and veggies they juice to bulk up their packaged product, and therefore you end up getting far less of what you had intended to get when you laid down your hard earned cashola. Well hopefully no more, at least not in New Zealand. You can see the complete story here, but it essentially says that The Juice and Beverage Association of New Zealand has become savvy to the practice of bulking up store bought juice with pulp, and is leaning on these companies to stop doing it.

I for one say ... Good on ya mates!! I certainly hope that the rest of the world catches up to this and takes the regulation of watered down, bulked up store bought juices to an even larger scrutiny. If the FDA could keep a closer eye on this industry (like our friends south of the equator) we might not have to buy our own expensive juicers and juice our own fruits and veggies at home. Then again, in a perfect world it rains kittens and lollipops, and Paris Hilton is just another spoiled rich kid. ;)

At any rate, 'nuf said. Have a drink already!

Smooooth Skin
Serving: 1 large glass2 medium to large Carrots
1/2 red pepper
2 clementines

Cheers!

A Healthy Juicing Recipe For Father's Day!!!

No this won't be my usual long rant about how you should be juicing for health every day of your life. I won't guilt all fathers reading my blog into submission by mentioning how YOUR good health is the most important thing in your child's eyes. I won't even mention how your children feel secure knowing you will be there for them, and that juicing recipes for health will help you to be there for them for some time to come. Nah, I could say it, but I won't.

I also won't drag you into a pit of depressing misery on such a pleasant day - by explaining how each year you grow older without taking exact and proven steps to insulate your body from this world's harsh realities, you are a year more vulnerable to disease, malaise, wrinkles, a sore back, hip replacement, swollen prostates, e.t.c... I could. Really, but today I'll spare you.

• factoid: Strategically and with a great deal of stealth, we here at Juicing Recipes have managed to mention things without admitting to mentioning things. I tell you, we're getting slicker here every day. :)
  

Instead I'll just tell all of the Fathers that read my fair and gentle blog HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!

If you haven't a juicer yet, buy this one. Right now. Buy it from here to support my need to nag at you every so often. Otherwise go to the store and get it. Now. Buy it for your children, so that they can marvel at how well you take care of yourself.

If you haven't a proper manual then buy this 4 pack. Do it. Right now. If I haven't shown you that juicing recipes and healthy juicing prolongs life and increases health - well just leave a comment as to what else I can possibly do to convince you. I'll do just about anything to get you to make the healthy choice - minus harming kitties or drive recklessly blindfolded. Oh, and I don't wear thongs. I'm a guy for crying out loud!

So get cracking Dad!! Your health. Important. Crucial to your children.

Since I'm taking the rest of today to find 1047 different ways to make my son smile, I suggest you try the same. (After you get a juicer!!!) Try bungee jumping or ice skating! How about scuba lessons? I can guarantee the more potentially embarrassing it is to you, the more hilarious your kids will find it. Trust me, I tried fishing once with my 10 year old, and my falling out of the boat made him laugh incessantly for at least 8 months. :)

Cheers and Happy Father's Day!


ZOOM JUICE

• 4 carrots
• 1/2 beet
• 2 stalks celery
• 1 handful parsley
• 2 apples
• 1/2 pear
• 1 handful grapes
• 1/4 medium pineapple
• 1/2 peeled lemon

Juicing For Health in 1 Move and A Few Baby Steps

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Why do us folks think that juicing for health will do anything besides waste time and injure our pocket book? It's nothing but a plot. So forget phytonutrients. Doritos work better. Vitamins? Minerals? Pfft... nonsense. Let's talk about something called the Twinkie Diet instead. Now there's a program I can get behind. You know I've even heard smoking Marlboro Reds is great for stress relief. And the bottom line is that all good juicers are expensive (really, check it out!), and juicing fruits and vegetables takes time, effort, and it's messy and a laborious task cleaning up.

OK OK, that is just one big crock of nonsense. But all kidding aside, if it's been in your mind lately to give yourself a fitness "reboot", then start by juicing. At least you can put off having the attitude that last paragraph describes.

Allow me to elaborate:

When you decide to do something productive about your health, yet you start with unrealistic ideals and no discernible plan (for example, joining the Navy Seals on a bet), it usually ends badly. It can either be slightly disappointing, or it can end somewhere close by inflatable lungs, MRI machines, and cross looking German doctors with names like Shnell or Nein.

It's not really that hard to figure out what does and does not work. Frustration, a gym membership, a trunk full of Muscle BeefHead magazines, and perhaps a bad back - that's what doesn't work. Juicing healthy veggies and fruits is what works. Yet more often than not we panic and run screaming down some crazy road or another, searching for health and youth. It usually happens this way because we glanced in the mirror one day and noticed that ever expanding gut, (or butt), and without thinking, run head long into a hasty, well intended catastrophe. Folks, seriously, the 30 minutes you waste each day waiting for some knucklehead to get off the only ab machine in a fitness center that looks more like a South Miami disco is far better utilized juicing some carrots, broccoli and apples.

Unless you have superhuman willpower and an affinity for the sort of senseless agony a gym can provide, eventually the uninformed panic routine will fail. Sure you have set out to be healthier, slimmer, fitter, yet your only real action is to completely inundate yourself with impulsive and poorly thought out exercise tasks, because it seems like that's what everyone in shape does. Uprooting your normal life, joining shiny gyms, buying ridiculous DVD programs, doing exercises that not only make you uncomfortable and constantly sore, it can quickly leave you confused and bitter.

Don't ever write off helpful programs like the Truth About Abs and the Diet Solution Program as nonsense, because all along they've been working for years to truly achieve for others what you actually want... health and fitness! The  way I see it, the problem with a believing in a few links on a blog is that sometimes they don't seem as sexy as the stainless steel Elliptical machine, nor the Calvin Klein model that's always using it whenever you drive by the gym on the way to Haagen Dazs. What you may not realize is that Calvin Klein beefcake was likely just as bent out of shape as you are once, and he/she started out with the same boring links I just gave you, not the nuclear reactor programs at most gyms.

I feel for people that begin by jumping in the deep end without knowing how to swim. After all, drowning really sucks. Feeling inundated by the complexities of some gym equipment, the 2 hour power workouts from hell, doing sit ups until you're left with nothing but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder... all while remembering how and when to properly ingest 150 grams of protein/creatine hybrid that some knucklehead trainer was on about... well it's no small feat. It feels like quantum physics to the uninitiated. This is why I preach on and on about starting any health program by juicing for health first, then adding a quality nutrition program to augment your healthy "reboot". It is the perfect, small, few baby steps to the rest of your healthy and energetic life, and here's why:

Nutrition is at least 70% of the battle for a healthy body and mind, ask anyone in the know. In fact arguably, it's the most important part of a any physical exercise program designed to cut fat and build muscle. (more important than sets and reps? Like I said, arguably, yes). By making what I like to call "move #1", you can start to fight that battle for your health and feel the results quickly, without having spent a fortune at the Adidas store, and without having embarrassed yourself by wrapping your neck around the cable rower at some disco gym full of beautiful people.

Move #1? If you can count to 5 and are willing to spend your money the right way, it's dirt simple. Here it is, in 5 easy to understand baby steps:

1. Buy a frikin good juicer. I'm serious. Stop thinking you may "one day", and get one today. If you own a clunker, upgrade. That link I just offered has the best juicer/blender in the entire history of time, at over $140.00 off. Deals like that don't fall out of the sky folks, and you're not getting any younger. If that's not incentive enough, how this: I've got sneakers that cost more than my juicer, and my runners don't include phytonutrients. 'Nuf said.
2. For 7 days, while you're waiting for the juicer to be delivered, write down all the beverages you ingest, and when you ingest them. Don't change any habits yet, just write. I bet you'll come up with a good novel sized tome full of Lattes, Cappuccinos, Coca Colas, Beers, Nestle Quicks, Iced Lemon Tea, rum and cokes, e.t.c... 
3. On the 8th day, replace every last one of those beverages with juices that you make from your seriously sexy juicer, (yep, that's another "get it done already" link). And don't forget that when you're not drinking juice, water is also your friend.
4. Keep drinking only juice and water - veto any other beverage for exactly 4 weeks, even if it drives you totally frikin batty and you crave like a chain smoker on a transatlantic flight.
5. On day 15 of the 4 weeks, fire up the Diet Solution Program and follow it.

 Listen, it's only 5 weeks total. It's not the peace corp or the French Foreign Legion. It's 5 frikin weeks. 1 week of figuring out what you normally drink, 2 weeks of not drinking it, and 2 weeks of eating what you're supposed to eat, while still NOT drinking nuclear waste. The Twinkies and Beer will still be there after 5 weeks, yes? Tony Roma's and Chili's will still have Ribs, Deathburgers, and milkshakes. So, how about it? Willing to give it a go?

That's it. Move #1 takes 5 weeks and will put you on the road to feeling healthier whether you like it or not. You can kick and scream the whole way, whine and moan the days away. But if you suck it up, take those 5 steps and do it for 5 weeks, it's gonna work.

Huh? No Way! Too Simple
Why will that work on it's own? I know you're asking, I can hear it. (this blog has special psychic software installed ;)) You see, the initial benefits of this 5 week nutritional "reboot" is that your body will start to appreciate being treated with respect, and it will manufacture some pretty unexpected energy and vigor for you to marvel over. That new energy becomes momentum, because momentum is the natural expression of unexpended energy. It's within that momentum that you'll find yourself salivating, and not for buffalo wings. Nope, you'll be hopped up and craving The Truth About Abs program like a hockey player craves the Stanley Cup. But I digress, that's Move #2, and we really don't need to get ahead of ourselves.

The other unexpected benefit of Move #1 is that you learn about nutrition by default as you juice vegetables and fruits and get an education through the Diet Solutions. You'll discover the ridiculous sugar content in most prepackaged foods, and you will get an eye-opening education on the nutritional value of pretty much everything you have been eating all these years. And some of that education is truly mind blowing. Well informed is well armed.

The way to lasting improved health involves many in a series of baby steps, all meant to ease you into a more healthy routine, and provide your mind and body with the necessary time to slowly adjust and work with you, not against. Slow and steady always wins this kind of race, folks. So before you set out to find Lance Armstrong's personal trainer and sell your mini-van for an exclusive membership to some Iron Uber Trainer Mixed Martial Arts Doom Camp, start off by making some simple juicing for health recipes. Get a good juicer and a good nutrition guide, and have at it. In 5 weeks, you'll want to have this blog post inducted into the Uber Cool Hall Of Fame. Seriously.

"Move #1" works, without fail. 'Nuf said.

Once you agree to the above commitment to yourself, here are some excellent recipes I've recently come across that can leave you basking in a sea of tasty good health. However, if you don't think it's a good idea to try what I've outlined above quite yet, just mash up some Lays Chips and Beer in a blender, and have at it. I mean, no point in doing things half way right? ;)

Orange-Grapefruit-Lemon Juice:

• 1 orange,
• ¼ grapefruit,
• ¼ lemon with skin.
  

Remember to discard the peel from the orange and grapefruit, leaving as much of the white pith on them as possible 

Carrot-Cabbage-Celery Juice:

• 2 carrots,
• 1 3-inch wedge of cabbage,
• 1 stalk of celery
  

Apple-Pear Juice:

• 2-3 apples,
  
• 1 pear
  

Apple-Strawberry Juice:

• 3 Golden Delicious or other sweet apples,
• 8 strawberries
  

Apple-Ginger Juice:

• 4 apples,
  
• 1-inch knob of ginger root
  

Apple-Kiwi Juice:

• 2 apples,
• 4 kiwis

Apple-Orange Juice:

• 2 apples,
• 1 orange (peel and discard skin of the orange)

Pineapple-Tangerine Juice:

• 1, 1-inch thick pineapple round,
• 3-4 tangerines (peel and discard skin of tangerine)
  

Carrot-Celery-Apple-Beet-Wheatgrass-Parsley Juice:

• 3 carrots,
• 1 stalk celery,
• 1 apple,
• ½ beet with greens,
• ½ handful wheatgrass,
• ½ handful parsley (you can substitute 1 whole handful of parsley if wheatgrass is unavailable)
  

Carrot-Cucumber-Beet Juice:

• 2-3 carrots,
• ½ cucumber,
• ½ beet with greens.
  

You can substitute ½ zucchini for the cucumber

Carrot-Kale-Parsley-Apple Juice:

• 5-6 carrots,
• 4 kale leaves,
• 4 sprigs of parsley,
• ½ apple
  

Carrot-Parsley-Potato-Watercress Juice:

• 5 carrots,
• 4 sprigs parsley,
• ¼ potato,
• 4 sprigs watercress

Cheers!