Juicing

Juice is probably the best beverage out of anything we can make. It has all the goodness of fruit - natural sugars, vitamins, etc, but doesn't have to be digested as much, as most of the fibre is gone, so can immediately benefit the body. What I do not like as much are the processed, manufactured juices. Whilst these are much better than pretty much anything else, they are preserved over long periods of time, which makes them inferior to freshly made juices.

There is a juice bar in one of the malls in the city centre. They make the juices right in front of you, and every time I've had a juice from there I've always felt remarkably uplifted, energised, and also tend not to feel hungry for quite a while. There is something tangible and real in this, and I feel that freshly made juice is probably as good as an alternative, if not better, to the high caffeine energy drinks, as well as to drinks like tea or coffee.

Anyway - such thoughts, as well as maybe the near-instant effect of juicing on physical condition and endurance had been gestating in my mind for a while until today, when my brother and I decided to spend a significant part of this morning juicing. We were at it for almost an hour, and produced nearly two litres of the stuff, which was fun. We somehow found ourselves with a lot of apples, so the base of the juice was made of apple. Then we added different combinations of other stuff - carrots, melons, oranges, cucumber (!), and the results were quite impressive.

Both of us agreed that the juice we made today was way better than anything we could get in the shops, and was as good as the stuff we could get in the juice bar. The combinations of different flavours was something, and the buzz we both got after having some was quite incredible.

So, I'm sold on juicing. I got my juicer about a year ago for under £20, and it gets the job done. I'm quite sure a lot is wasted in the pulp though, as my own limited research has shown that the higher priced masticating juicers are much more efficient in getting higher volumes of quality juice from fruit. But is it worth shelling out for a better one when mine does a reasonably decent job? I'm not sure.

However, whilst juicing was quite enjoyable, and the end result most definitely worth it, there is one part which seriously deters me from doing it again, despite the fact that I want to make this a regular practice...

The cleaning up afterwards.