by Emily Tuuk

Created on: August 29, 2008

Vegetables have been called the building blocks of life, containing the vast majority of the nutrients we need for healthy, strong muscles, and overall health and wellness. Nutritionists estimate that we would need to eat around fifteen pounds of raw plants every day to supply our bodies with what they need. That's a hard chore! Fortunately, there is an easier, and even more beneficial way of consuming these "building blocks" than just eating them, and this comes from drinking fresh, raw vegetable juice.

Our bodies work long and hard every day to make sure that they are healthy and functioning well by separating and organizing different nutrients for use throughout our systems. When our bodies aren't fed enough proper nutrients they have to draw them from other parts of the body as substitute. Eventually stores run low, which leads to illness.

When we eat whole foods, the body extracts what it needs from the fiber, converting it to liquid. By juicing vegetables instead of eating them, you eliminate a step in the digestive process, and the vitamins and minerals from the liquid release quickly into the bloodstream, and go directly to the cells that need them the most. The juice that is extracted from the juicer contains the same elements as the liquid that the body separates from the fiber in the whole vegetables we eat.

When made fresh and consumed immediately, vegetable juice contains about ninety-five percent of the food value of the whole vegetable. Drinking one cup of carrot juice is the equivalent of eating about four cups of raw, chopped carrots.

Consuming fresh, raw vegetable juices is an incredibly beneficial way to boost the health and overall function and performance of you body. Of course, fiber is also an essential element of your diet, and that should certainly not be omitted. A good way to ensure that fiber stays in your diet is to eat whole fruit, especially considering the fact that vegetables are harder to digest when eaten whole, and tend to break down more slowly in the body than fruit does.

It is important to note that drinking canned, bottled, or concentrated vegetable juices does not give you nearly the same health benefits as drinking fresh, raw juice. The nutrients of the juice lose a lot of value within minutes of juicing, and juice from the juicer is not pasteurized, or "cooked", which would kill the living cells in the vegetable that are so important for your health. Making fresh juice also ensures that you are getting ONLY vegetables in your drink no additives and preservatives.

If vegetables are the building blocks of life, then vegetable juice is certainly one of the best - if not THE best - way of consuming them. In drinking a glass of raw, fresh vegetable juice, you are nourishing trillions of cells throughout your entire body with live enzymes, vitamins, and minerals, in one of the most efficient ways possible.

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