Back in the late 1980's health food stores were intruducing many people to "juicing". No, not the "juicing" of the bodybuilding world where the term refers to taking steroids. In this case it's all about juice machines and how utilizing the juice of fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet can help benefit your health naturally.

The theory behind juicing is a simple one. By extracting the juice from a fruit or vegetable, you are taking in the valuable nutrients without all the work of having your body break down the fibers (although preparing the produce can be quite a bit of work!). When you take the juice in this state, you are not losing any vitamins or minerals that might otherwise be lost through a pasteurization process or from having the juice sit on the shelf and deteriorating.

Another benefit is you can consume far more fruits and vegetables in one sitting than you ever could by eating them whole. Have you ever tried to eat five carrots, two apples, a pear and a bit of ginger? It is not easy, however if you were to put those same items through a juicer you could fill a glass with the juice and consume them all at once! This is definitely a plus for those of us that do not enjoy eating fruits or vegetables.

To start with, you will need a good juice machine. The ones you see in the health food juice bars are massive and the bars need those to handle the large amounts of produce they juice on a daily basis. You will not need something quite that industrial. Prices range anywhere from $100 to $1,000, you can find one that suits your budget. Try not to get a cheap one you will regret it.

A low-end juicer won't have enough power and will get clogged easily and you will end up frustrated with it. Get good quality; a juicer in the $150 to $200 range is usually sufficient. When the Juiceman juicer first came out this was a good, solid machine, capable of handling daily use, and since the late 80's they have no doubt improved.

Preparing your produce for juicing is probably the most time consuming part of the whole process. Fill your sink with cold water, squeeze half a lemon into the water and add some salt (a couple of tablespoons). Let your produce soak for about ten minutes. There are also some products in the health food stores designed specifically for washing produce should you decide to try that.

One way of dealing with removing the wax from fruits like apples, one source suggests that you dip the fruit or vegetable into boiling water for approximately five seconds. While organic produce is expensive, you might want to get your apples from a natural market where they do not wax produce such as apples or cucumbers.

Now that you have gotten your produce cleaned and chopped into pieces that will fit the mouth of the juicer, you can start creating your juicy concoctions. Different combinations will give you certain results, and there is no rule against mixing fruits and vegetables.

Carrots and apples are always a standard and work well with everything, including each other. To that, you can add a chunk of ginger, or a clove of garlic to help you through a cold. Oranges, cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon all work well too.

When you juice melons be sure to remove the rind. Cucumbers are also tasty and go with anything. Kale is also a very popular vegetable to juice. It is thick in nutrients, but be careful to balance it out with other produce, as it can easily overpower the other flavors. Kale and Wheat grass juice are both considered "green" juices and can have a very strong taste.

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Jeff Clare has worked in healthcare and now writes regularly on health related topics including nutrition and asbestosis and much more