Why Juice?

A logical starting point, juicing is the easiest way to get guaranteed fresh, raw nutrients into your system in a compact and easy to digest way. At juiceproducer we recognise the problem of a nutrient depleted world, pollution, intensive farming and all that stuff takes its toll, but let's not weigh ourselves down with that, let’s do what we can to sort it.

Juicing and smoothie making is simply a fun way to give your body what it needs to function, repair itself and generally be at its full glory as simply as possible. Take the Juiceproducer challenge, dust off the juicer or buy one from us* get up ten minutes early for a week and juice one apple, 3 carrots, a little ginger, some beetroot for the battered old liver and maybe for the blender equipped amongst us whip a banana, mango and strawberries into the mix then try to tell us you don't feel and look better by Friday.

Types of juicer!
I think it's safe to say that everyone starts with a C? A good old centrifugal juicer. These are great machines, they're quick and cheap to buy, a great juicy starting point. But I know what you're going to say, they are noisy, can't do wheatgrass and offer a low yield?

Blimey you knows' is all already!! Yep its true, the good old centrifugal has its drawbacks, getting juice geeky – there is a somewhat lower yield, that is the volume of juice you will get per carrot you feed in, and, compared with a ‘masticating’ juicer, the harshness of the process of the cutter whizzing round at 10'000 rpm in the centrifugal type juicer employs slightly lessens the nutrient quality of the juice.

Next up in juice world is:


The single auger juicer, now we are a-juicing' easier to clean, better yield and a more gentle juicing process gives you a "live" or more nutrient rich juice, also most juicers in this category will do wheatgrass. These machines are sometimes known as ‘masticating’ juicers as the auger crushes the voluntary fruit and vegetables at slow revs, typically around 100 rpm. The result is a nice, quiet, easy to clean juicer giving a living nutrient rich juice that hits the spot!


More!?! OK then, the big daddies in juicer world are the twin gears, these machines offer a lot, they really will juice anything, work a little quicker than a single auger AND offer the best yield and nutrient quality. Serious tools for serious juice fans get one of these and you are at the juicy pinnacle. Well worth the extra money and a great investment in personal health.

Mark makes a lot of fresh dehydrator snacks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and dehydrator recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Growing and Juicing Wheatgrass

Growing your own wheatgrass at home, how to do it and the health benefits of wheatgrass juice


Wheatgrass juice is increasing in popularity and with very good reason, it's just baby wheat, grown and juiced, but it's one of natures most powerpacked juices.

" It's not the food in your life, it's the life in your food " Anon

Never a truer word said, if you are on a quest to increase health making your own wheatgrass juice at home will be a potent weapon in your arsenal to optimum vitality! So how do you grow it? OK! Here's the JP's quickie guide.
We think for a couple of people looking to increase health levels you need to start three trays of wheatgrass every three days, so you have three trays maturing at about the right time! Its the 3x3x3 plan!

Simple soak your wheatgrass seeds overnight to get the germination process rolling, then spread the seeds over a potting tray with an inch of compost in the bottom. Water them again when planted, there is no need to cover them with more soil. I use standard potting tray from the garden centre.

When it's cold outside, wheatgrass will grow very slowly, so bring the trays in overnight to prevent growth stagnating altogether and mould setting in.

" Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge "
Thomas Edison ( You know, the inventor of the light bulb )

Wheatgrass is ready to juice in typically 10-12 days or at a height of approximately 10" (24 cms) to harvest simply slice the grass off at the root with a serrated knife. You can only juice wheatgrass in a single auger juicer or a twin gear juicer, centrifugal juicers will just end up with grass dancing around in the top!

One third of the tray's grass will give you two good shots of wheatgrass juice, personally I don't mix it with any other juice, it's taste will overwhelm pretty much any other juice it's in. If you prefer you can mix it up with any other fruit or veggie juice, just be prepared for a greener more wheatgrassy juice!

On the three trays every three days plan you will have three shots a day for two people, this is a good level to maintain optimum health and detox. If you are battling illness then more is required but start off slowly, wheatgrass juice is so powerful most people will experience it's detoxing side effects be it nausea or a headache. Stick with it, this is normal.

What can you expect? well look at it like this, you are growing your own organic wheatgrass, juicing it and drinking it fresh, it doesn't get much more potent than that! With a live organic juice from a baby green plant you are drinking sunshine itself! On a more practical note wheatgrass juice is a great multivitamin and mineral juice, will help regulate blood sugar and cleanse you on a cellular level! Keep your cells happy and you're in good shape!

Wheatgrass powders and tablets, obviously there is no substitute for the fresh stuff, but done properly dried wheatgrass is good stuff! It can be as high in protein as a fillet steak but without the animal lard! Dried you will get most of the goodness but the usual rule applies, there is NOTHING better than fresh

Juicing and Cancer

Hello,

We do our thing here and get to know a good few people along the way, one harrowing thing is when we hear from recently diagnosed cancer victims told to start juicing by their health advisor. Cancer is a cellular disease, your body is made up of millions of tiny cells of different types. Each cell is like an individual little factory with an affinity to the whole, it does it's job and gets on with keeping you going as a human being. Like factories your cells produce waste products and need to be kept running clean and efficiently.

Cellular disease such as cancer can set in if your cells are trying to work in poor conditions for too long, for optimum health you need to be nourished at a cellular level and do all you can to help keep your cells happy and running as they should. Anti-oxidants are a part of this as they neutralize the harmful free radicals that are generated in normal body functions and by other influences such as pollution. Free radicals are always on the attack so your cells need a constant supply of anti-oxidants to neutralize them.

Nature supplies us with the greatest health aids available in the form of fresh, organically grown fruit and vegetables, taken raw, juiced and blended. This is the best way to maintain nutrient quality AND make the goodness easy for our body to access and utilize. Time elapsed after picking, cooking and processing ALL negatively affect the nutritional content of your fruit and veg. Buy local, organic produce and ingest it raw, it's one of the best preventative medicines out there.

Here's what we reckon to be in good cellular health or you could say anti cancer measures.

a) Drink plenty of anti-oxidant rich juices and smoothies, this means good amounts of mainly veggie juice. For maximum retention of the fragile nutrients juices must be from a single auger juicer or a twin gear juicer.
b) Supplement 1000mgs of Vitamin C per decade you've been alive (you really have to supplement this as 1000mgs is about 33 oranges worth, too much even for us to juice!) Supplement a quality multivit and mineral tablet too.
c) Maintain a good level of physical exercise and general activity, breath deeply as this stimulates lymph system. Ever notice how you instantly feel better after returning to the gym after a break?
d) Keep your diet alkaline, read our article about this I supplement my juices with a greens complex too.
e) keep well hydrated with filtered or bottled water.

If you do have a toxin heavy weekend, give your body a helping hand to neutralise the damage with a good dose of Vit C and go heavy on the juicer too! Your body doesn't suddenly get ill, it will fight and fight given the right tools and often win. Disease only sets in when your natural defenses are overwhelmed after a long battle.

Gerson therapy often achieves very good results juicing for cancer sufferers as poor diet and nutritionally void food is a major cause of cellular diseases as they supply no anti-oxidant power. Gerson therapy patients undergo a regime of as many of 12 organic, cold pressed juices a day. As well as highly alkaline this treatment gives the body what it needs to strengthen and fight back as well as cleanse. Your body needs these building blocks of natural nutrition to build, maintain itself and fight disease effectively. It is critical for Gerson Therapy patients to use a slow turning juicer like an auger juicer and organic produce, the last thing your body needs is more work to do like booting out pesticide residue.

Fight the good fight on a daily basis! our cells are continually attacked by free radicals therefore need to be continually supported by good nutrition, plenty of water and regular exercise. Regular physical activity blows away the cobwebs by activating your lymph system, lymph is the fluid that carries away toxins. If you are ill and seeking help we can put you in touch with your nearest Gerson therapist and supply all the equipment you need to adopt a life changing diet.

Wheatgrass juice is a potent green juice too; heavily alkaline and very cleansing it's so powerful as a detoxifier it often causes pretty instant detox headaches or nausea when first taken. There are hundreds of stories and testimonials as to the power of wheatgrass, with good reason too, the juice is high in chlorophyll, offers pretty much every mineral and vitamin out there AND tastes pretty good too. Have a read of our wheatgrass article here


Prevention is so much better than cure, make changes today that will positively effect all of your tomorrow's and you are well on the way to a healthy life.

Sprouting at Home

A simple guide to growing your own superfood sprouts at home, what you'll need and the benefits you will get.

Hello, time for a little about the joy of sprouting? In our quest for need to know health info we have tried all sorts including sprouting! and man, we love the joy of a good sprout. Nature has decreed that things are packed full of life force and goodness when young, so in the veggie world, sprouting is a good way to take advantage.

What is sprouting? It’s the simple practice of germinating your own mini plants in the comfort of your own home, providing you with a continual crop of easy to digest power packed super food that you've grown yourself! Probably using your own sprouter

A simple sprout fact, check this out! In some cases sprouted young plants contain 60 times the amount of enzyme packed nutrition than their unsprouted or dormant bean. This is a gift from nature, take your bean, seed, whatever, just add water and you unleash its bioavailable goodness! KA POW! Did I mention that sprouts are possible one of the most easy to digest foodstuffs available? Imagine that! Your own organically grown, zero food mile, nutrition rich, super food mega crop growing in your kitchen for virtually pennies. Sprouting is the new bling, trust me, P Diddy has mung beans germinating all over his "crib"

What you need for Sprouting

Air: sprouts need air to breath!! They are living breathing things! Good air circulation is essential to prevent them rotting and for optimum growth.

Water: after a good overnight soaking, sprouts need water every 12 hours at least and more if it’s warm. They need a good soak to wash off the enzyme that stops them from germinating.

Temperature: Sprouts like kind of what we do, nice and warm for good growth and a happy plant, comfy room temperature is the way to go

Room: remember after soaking sprouts can increase in size 30 times, give them room or they'll fight it out with each other!

Light: sprouts that produce leaves do need some light eventually, indirect sunlight is fine.

A sprouter: well they'll grow anywhere really, but a sprouter does make it easy!

Things to Sprout

Green stuff
.Alfalfa a daddy amongst sprouts, a true super food
Cabbage, full of life-force as sprout, undoubtedly cabbage even as a tiddler
Clover (red) lovely in salads and ready to eat in 6 days
Fenugreek green, good and somewhat groovy, a nice large sprout crop
Mustard hot little buggers these, add a little or you'll be blowing out an imaginary candle
Radish turbo charged again and a hot one
Sunflower super tasty and ready in 10 days
Wheatgrass another super food, wheatgrass is a super food and a medicine

Beans, nuts and pulses
Adzuki a super bean, a super sprout!
Barley ready in 2 to 5 days
Chickpea cook this one though ready in 4 days.
Lentil very easy to grow, steam them or eat sparingly on salads, ready in 5 days.
Mung good old mung beans, great in salads
Oats you can eat sprouts raw, sweet tasting

There we go, the joy of sprouting is you've grown your own crop, you know where it's come from, I doubt you will have sprayed it with pesticide and its all green goodness. Get sprouting today!!

The Alkaline Advantage

Eating by PH group to give yourself an alkaline constitution

It's our mission here at juiceproducer to spread the need to know health knowledge out to the busy masses, yes in the name of the country's health we juice, blend, grind and boil our way through the things that work and some that don't. Sorting the effective from the duff and delivering our findings to you.

This next one is amongst the most simple and effective, it's the process of alkalizing your system. Now we think of health as a sliding scale, most of us are relatively healthy, its fair to say that there is room for improvement but also we are a long way off grinding to a halt and sporting a feverish brow. Illness or disease needs several factors before it can take a hold, low immune system, lack of oxygen (just one reason you need a good dance once in a while) are a couple. One way of allowing disease to grip is an acidic constitution.

Acid and where it comes from

Acid is formed in the body when you consume certain foods (all of the fun ones, typically) the body dispenses of this acid in the form of uric acid. Now your body only has the capacity to rid itself of a certain amount of acid, drinking plenty of water is one way to help, the other is to eat plenty of alkalising foods keeping your constitution alkaline and making it difficult for disease to set in.

Highly acidic : eggs, mayonnaise, fish, shellfish, bacon, beef, chicken, lamb, liver , veal.

slightly acid : nuts, cheddar cheese, herrings, mackerel, rye, oats, wheat, rice, plums.

Neutral : butter, margarine, coffee, tea, sugar, syrup.

Slightly alkaline : almonds, coconut milk beans cabbage celery lentils lettuce mushrooms onions root veggies tomatoes apricots apples bananas grapes grapefruit oranges peaches raspberries prunes

Very alkaline : avocado, beetroots carrots potatoes spinach dried fruit wheatgrass rhubarb

There you go, fruit and veggies rock again!! Armed with the right info it's easy to make healthy food decisions where ever you are! Never a truer word was said than "eat your greens!" So now as you drink your freshly made juice you know it’s rammed full of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, nutrients AND that its alkalizing helping you to stay disease free!

Please don't be put off the oily fish you see listed here, eating oily fish three times a week is an excellent way of ensuring adequate levels of Omega oils. Just eat a good supply of dark leafy greens to balance things out.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Why Blend?

What to look for when buying a good blender and how to select one for the raw food lifestyle.

We bang on about juicers enough, but here’s our thought on our other favorite tool of choice, the blender. A decent blender in your kitchen is a brilliant tool for healthy drinks no mess, no waste and great easy to digest drinks! The blenders we offer are all tough boys, plenty of power offering easy liquidizing of fruits and veggies, we think when you adopt a raw and fruity life you'll need equipment you can depend on.

What to look our for when you buy a blender

• POWER, at least 900 watts but the more the merrier, a really powerful blender will make smoother smoothies quicker than a low power machine.
• QUALITY particularly in the power socket, a cheap blender will ALWAYS break where the drive from the motor meets the blade driver.
• JUG SIZE again, if you are making drinks for the family, the bigger the better, and allow for the drink sloshing around.
• CONTROL speed control is an advantage, at low speed you can fold oils and powders into your drinks at high speed you can mill nuts and seeds.

EASY to clean, look for wipe clean surfaces, and simple to clean contours.
Keep things interesting too, if like me you can be a little lazy, equip yourself with a decent recipe book so you've always got new things to try. This keeps me primed with new mixes to try and knowledge of the effects of natural additives such as spirulina! There are TONNES of hip books out there, they're a great help in keeping things fresh!

When you've got the time double up the juicer and blender for max nutrition, juice some carrots, ginger and tender stem, throw that juice in the blender and add some pears, pineapple, half an avocado and a couple of scoops of essential food and KAPOW, there you have broad spectrum natural nutrients in a glass! Take a look at our juicer-blender deals.

Remember, the point of consuming smoothies as well as them tasting really good is that liquidized food is easier to digest than food you chomp up, this means it takes less energy to digest and is more thoroughly digested.

If you are new to this fresh and juicy lifestyle here is some help deciding if you need a juicer and a blender and what each tool is for.

So here are a few of our favorite things to chuck in the blender
• pineapple: just slice it up trim the skin and lob it in
• avocado: a total favorite total food here at JP towers you can't go wrong with avocado in the mix
• banana: a smoothie staple, too fleshy to juice so in the blender it goes
• Berries: blue, straw, black, you name it berries are good for you and add great taste to a smoothie.
• Kiwi fruits: rammed full of vitamin C slice them, scoop them and throw it in the blender, the seeds crush up nicely and add protein.
• Oranges: buy seedless oranges peel them and blend them great and no waste!
• Apples: peel and core they blend well in a powerful machine.
• Melon: high water content, great for thinning out a drink so it will go up a straw OK!
• peach: stone out then blend and great taste and texture to any drink
• Nuts and seeds: add protein and more to your smoothies with a handful of nuts and seeds. So easy to do and really worth while.
• Mango: another fleshy one that is hard to much else with apart from eat whole or blend, great distinctive taste too.

There are a few ideas and reasons why we love our blenders, so quick and easy to use, no waste and easy cleaning too, an essential part of the raw food kitchen.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

F.A.Q's of Juicing and Health

Some questions we get asked a lot on the subject of juicing and health and the answers we give

We're juice and health people here, we find that people always ask us some similar questions on the subject of juicing and natural health. So here is our F.A.Q section in which we aim to answer some of the most common questions on juicers, diet and natural ways to excellent health.

Question: What's the best answer to domestic juicing?
Answer : the age old, we reckon that in most scenarios of a family up to 4 people looking to juice a normal array of fodder including wheatgrass or leafy greens, the single auger style juicer is the way to go, won't go blunt, won't wear out, nice and quiet and will juice it all.

Question: do I need to supplement my diet even when juicing regularly?
Answer: check this! it's a nutrient depleted world my friend! food miles, storage times, intensive farming from tired soil all have a bearing so we say yes! A quality multivitamin and mineral plus separate turbo dose vitamin C and multi oil capsule should be part of everyone's daily routine! R.D.A's are a MINIMUM we aim for optimum amounts which can exceed the government R.D.A by a couple of thousand percent!! Filling the gaps with quality supplements is an investment in your future! Cruising right through to a ripe old age disease free is well worth £25 a month, no? If you are under stress, you burn nutrients at a faster rate, so to cope, take more in! simple!

Question: what's the healthiest kind of juice?
Answer : veggie juices rock, they are more complex than fruit juice and basically ace them in terms of nutrition, the top of the tree are the dark green juices, alkaline, cleansing and a massive array of nutrients, not the best taste but drink em!

Question: will juices make me more beautiful?
Answer : YES! look what happened recently in the news, scientists issued a report that vitamin A rich skin creams have an anti aging effect, it's true, but why rub it on the outside when you can drink retinol (vit A) rich juice and nourish the cells that manufacture your skin! Try a carrot juice a day for a week and watch the wrinkles disappear!

Question: do centrifugal juicers damage juice quality?
Answer : a little, ALL juicers are good things, it's a hell of a lot better than carton juice or juice from concentrate which is next to pointless on the nutrient front. Centrifugal juicers run at high speed and whip too much air into the mix, your juice will oxidize in the glass, hence is loses it's anti-oxidant power, which is one of the main health benefits.

Question: what's the main reason to drink juice in a nutshell?
Answer: Well, we are made of billions of cells and we constantly regenerate ourselves, our cells are like little factories that make this possible, food is their raw material for manufacturing the new you, it makes sense to give those factories the best materials they can get doesn't it?

Questions: I'm knackered all the time, can juicing help?
Answer : Oh man, we hear this so much, yes juicing can help, fatigue is widespread it takes a while to happen and a while to get rid of, but a healthy nutrient rich diet is essential, getting a prescription upper like prozac only prolongs the condition as in our option another drug or toxin simply cannot help the situation long term.

Question: I want to lose some porkiness, is juicing a good idea?
Answer: Embrace a nutrient dense low bulk diet full of enzymes other active good stuff and watch your body respond. How can we expect to be the right weight when the average diet is high on mass but low on essential nutrients? A balanced diet is a whole heap more than the right proportions of protein, carbs and fat.

Question: Will a good diet affect my mood?
Answer: Hell yeah! a sugary-hi GI-caffeine diet upsets your system, leaving you low on concentration, hungry, craving another sugar fix and generally dimmer than you could be. Run your body well, and you'll be cooler, you'll find it easier to learn and you'll respond to stress better, not to mention an innate sense of well being.

Question: what else can help my level of health easily?
Answer: You GOTTA move it baby! your blood delivers nutrients to the cells, but they also make waste materials, these are carried away by your lymph fluid. Your lymph system doesn't have a pump like the heart and relies instead on deep breathing and muscular movement, get busy!!!

Question: what do you think of high protein diets like atkins?
Answer: It's a smoke and mirrors weight loss trick that's short term, yes it works short term but it's not all that healthy and is no substitute for a proper healthy diet, loads of greens and nutrient rich juices and good old graft down the gym or out in the fresh air

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Do you need a Juicer or Blender

Well two great tools for today's healthy kitchen, let's start by telling you what each machine does. A blender is a standard piece of kitchen mixing equipment, for the raw foodist this is what you use to make delicious meal-in-a-glass smoothies!
A blender is simply a mixing jug with a rotary blade at the bottom; whatever you put in the top gets liquidized and turned into a drink! So for example you may throw in a banana, some soy milk, some strawberries and a few ice cubes and you'll have a delicious and easy to digest fruit smoothie, no waste, and no fuss and just swill out the blender jug when you are done. Simple!

The beauty of smoothie making is that there is no waste product, everything is used up in the drink, your ingredients are liquidized and made very easy to digest, just think of those lazy summer days with a tall banana smoothie in your hand and the sun's rays on your face perfect!!

Blenders also make short work of adding super foods and other drink enhancers to your smoothie; you could whip in barley grass powder, protein powder, ginseng, or any other healthy liquid or powdered supplement!

Buy a decent blender and you can make super easy to digest nutritious smoothies every day!

Ingredients suitable for blending:
1) Banana, Mango, Strawberry, Raspberry soft pulpy fruits!
2) Juice from your juicer
3) Nuts
4) Seeds
5) Kiwi fruit (peeled), Berries, Star fruit, passion fruit, avocado, grapes,
6) Orange and other citrus (peeled of course)
7) Super food
8) Greens complexes, powdered barley grass etc.
9) Protein powder! Go beefcake!
10) Seed oil, essential fats etc
11) Ice, ice baby, let's face it you want your smoothie cool, after all anything less than the best is a felony!
12) Leafy greens I often make a point of chucking in a handful of spinach
Now your juicer is like a key!! It's a key for taking all of Mother Nature’s natural fare and unlocking the raw liquid goodness from within!! Grab a carrot! Now look at that carrot and imagine inside it is charged with all the stuff you need, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and live nutrients for life!!!

Now your juicer allows you to take a handful of nature’s finest foods and separate the rough, tough, and hard to break down body of the fruit or veg from the pure liquid gold nutrient content within! If you were to take that carrot now and run it through a juicer now you would have two things, one, a small mound of bland dry pulp, and two, a glass of nutritional LIQUID GOLD!!! This is what the juicer does! It unlocks the natural raw power of fruits and veggies and gives them to you in a way that your body can fully and easily absorb!

Your juicer can give you a lifetime of service providing you with the best dietary supplement of all natural living juice!

Now there are obviously different types of juicer with differing capabilities so this gives you a good idea of which type of machine does what! Or you can always call us and have a chat about what you want to do and what you are looking to achieve!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Juicing for Kids

A good few parents have noticed that juicing can be a cunning way to smuggle fresh fruit and vegetables into their offspring. Well it is true! The first taste is with the eye as they say.

Most youngsters are born with a fairly sweet tooth but this can easily be catered for with fruit and vegetable juices instead of sugary drinks which can form a habit for life! Sugar in it's simple granular form is not such a great idea to eat really, like anything in small amounts it's OK, but look on the side of food packets, we've got to the stage that sugar is in almost everything! It's part of the reason that some foods are addictive and moreish. Great if you are the manufacturer, not so good if you are a consumer.

The sugars in fruit juices are more complex, take longer to digest and avoid the hyperactivity then energy crash associated with processed sugar. Vegetable juices are liquid gold in health terms, you can make a 50/50 split, say, apple, pineapple, carrot and spinach juice and it will still appeal to the sweeter tooth.

We think you have the opportunity before your offspring are out in the world to set up good food and drink choices as a matter of habit. A well educated palate will find sugary snacks and drinks sickly sweet and pretty gross.

So with juicing for the younger crowd you can get them excited about the millions of variations and mixes to make, and the fun to be had making juices and smoothies. One thing to note is that a centrifugal juicer gives a cleaner juice that seems more like carton juice, we prefer the auger style or twin gear machine, but some juice is better than no juice!

So make juicing fun! the noise and theatre of making juices and smoothies can be a laugh, take a good look at the dualit blender, it has a safety device that prevents it from starting if the jug is not securely in place! The auger juicers are fun in a silly way too as the pulp emerges from the front of the machine it's like a plastic pig pooping on your kitchen work top. Bless my childish mind!

Get the kids involved making their own healthy drinks and snacks, make fruit and veg fun and be creative, garnish the juices with slices of fruit or grate some rind on the top. Use straws, umbrellas and diner style glasses to glam up the goodness and we think you'll be onto a winner.

Then when no one is looking, throw a hand full of leafy greens in the blender and the victory is yours!!

You can make juicey ice lollies by freezing juice or smoothy mix on a stick, suspend whole fruit in the ice cream or lolly!

Smoothies are a firm favourite because they can be cunningly disguised as milkshakes, you can even lob the odd sprout or green vegetable into the juicer and no one will be the wiser!

This is the beauty of juicing for kids, you can make their favourite drink, make it fun, full of the things they like to eat and introduce small amounts of the healthy stuff you actually want them to eat, what a great start to life it is too, being full of natural nutrients from day one! As a reward you can look forward to a calmer child with greater concentration as they don't ride the digestion roller coaster of processed and high sugar content foods!

For the brave parent you can try and fortify juices with more and more vegetable content as time goes by, or even a supergreens complex! tricky but nutritionally well worth the effort. A good natural diet will help your child fulfill their potential academically, physically and give them the best shot at a long and healthy life!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Single Auger Juicers Described

The single auger class of juicer described with pros and cons discussed

Single auger juicers offer many benefits; it is the most versatile and easy to clean class of juicer. There are also some excellent slow turning genuine cold press style juicers within this class of juicer, which give the best quality of juice. I feel turning speed is a very important aspect when assessing a juicer with juice quality in mind, the operating speed, if high, can lead to an aerated juice that will oxidise and lose health benefits in the glass!

Auger juicers work by employing a profiled auger that rotates and presses the fruit and vegetable against a perforated juicing screen to literally press out the juice. Most share variations on these similar parts, the rotating auger, some kind of perforated juicing screen and the main body or barrel that houses the parts. The drive end of the juicer typically uses and small electric motor of maybe 200 watts and a reduction gearbox to give a typical running speed of less than 100 rpm. Some juicers in the single auger juicer class us a direct drive motor and running speed of over 1000 rpm. Although these are technically single auger juicers they are not of the “cold press” style.

Single auger juicers that genuinely cold press the juice operate at a turning speed of around 80 – 120 revolutions per minute, any juicer that operates significantly faster than this bench mark 100 revs cannot be classed as a “cold press” or “masticating” juicer and must be using a cutting style instead. I feel that the cold press action is important for a juicer to offer the best quality, most potentially healthy juice.

Another major advantage of the single auger juicer is its ability to handle leafy greens such as spinach and wheatgrass. Leafy greens offer complex nutrition and chlorophyll a nutritious and cleansing element of any edible green plant. Another great benefit of the single auger juicer is the ease of clean up. Any mess is quite contained between the auger, the juicing screen and the barrel of the juicer. This makes cleaning a simple dismantle and rinse off process.

Some single auger juicers offer great flexibility, they can grind, pump and homogenise and come with the parts to make nut butters, baby foods, pastas and breadsticks, with a simple change of screen the juicer is transformed into a versatile kitchen appliance. Some juicers offer additional attachments giving you the ability to crush ice, slice salads and cold press your own seed oils, such as flax or hemp seed oil.

In summary we do feel that a quality single auger juicer offers the best all round juicing solution to the typical domestic setting.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

A Little Juicing History

A little background is always good, and juicing and using food to increase health has been around for a while now however there are a few notable events and people that have furthered the cause

The first juicers are still amongst the most potent and effective; these were large cumbersome hydraulic press style machines. Pioneered and improved constantly by Dr Norman Walker who started researching the health benefits of fruits and vegetables in the 1920's. His research led to the development of the Norwalk juicers, still available and recommended today by the Gerson Cancer Therapy Trust.

As juicing become more mainstream there became a need for a more manageable household juicing machine and so the first twin gear, auger and centrifugal juicers started to appear and be developed. Juicing became incredibly popular in the late 70's with the rise of some notable people such as Anne Wigmore, one of the world's keenest wheatgrass juicers.

Norman Walker himself went on to the ripe old age of 118 years young, a great example of the power of raw living juices!

Further refinements and modern production techniques brought the price of juicers to within the reach of all. Now we see an excellent range of juicers available. The high street shops still prefer the centrifugal style of juicer, whereas the more specialist juicer supplier will always tend to recommend single auger or twin gear machines on grounds of usability, juice yield and health benefits.

“Beauty and vitality are gifts of nature for those who live according to her laws “Leonardo Da Vinci

The most modern juicers are now excellent, the oscar vitalmax and machines such as the Angel and Green Power Kempo deliver excellent results in very user friendly packages. In the modern convenience based society we live in most people have noticed that certainly dietary wise something has gone missing.

We believe that "something" is the life in our food; modern farming and processing techniques have given us easy living but left our food lifeless. With this reliance on processed food and convenient living you can also plot the rise and rise of cellular diseases such as cancer. There is no mystery to the health benefits of raw juices and natural foods, they simply contain all the naturally occurring nutrients needed to sustain life at its healthy best, any artificial process or treatment lessens their potency.


The movement towards organic supplies, raw food and juices is a definite 'return to nature' and a realization that shortcuts often cost you in the long run. I hope you enjoy reading this site and can fit as much raw, living food into your life as you can.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Centrifugal or Masticating Juicer?

Help choosing between a centrifugal and masticating juicer and what they offer

Right ya'll here is something that we hear a lot about, the eternal debate about centrifugal juicers over masticating juicers, let me tell you, they are both good and both have their place. True the masticator is better at preserving nutrients and we do try to get people into using them but make no mistake a decent centrifugal is still a good starting point in juicer ownership.

Centrifugal juicers get slated but we see a place for them for sure, for one they give a clean juice which is a lot easier to feed to kids, and they are a whole heap better than no juice or juice made from concentrate!!! Also if you are new to juicing you can try it with a centrifugal juicer for 50 odd quid or so, a great juicy starting point! The negatives are mainly that they are tricky to clean and do make a juice that goes off pretty quick, so it's a case of juice and drink, juice and drink. If you are fussy about bits in your juice, or want your kids to drink fresh juice, then a decent centrifugal juicer like the L'equip mini is the way to go!


Masticating juicers are better at preserving nutrients as they turn slowly and squash the juice out of your fresh produce, this is what we recommend as it's better for you, but bear in mind the juice will be "live" ie somewhat bitty, so your kids may not dig it! If you are juicing for health benefits a masticating style juicer is the type for you. It's the essential piece of health kit for getting super powered green juices into your system, it will be flexible and juice pretty much anything you throw at it, will be quiet and never go blunt, block up or otherwise slow down your juicing!! If we had the choice we'd go masticating juicers every time!

juicy hint: If you want the double benefit of a cold pressed juice that is bit free, then just simply pour the juice through a flour sieve!!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Essential Oils and Fats

Your body needs essential oils and fats to function at its best, here is a quick guide on getting them in your diet.

Essential oils, Omega fats, fatty acids, trans fats, there is a lot of fat out there, some good some bad. We hope we can help you sort them out, as a broad term the only good fats come from the non animal world. Simply put the only fats and oils really worth eating are from fish, nuts, seeds and vegetables.

We get our fats and oils from good sources, avocado is good, hemp and flax seed oils are also good, and both give a nice nutty flavor. Oily fish are good as well; we make sure we eat some small oily fish, e.g. mackerel or kippers three times a week. And we go to the counter to buy it. I don't dig fish in cans all that much as the can material can get into the fish.

Nut and seed oils are good things indeed, so try and add some avocado, coconut flesh, hemp or flaxseed oil in your juicer mixes two or three times a week, you only need a little splash as these nutrients are very concentrated.

You can fortify a juice by throwing a handful of nuts, seeds or a mixture into the juice at the blender stage. This is when you need a blender that is fast and powerful enough to mill the nuts and seeds making them super digestible. The auger juicers are multi function and can be used to grind up nuts and seeds too.

Remember nuts in particular are very calorie heavy so you don't need many of them, and try to avoid buying salty nuts, it makes them incredibly more-ish. Seeds are always worth milling or grinding as they are very hard to digest. Nuts and seeds have a lot to offer, they are very mineral rich too, the old saying is "nuts and seeds, greens and beans" with that lot in your diet regularly you'll be well nourished.

Mark is a juicer and blender enthusiast and maintains a healthy lifestyle.

For more information on juicers and blenders look here.

Bottled or Fresh Juice?

What separates a manufactured juice from a fresh home made juice from your juicer.

This is our thoughts on bottled juices and why fresh juice from your juicer at home is the best thing for you! And while we are on this subject what exactly is juice from concentrate??

Take the humble apple for example, when an apple is growing on a tree in blazing sunlight then it's a living thing growing and rammed full of nature’s best goodness! As soon as you pick the apple it's reached its peak and whatever happens from now it's losing its natural goodness and living energy!

That's why it's a good idea to eat fresh fruit as soon as you can, and by fresh, nothing is fresher than straight off the tree! Fresh fruit and veg or freshly juiced fruit and veg juice is about as healthy as foodstuff gets. Rammed full of vitamins, minerals sucked straight from the ground, and easy to digest. Super.

Now freshly squeezed bottled juice is good, no doubt, but think about it, the fruit is picked, sent to the factory, juiced ( and we hope it's juiced in a nutrient preserving way of course ) probably heat treated in some way to give it it's shelf life and then sent to the shop for you to buy! That's a good few hours there to say the least, and that heat treating will certainly degrade the nutrient content! Not good and not what we can call a living food is it?

And what does made from concentrate mean? Well I'll tell you! This is a way to make cheaper juice at source, say you want pineapple juice in a country that pineapples don't grow. Here are the 6 steps of juice that is made from concentrate....

1 grow your pineapples.

2 pick the pineapples and juice them.

3 dehydrate the juice, making pineapple concentrate (yes another heat treatment).

4 ship the dehydrated pineapple concentrate to the country you want to sell juice in.

5 re-hydrate the pineapple pulp from the concentrate.

6 bottle the juice up and send it out to the shops for sale.

Its things like this that can leave our food pretty dull and lifeless, the energy, nutrient content and life itself starts to fall away from our food as soon as it's picked.

This is why we think living juices straight from a slow speed, cold press style juicer are the best thing for you! Your body needs the fragile micro nutrients that processing, time and heat removes from your food.

We hope these articles on juicers, living foods and other live food methods are useful to you and get you thinking about what you can do to improve your health and vitality today!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

A Guide to Twin Gear Juicers

The twin gear juicer class described including their strengths and weakness’

Twin gears are the juicing pinnacle they often cost the most of course but offer the most precise juicing and the best yield. Twin gear juicers work by using two counter rotating gears that roll together compressing the juicing material allowing the juice to run between the gears. A profiled front section to the gears pushes the waste pulp along and out of the front of the juicer. If a measure of a juicer is the dryness of the pulp, then the twin gears are the most efficient juice extractors.

Twin gear juicers juice the fine leaves of wheatgrass particularly well offering the best yield from this costly crop. Twin gears are particularly good at extracting wheatgrass juice as the leaf is highly fibrous and tough, needing the high compression and precision that the twin gear offers.

One disadvantage to twin gear juicers is that they can struggle to grip and juice softer fruits, this disadvantage is lessened by juicer gear diameter, so check which juicer has the largest gear size before you buy. At the time of writing this is the Easyhealth Angel twin gear. If you want to juice soft fruits then a single auger juicer is better. Or just use a strong blender.

Speed of rotation is important when evaluating a new juicer as the higher the speed, the more likely oxidation will take place. Most twin gear juicers rotate between 80 and 135 rpm, which is excellent for preserving juice quality and nutritional benefits of the juice.

One aspect to owning a twin gear juicer cannot be ignored; the juicer itself is quite complicated with many intricate working parts this makes for an involved clean up, so make sure you are aware of this before you buy.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

A Guide to Dehydrators

A quick look at dehydrators, why they are used, and their benefits.

Welcome, welcome time to look at dehydrating now, it used to be popular in olden times where I think they probably called it "sun drying" and I believe it was big in the wild wild west for they dried out strips of beef to make "jerky". Now what they stumbled across was a way to preserve food while locking in the nourishing nutrient content, unlike cooking which is too harsh and hot, destroying enzymes, protein and other goodness.

Dehydrators and dehydrating foods for health

So how does a dehydrator work? Easy really, a dehydrator is basically a cabinet with a fan and heater element in, the warm air is circulated through the unit, heating the drying area evenly and dehydrating whatever you put in it. The result is dried out fruit and vegetables or meat, if you wish similar to the packet stuff you find in health food shops. Until you have made your own though you'll never know how much tastier home grown stuff is!

An endless supply of healthy snacks!! yep that’s what its about, feeding yourself right day in day out, if you follow all the fresh and raw lifestyle tips you can throw out all the diet books and associated nonsense, you body will thank you for living natural by regulating body weight, giving you more energy and just running how nature intended.

Types of dehydrator: basically two types to contend with, the stacking type or the drawer type. All I would say is the stacker is easier to take apart and clean, whereas the drawer type is no doubt easier to use. The more expensive dehydrators are big units and benefit from the fan and heater mounted in the end rather than the bottom of the machine, which creates more even drying temperatures. The dehydrating pinnacle really!

Things to dehydrate: all fruit and veggies will dehydrate, so think pineapple cubes, strawberry chunks, banana slices, mango crisps, berries, kiwi fruit sections. On the veggie front stick to the ones you like the taste of as the taste gets stronger with dehydrating!

Mark makes a lot of fresh dehydrator snacks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and dehydrator recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Raw Food an Easy Guide

Some words on raw food and the ideas behind it.

It's a funny old world, things go in and out of fashion and it's said to be the doom of man that he forgets (I like that one!). One thing that fits into this pattern is the consumption of raw foodstuffs, back in the day it was ALL we could do!! Yet now it's seems to be viewed as a new and healthy trend. Chew on that for a while, there is really very little out there in the dietary world that we haven't already done, got bored of, forgotten about then had come back as the latest trendy thing to do.

Reading this may mean you are interested in raw food consumption, and good on you! Fresh food eaten raw can literally make your day! It's also one of the simplest of techniques to master; you need a few good tools and a little imagination.

The principal behind raw food consumption is simple: raw food is intact, all the fragile nutrients are present and none of its "life force" is lessened by processing. It's bonkers when you ponder that most of our food takes days, weeks or even months to reach us from the moment it leaves the soil or is plucked from its branch. Then the first thing we do is heat treat it!! Cooking as we know it undoubtedly lessens the nutrient potential of fruit and vegetables. Heat treatments like pasteurizing, or freezing and excessive delay in food reaching our plates (food miles) also weaken nutrient potential.

So what do we need to eat raw? Strictly nothing more than our teeth, but to spice things up and broaden what we can make a few benchmark tools are required! A Single auger juicer will allow you to juice, grind, mince, and make sauce. Importantly you must choose a slow turning machine, as high speed juicers introduce heat and oxygen (two destroyers of nutrients). A powerful blender will add smoothies, milks and more to your menu. Think of a dehydrator as a low temperature oven than gives your fruit and vegetables a shelf life but without lessening the nutrient value too seriously, a dehydrator in your kitchen will allow you to make all sorts of snacks and goodies and make sure nothing goes to waste!

We think that live natural food creates lively natural people. Next time you're in the queue at a burger bar you too may feel, as we do, that we are on set of a zombie movie! Find a juice bar or whole food cafe and compare the buzz!!
In conclusion then we are cellular beings, what I mean by that is nothing hokey it simply means that we are make up of billions of cells, these cells are constantly replicating, dying off, fighting disease and doing thousands of other functions on our behalf. Cells are like miniature factories, then need raw material, and they produce waste materials, we think the best raw materials you can give yourself is a fresh raw "living" diet!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Nuts and Seeds in your Diet

Including nuts and seeds to your diet, how to do it and the benefits.

Nuts and seeds are rammed full of dietary essentials and easy to add into your diet, they can be hard to digest so mill them in the blender or grind them up in your single auger juicer so help your body get the best from them. Milling or grinding will break the seed or nut down a little and make them easier for your body to digest. Nuts contain protein, fiber, vitamin E and a good selection of minerals. They are potent and calorie rich though so you only need a few.

Nutty butters: some juicers excel at making nut butters, the single auger machines are the best for this, they double up as pestle and mortar style homogenizing machines that allow you to make pastes, nut butters, baby foods and other goodies.

Nutty hint: common sense this one but always buy non salted nuts, salt is everywhere in our diets, you needn't add any salt in the form of salty nuts, that's for sure! Also salt makes things very moreish, so you’ll find it hard to stop eating them!

Nuts and seeds go great in smoothies and mill into dust in a decent blender. Mill them up before you put the fruit and vegetable ingredients in so they are ultra easy for your body to use. This is a super way of introducing vegetable protein to your diet as well as essential fatty acids, my favored seeds are Hemp or Flaxseed.

Nutty warning when you make a smoothie for someone, make sure the do not have a nut allergy! Take extra care when making drinks for children as they may be completely unaware of their allergies and intolerance.

Nut storage nuts are easy to store, you just need some screw top or lever seal containers, like any food they do need to be in air tight containers! They will then last 2-6 months quite easily, put a few grains of rice in with them to absorb moisture.

Seeds

Seeds again are natural powerhouses of nutrition we like linseeds, pumpkin seeds, hemp, sesame seeds and pine nuts which are the seed of the pine tree, expensive I know but great tasting and a fine source of vitamin E. We think the reason they are expensive is the cost of extracting them from such a spiky tree!

Apple pips are not good to eat, make sure you core or quarter the apple and remove the pips from them!

Seed sense! Seed’s are potent, you only need a few regularly, and buy them hulled and keep them in sealed containers, flax seed oil is a good source of essential fatty acids.

Well I hope you found that useful and it helps you in some way, the importance of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is clear to see and we thing juicing has it part! We think juicing and smoothie making is one of the best ways of getting a healthy diet and remember that nutrients can be fragile so keep it raw!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

How to Assess Health

The idea of health and attitudes towards the concept discussed.

Funny question that really, isn't it? Most of us and (me included a little while ago) think that we are either healthy or sick, that is the basic concept. Carry on doing what you're doing until you get sick then go to the Doctor to get help.

The comparison is easy, think about your car, do you run it until it breaks down or do you follow the service schedule in the hand book to make it reliable and prevent it from breaking down? Change the oil, keep the coolant topped up and grease the joints and you have a healthy car, neglect it and it will eventually let you down.

Our message here is one of preventative healthcare, not waiting for something to go wrong but busting moves on a day to day basis that keep the human machine running well in both body and mind. Health is not "I'm healthy" or "I'm sick" choice but an endless sliding scale. To be at your best it's good to do all you can to maintain your level as well as possible.

There are lots of angles on this, exercise, flexibility, rest, nutrition; stress management etc, the one we are most interested in is nutrition. Our thinking is that nutrition is the bedrock, get this as right as you can and it will help all the others. Well nourished you are better equipped to handle stress, more likely to have the extra energy to take exercise and well you know, just happier!

We've learned a whole heap about nutrition here at juiceproducer and recognize the problem that most people face; it's the whole finding time deal! So what we aim to do here is supply the equipment and knowledge to make optimum levels of natural nutrition easy to achieve in todays fast paced life! The best bit is if you can get the ball rolling then you'll be rewarded with the extra energy to keep the ball rolling and do more and more!

The most important thing is to take the plunge into juicing and raw living, pop out to any department store and you can find juicers from about £40 they may not last too long, but at least you will have made a start and you'll be able to tell if juicing is for you! With fresh juice in your system you'll have more zest and energy for life!

We hope buying your first juicer is the first step on a road to beaming good health and a life of high energy living!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Food Miles

The impact of food miles on your fresh fruit and vegetables and the potency of their nutrients.

Food miles are an interesting development of cheap air and sea travel, gone is the day when wearing your attractive loincloth you would wander up to the nearest tree, pluck an apple and eat it as fresh and as vibrant as it could be.

Now our food takes a longer journey from tree or earth to plate, I feel its important to realise that living foods are firstly vital and secondly losing their power to give health benefits from the moment they are picked. In some cases out of season foods are delivered frozen by sea freight or rushed over by air so we can enjoy a wider range of choice throughout the year. We are based in the UK so we enjoy bananas from the equator, apples from South Africa and Kiwi fruits from New Zealand. Although very enticing, what are these foods losing on the way?

This is what we think, we know fresh fruit and vegetables are good for us because of the healing power of the nutrients within, some nutrients are known about, the vitamins and minerals, some micro nutrients are yet to be discovered and their full benefits charted. But you can bet one thing! These nutrients are FRAGILE and they are live. Therefore common sense would indicate that foods are best eaten as fresh as possible and, importantly, unfrozen, un-processed and not heat treated unless necessary! Isn’t it striking that we are the only species on the planet with a catalogue of illness and we’re also the only one that cooks and stores food.

What can you do? We recommend tracking down your local farmers market, often good here are very reasonably priced and direct from farmer to you with minimal time and process between. Brilliant! Also shop for locally grown produce as a matter of habit, this will ensure the freshest of produce.

We also recommend enjoying the art of juice and smoothie making as this takes uncooked fresh fruit and vegetables extracts the goodness raw and uncooked and supplies your body with the nutrients it needs!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Storing Juices and Smoothies

Storing fresh juices in a way that will retain maximum nutrients and the juicers to use to make a storable juice.

Hello,

A few words of advice on storing your juice. If you use a centrifugal juicer, you can't really store the juice, you must drink it straight away. This is because the juice is very aerated by the process and oxidizes straight away. A slight negative for the centrifugal machine but that's the way it is! Your body needs the anti oxidant quality of juice for health, oxygen going into the juice at the manufacturing stage weakens the juice's protective power! In short it oxidizes the anti-oxidants! No good!!

The good news is if you own an auger or twin gear juicer your juice is "cold pressed" giving you a nutrient rich juice that you can indeed store!

Now what we do is make our juice in one session in the morning and enjoy it until the day is done. We store the juice in the fridge in bottles with the air tight levered top ensuring an air tight seal, keeping the juice as fresh as possible.

Do please remember this though; as soon as you make your juice it is rather like a battery! full of power straight from the off but it will start to wilt a little before long. The reason for this is that most nutrients are fairly fragile, time, heat, air and processing destroys them, also the enzymes in the juice will actually start to "digest" the nutrients of the juice itself! That’s how active or "live" fresh juices are!

We reckon that the best way to enjoy juice is by storing it for no longer than 10 hours in the fridge in an airtight container. Don't leave it overnight, it's too long. For the best results or for health restoring power juice then drink, juice then drink! The auger juicers are easy to clean, so this isn't as hard going as it seems!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Nutrition for Maximum Performance

Nourishing your body for Maximum Performance and Endurance.

Hi,

This is something we get asked about a lot, fatigue seems to be widespread with people losing their spark and lust for life. We think the answer is simple! Dull lifeless food equals dull lifeless people! If you fall into this category of person and want some of that drive back, try a few of these ideas.

Stage one: like it or not there is 42 feet of digestive system from mouth to anus, digestion is one of the highest energy consumers within the body. It makes sense that if this system is clogged and battered, there will be little energy left for muscular movement and generally charging at life. SO cut down on processed food, animal protein and diary products, up your intake of fresh fruit and vegetables and supplement some soluble fibre.
For the adventurous try a herbal cleanse/toxin absorbing kit. These use soluble fibre such as Psyllium Husk and a toxin absorber like bentonite clay.

Stage two: with a cleaner and more efficient digestive system take the chance to ditch those bad habits! Particularly sugary snacks, sugar in its refined stage should not be in the food chain. Bold statement, but true, it’s an addictive stimulant, not a food stuff. This means the more you eat, the more you’ll want to eat. Check the ingredient panel on your produce if sugar is in the top 5 ingredients bin it. If you buy natural foods then consulting the ingredient panel becomes irrelevant. Understanding the nature of addiction is important to breaking the cycle, if you are a chocoholic then switch to raw chocolate. This contains no sugar, and offers the delight of chocolate without the addictive qualities of refined sugar, a calorie rich stimulant that only leaves you wanting more.

Stage three: start juicing and blending this is a great way of taking the strain away from your digestive system, feeding on freshly extracted super nutrition in the form of juices and smoothies. No multivitamin or magic potion can offer you the complex nutrition that freshly made fruit and vegetable juices can. Try living on fruit and vegetable juices only for a few days, see the effect this has on your energy levels as your body has the opportunity to detoxify and rebuild itself with natural super nutrition!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Food and Mood the Link

Exploring the bio chemical effect of foods on us and our well being.

I am firmly of the belief that every item of food or drink we consume has a biochemical effect on us, some negative and some of course positive. Furthermore it could be said that along with all the conventional methods of grouping foods that we could use the following:

Nutrient, stimulant and empty calories, let me explain group by group.

Nutrients are natural food stuffs that are not processed or altered from their original state by modern food industry practise. This means their natural chemical compounds and nutrients are left intact and are able to feed the body and have positive biochemical effects. This group includes all fresh fruits and vegetables and other natural foods nuts, seeds, beans, greens, oats, brown rice and all those other items that look the same served up as they do growing wild. This group is called Nutrients because they offer all the life giving power of natural foods whose positive effects are still to be fully understood.

Stimulants these are the temporary boost foods, usually high in sugar, caffeine or other artificial stimulants that give temporary energy followed by a low or crash as their active ingredients rapidly pass through the blood stream and are processed by the body. So tea, coffee, stimulant drinks, sugar rich foods and drinks. This group is probably the most harmful to the wellbeing of the mind and body and also can be dangerously addictive as the boost delivered is desirable and may be repeated with another dose! Stimulants are exactly that, nutritionally pretty void, they boost the body in an artificial short term way instead of fuelling the body with the nutrients it needs. Talk to someone in a coffee bar, and you’ll see what I mean! Addiction to stimulants is a real danger as resistance is developed and more and greater doses are required for the same heady effect! Avoid this group and your reward will be better energy levels and a more stable and genuine mood, with greater resistance to temptation! Check out the ingredient panel of food packaging, manufacturers have to list ingredients in order of volume in the product, if sugar is in the top 4 leave it out of your shopping trolley. Isn’t it crazy that most breakfast cereals have a huge amount of sugar in? Stuff a load of sugar down first thing and you’ll be on a sugar craving roller coaster all day.

Empty calories, this is the U.F.O. food group, Unidentified Food Objects you know the score funny looking and smelling things that resemble nothing in its natural state! Generally they are cheap and certainly in the “junk” category. As we all know cheap isn’t necessarily a good thing. Cheap batteries in your walkie talkie on a jungle trip could be a bad thing! Cheap food during your lifetime will definitely have a negative effect. These empty calories can have an extraordinary effect as they are calorie rich, high in sugar and other addictive ingredients BUT nutritionally poor, leading to over eating as the body craves nutrients and gets addicted to the sugar boost. It’s impressive that a junk food addict can be at once obese AND malnourished, a testimony to the emptiness of the calories in this food group!

I hope this simple look at foods makes you keen to explore the positive effects of great natural nutrition.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Home Water Filters

A little look at the advantages offered by a domestic water filter system.

We all know it is important to keep well hydrated, as we are over 70% water ourselves and the human machine can suffer if water supplies run low. But what is the best kind of water to drink and bathe in?

Firstly water for cooking and drinking: In my home I use a water softener cartridge and an active carbon filter impregnated with colloidal silver. These two filters offer the level of clean up I am looking for on my domestic water supply. The filter is of the ten inch disposable cartridge type so filters particles out down to 5 microns, small enough to filter out particles like rust flakes from older water pipes.

The carbon element of water filters is designed to absorb chemical elements from the water supply such as chlorine. I also carbon filter the water supply to baths and showers as the chemicals from hot water can be particularly active in the steam. I don’t think inhaling chlorine vapour is a great way to start the day! The size of the carbon filter must be matched to flow rate or chemicals will only be reduced and not eliminated to a healthy level. I find a ten inch filter is ideal for typical domestic tap flow rates.

The colloidal silver is only required when the water will be drunk as this is an anti bacterial measure. Water softening is a more general task that will extend the life of appliances such as dishwashers as well as improving the cleaning and lathering qualities of water. One physical side effect I always notice in hard water areas or with untreated water is the skin condition round my fingernails suffers. This is a sure sign that hard water and undesirable chemicals are on the attack…

If further water treatment is required then more complicated methods of filtration can be employed like reverse osmosis in which fluids are treated at a molecular level, fortunately in this method most contaminates are a larger molecule than H20 so can be relatively easily filtered out with a permeable membrane. This can also be backed up with a UV sterilizer using intense ultra violet light to kill bacteria in a water supply.

In summary I feel most domestic situations are benefited by a relatively cheap cartridge filter to fresh up and filter drinking water at the point of consumption.


Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

The Need for Greens

The importance of consuming green vegetables regularly, and what they give you.

It’s typical isn’t it? The very food group that offer the most potent health giving properties is also the one that most people ignore or simply do not like. I’m talking about greens, yes, sprouts, broccoli and all those dark green leafy veggies that are always over looked for tastier options. When you select your shopping just think about this, look at nature, think of all the massive muscular beasts that only eat grass!

Most greens, particularly leafy greens are complete whole foods, yes, I mean what I say, they contain protein, carbohydrates, fats and the complete spectrum of vitamin and minerals. Also anything green contains Chlorophyll, this is the chemical compound that allows green plants to suck up carbon dioxide and transform it into oxygen, a neat trick that has supported life on the planet since day one. Chlorophyll also happens to be super healthy to eat as it is a powerful cleanser at the cellular level. If you have read my previous articles on the nature of our bodies being made of billions of cells, each one like a busy factory repairing itself and making more cells, you’ll understand the glorious benefit of keeping those factories clean! That’s exactly what chlorophyll does!

Once you appreciate the power of green vegetables and what they offer it’s easier to be enthusiastic about including them in your diet regularly, take brussel sprouts for example. As a kid I chased them round the plate soaking them in gravy to soften them up and make them taste, well like anything other than a sprout. Now I know that sprouts and other cruciferous veggies like broccoli are nutritional powerhouses with potent cancer fighting chemical compounds aplenty. Yes, eating sprouts effectively helps neutralise the negative chemical attack we are under everyday from pollutants and other nasty chemicals.

Healthy hint: you probably know by now my opinion on processed sugar, well once you remove such a potent taste from your diet your palate has a chance to return to normal with the pleasing effect that greens have a marvellous sweet taste all of their own that previously you may have been missing out on! I sincerely hope this information encourages you towards a more green and healthy life.

Another great place to look for potent greens is sea vegetable products, next time you are in a health food shop take a look at the chlorella and spirulina.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Going Sugar Free

Removing refined sugar from your diet and the reasons why.

Like many kids I had a real sweet tooth when I was young, I doubt I was born that way but sweets and chocolate advertising targeted at the youth market certainly worked on me. It’s no wonder then that I found it hard to concentrate on one thing for long and all I really wanted to do was run about and play football!

Sugar is a lot more common than just sweets and obvious foods, because of its addictive nature food manufacturers like to put sugar in their products because it makes them more-ish and addictive. Not bad if you can sell something that people will want more of is it?

The problem with sugar is that it’s a non-food, it’s a stimulant, sure it has calories so it could be said it gives you energy, but the same could be said of alcohol. But those calories are empty at best and downright unhealthy in reality! Sugar provides a sweet taste but at what cost? Well I’ll tell you!

Sugar in the refined sense doesn’t get digested like a normal food, it’s absorbed directly into your blood stream as soon as it’s ingested, through the membranes of the mouth and digestive tract, and in fact you are lucky if any reaches your stomach at all. What this creates is a massive rise in blood sugar which gives you that temporary perky feeling after a sweet snack or sugary tea. But the party has to stop, detecting the sugar rush your pancreas squirts insulin into your bloodstream to control things, all well and good, but because refined sugar is an invention of modern food production your body is not really designed to reign in massive blood sugar spikes. It’s only designed to control the natural blood sugar rises associated with eating the natural un-refined sugars in natural foods. After a while the refined sugar roller coaster leaves your pancreas and you for that matter, exhausted and feeble, this is the basic foundation of diabetes where your pancreas cannot control blood sugar correctly so it either over or under reacts, leaving blood sugar rising dangerously high or crashing far too low.

The low that you feel after a sugar snack is blood sugar levels dropping too fast as insulin levels peak to control blood sugar, hence the low, and the psychological craving for more sugar, which if indulged, starts the whole process again. You can see how your poor pancreas is getting battered as well as setting you up for a day or mood swings and high calorie, nutrient void sugar cravings! No way to run a body is it?

So if you are a sugar fiend, realise that it is a mental addiction rather than a nutritional need, drop the sugar content off and be careful to look out for the hidden sugar in production foods, breakfast cereal is known to be loaded with sugar. Not a good start to the day at all! Your reward will be more useful level energy throughout the day, more stable emotions and less snacking!


It is also important to understand that naturally occurring fructose and other sugars in fruits and natural foods are much safer and more natural to eat. This is because they are a natural compound part of the food and therefore will be digested and used by the body in a more gradual and stable way. This avoids all the complications of refined sweeteners and is indeed good for the body! Your brain for example uses natural sweeteners as fuel! As we always tend to see, mother nature has all the answers for us, if we care to live by her simple rules.

I hope this information is useful, it's tricky because people obviously like sweet foods, and the more you eat the more sweetness you need to get the same taste sensation. But as we all know, what we want is not always what is good for us!

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.

Spicing Up Your Juices

Some ideas for adding a little extra to your healthy juices and drinks.

We like to keep things imaginative here, so we are always pushing the juicing envelope and finding new natural things to throw in the blender and learn about, here are a few of our favorites in a quick guide to fortifying your juices for even more radiant health!

As a golden rule, leafy ones can be put in the blender or juicer, root ones need to be juiced for max digestibility!

Basil: a nice herb, just a few leaves put through the juicer or thrown into the blender will add a slight peppery taste.

Mint: excellent for the digestive tract, not to mention the breath, only use a small amount or the taste will be over powering in your juice.

Rosemary: another herb with active benefits traditionally used for poor circulation try a pinch of this in your next juice.

Parsley: is a favorite of ours at juiceproducer, a good source of Vit C and calcium, this tasty herb finds its way into a good few of our juices.

Some Spicy additions

It’s nice to spice things up once in a while, and juices are just the same

Chilies: are a favorite of ours BUT! Due to their potent nature we DO NOT put them in the juicer! They can take over for a while and give everything a chili overtone, not good if you are after a nice fruit juice in the morning.

Garlic: now considered a super food for it's legendary effects on the circulation and immune system you can throw a little in the juice as its quite oily and doesn’t hang around. Takes some getting used to as a raw juice but the health effects are very potent. Do not take before a first date or job interview though.

Ginger: this is a very popular addition to juices, it seems to go equally well in fruit or vegetable juice adding a nice warming spicy feel to your juice. Ginger has anti inflammatory and antiseptic qualities.

Nutmeg: a lovely smelling spice a pinch of nutmeg will have a lovely warming effect.

Cinnamon: a very distinctive taste, goes better with some things than others, try a little in a banana based smoothie.

Mark makes a lot of fresh juicer and blender drinks and tries to be as healthy as he can be.

For more ideas on juicer and blender recipes and healthy foods have a look at our information archive.