Juicing Fruits And Vegetables Removes Polyphenols Stuck To Fiber – Make Smoothies Instead
If you are looking to optimize your health make smoothies from fruits and vegetables instead of juicing them. There has been a long ongoing debate about whether making smoothies or juicing fruits and vegetables is better for you. This video below adds to the argument that making smoothies is the better choice.
The big debate revolves around the fiber that is lost during juicing, but the debate around fiber has mainly been based on its stool bulking characteristics that help to maintain bowel health. Foods lacking fiber cause the intestines to work extra hard to move the digested food through the intestines.
The muscles of the intestines have to exert more pressure to move the un-bulked fiber lacking food that moves through them, which causes ruptures the mucus membrane lining the walls of the intestines. These ruptures called diverticula collect waste that becomes putrid over time, and the putrid waste then releases toxins into the body.
The toxin buildup can contribute to the development of cancer in the colon and the continuous strain can compromise overall intestinal functioning. Advocates of juicing point out that juicing concentrates nutrients and the removal of the fiber allows the body to quickly absorb the nutrients into the bloodstream, because it bypasses the need to be broken down into smaller components. This does help to support health, but at a cost.
Since the juice lacks fiber to slow its travel through the intestines some of the nutrients end up being excreted from the body, but this is another topic for debate on the subject. To get fiber into the diet proponents of juicing will sometimes use the extracted fiber to make baked goods, but this also ends up destroying polyphenols that are attached to the fiber. Many people don’t understand this point.
Proponents of juicing think they are extracting all of the nutrients from their fruits and vegetables, and they are only discarding the insoluble fiber. Unfortunately they are mistaken. Helpful bacteria in the digestive track digest the insoluble fiber and make short chain fatty acids with it which feed the body. They also help to lower the pH level in the colon, increase the absorption of minerals into the bloodstream, and inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria.
This helpful bacteria also helps to liberate polyphenols that are bound to the fiber. This is important because most polyphenols in plants are bound to the fiber and this is the way we get access to them. Polyphenols are phytonutrients and they’ve been shown to protect health by fighting disease in the body. Once the fiber bound polyphenols make it to the colon the good bacteria digest the insoluble fiber and release the polyphenols, where they are then absorbed into the bloodstream and go about their business of fighting disease.
Tags: blending, juicing, smoothies
