Vegetables juicer recipes are considered to be the most healthy of juice recipes. Fruit juicer recipes are also great, but can be sugary due to fruit sugars. Vegetables generally have a much lower sugar content than fruits, which make them a great choice for low carb diet followers and also diabetics.
The color of fruits and vegetables can also tell us about some of their health benefits.
Green Colored Vegetables
Chlorophyll is the plant pigment that gives vegetables their green color. The darker the green the more chlorophyll the vegetable contains. Spinach and kale are two of the most cholorophyll dense vegetables.
Cholorphyll has a very unique benefit for a plant nutrient – it can help build red blood cells. Its chemical structure is almost identical to that of hemin, an important component of red blood. The good news is that when we eat chlorophyll it is actually turned into hemin via the digestive process.
Orange Colored Vegetables
The orange color of fruits and vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes and squash, is provided by their density of carotenoids like beta-carotene. Studies show that a diet rich in carotenoids can substantially reduce the risk of suffering a heart attack.
Yellow Colored Vegetables
Carotenoids also provide the yellow color in vegetables. Hydroxy-carotenoid in particular is one carotenoid that gives vegetables like yellow peppers their deep yellow color. Although carotenoids as a group help reduce the risk of developing heart disease, there is very little research about the health benefits of hydroxy-carotenoid alone.
Red Colored Vegetables
You can thank the powerful antioxidant lycopene for providing the red hue in tomatoes and beets. Lycopene is very effective as an anti-carcinogen and there is evidence that it is particularly effective at protecting men from prostate cancer.
Blue Colored Vegetables
Anthocyanins are a heart healthy antioxidant that provides the blue hue in vegetables such as purple broccoli and purple cabbage. Anthocyanins help to improve the structural integrity of blood vessels like capillaries and veins. This reduces our chances of developing cardiovascular disease and other health problems like hemorrhoids and peptic ulcers.
Juicing Vegetable Benefits
Juicing vegetables allows us to extract a great amount of the antioxidants and other nutrition into the juice by virtue of shear volume. For example, you wouldn’t eat 8 carrots in one sitting, but that’s about how many you will need to make one juice!
Vegetable Juicer Recipes #1 – Carrot and Purple Broccoli
8 carrots
1 cup of purple broccoli heads
Top and tail the carrots, rinse the broccoli heads and juice.
Vegetable Juicer Recipes #2 – Green Supreme
1 cup of collard greens
1 cup of kale
1 cup of spinach
1 apple
Green juice recipes like this one are a great source of chlorophyll. The apple is added to give sweetness to the bitter greens.
Thomas Davies
