Juicing vs. Blending - What's better for you?

Many of you have asked me what I think about juice cleanses and if they’re worthwhile or not. Like me you’ve probably heard the ads for juice fasts on local radio stations and they make it sound like the magic pill for excess weight, bloating and low energy. Who wouldn’t find that appealing?!

Sometimes we need a quick reset to reduce bloating, break bad eating cycles and just feel refreshed, so juice fasts can be really tempting. To some degree a juice fast can help you feel lighter and less bloated, but what I almost always her from people is that they were starving the whole time and they felt weak and cranky. After the “cleanse” they go right back to eating the way they did before and often overeat because they feel so hungry and deprived.

Most of us think of juicing as being super healthy, and there are definitely some benefits to juicing, especially for people who don’t normally eat enough vegetables or fruit in their regular diet.  Juicing can provide much needed antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, and has been shown in certain studies to be beneficial for heart health and increasing microbiome diversity. However, those benefits are often short-term, and some people feel worse after a juice fast than when they started. 

Juicing and Your Blood Sugar

Not all juices are created equal. Celery and other low-sugar, organic vegetable juices (lemon water anyone?) are wonderful, and fruit juice when it’s in an actual piece of fruit is too, but when it is extracted from the fruit, it no longer contains the pulp and skin and is very high in sugar.

That pulp and skin contain fiber which slows the release of the fruit sugars into your bloodstream so without it, drinking juice can cause a dramatic rise in blood sugar which then crashes down leaving you feeling hungry again within a short period of time. Fiber helps keep you full and is crucial for gut health, hormone balancing, and detoxification, but most Americans only get one quarter to one half of the fiber they need daily. 

If you’ve ever read the nutrition label on a bottled juice or smoothie, you may have been shocked to see that there is more sugar than in a typical candy bar. For example, one popular organic bottled juice company sells a green juice that contains 35 grams of sugar. That’s over 8 teaspoons of sugar! A Snickers bar has 29 grams and yes, the Snickers is worse for you because of the inflammatory ingredients, but it has more protein and fiber so it’s potentially less of a blood sugar disaster.

The effect a food has on your blood sugar is very important because it determines how full and satisfied you’ll be and for how long. It determines whether your body will be more likely to store or burn fat and it also effects your mood, energy levels and hormones. If you’ve done a juice cleanse before you know that you’re hungry again an hour or two after each juice, and your energy was probably in the tank.

When your blood sugar increases, your body must pump out insulin to shuttle that sugar into your cells where it is then converted into glycogen (readily usable energy) or stored as fat. Whenever insulin is elevated, the body is in a fat storage state and that fat will tend to be stored in your midsection if insulin is elevated too much too often. If your body is constantly having to produce insulin to regulate blood sugar, you can develop insulin resistance which can lead to a whole list of health problems including Type II Diabetes.

One study lead by Qi Sun of the Harvard Medical School and published in the British Medical Journal found that: “Greater consumption of specific whole fruits, particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples, is significantly associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas greater consumption of fruit juice is associated with a higher risk.”

Don’t skip the protein and healthy fats!

Juices are also low in protein which also keeps you feeling full and is necessary for nearly every bodily process including muscle and tissue repair, production of enzymes, hormones, giving cells their structure, and regulating the body’s pH and fluid balance. Longer juice fasts can lead to muscle and bone loss due to the lack of protein, healthy fats, and Vitamin B12, so they should always be limited to no more than a few days.

Healthy fat is another thing missing from juice and that’s a real problem because the fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E and K cannot be absorbed without fat. So, when we drink vegetable and/or fruit juices or eat our salads and veggies without any healthy fats or oils, we are preventing absorption of these crucial nutrients. Some of you may recall the fat-free salad dressing craze in the 80’s and 90’s? Boy did we have it wrong back then!

Detoxifying or toxic?

In addition to what’s missing from juices, what they do contain can be problematic. Most commercial juice “cleanses” are not certified organic which means you’re getting a hefty dose of toxic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides in the juice that’s supposed to be detoxifying. 

Don’t juice, blend! But blend smart.

Smoothies are often a sugar bomb as well because they contain too much fruit and not enough veggies, protein or healthy fats. I have had so many clients who thought they were doing the right thing by drinking fruit smoothies and couldn’t understand why they were gaining weight.

For all these reasons I decided to create a program that will give you the same benefits as a juice fast but with none of the drawbacks. I want you to feel nourished, satiated, and energetic and this delicious, nutrient-dense plan is designed to do just that with soups and smoothies. You can choose either the 3 or 5-day option to fit your busy schedule and I’ll provide you with shopping lists and recipes for each.

And for those of you who’d like some individual coaching or want a customized set of recipes, I’m offering a VIP option that includes a 30-min private session with me, an optional customized plan & shopping list, and my Favorite Smoothies ebook ($173 value).

The Blended Bliss group program begins on August 14, 2021 and I hope you’ll join me for this quick but refreshing few days! Click here to sign up..

Resources:

Pyo YH, Jin YJ, Hwang JY. Comparison of the effects of blending and juicing on the phytochemicals contents and antioxidant capacity of typical korean kernel fruit juices. Prev Nutr Food Sci. 2014;19(2):108-114. doi:10.3746/pnf.2014.19.2.108

Zheng J, Zhou Y, Li S, et al. Effects and Mechanisms of Fruit and Vegetable Juices on Cardiovascular Diseases. Int J Mol Sci. 2017;18(3):555. Published 2017 Mar 4. doi:10.3390/ijms18030555

Muraki I, Imamura F, Manson J E, Hu F B, Willett W C, van Dam R M et al. Fruit consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: results from three prospective longitudinal cohort studies BMJ 2013; 347 :f5001 doi:10.1136/bmj.f5001

Green Smoothies: What Does the Science Say? NutritionFacts.org

9 Important Functions of Protein in Your Body Healthline.com

Are Juice Cleanses Actually Good for You? Houstonmethodist.org