Leafy green vegetables, such as kale, spinach and collard greens are the most nutritious of all vegetables. They are packed with antioxidants, enzymes, minerals and vitamins that are essential to our well-being and deliver powerful health benefits. By juicing green leafy vegetables we can greatly increase the amount of nutrition and benefits that they deliver.
First, when we make a green juice we normally use at least 5 portions of green leafy vegetables, that’s more than we would eat in one go! Second, juicing “frees” many antioxidants from the fibers in green leafy vegetables, making them available for digestion and absorption into the blood stream. We cannot release the same amount of antioxidants by chewing green leafy vegetables as a juice extractor does.
The health benefits of juicing green leafy vegetables are many and can be broken down into 3 main aspects: chlorophyll, trace minerals and enzymes.
1) Chlorophyll is the plant pigment that creates the green color in fruits and vegetables. The darker green a vegetable is, the more chlorophyll it contains. This is why dark green leafy vegetables are among the best sources of chlorophyll. Besides being a plant pigment, chlorophyll is also a powerful antioxidant that helps protect us against cancer. At the cellular level, chlorophyll protects DNA from oxidative damage that would otherwise create mutations in the DNA. These mutations will create cancerous cells instead of the healthy ones that DNA should be making.
2) Trace minerals are abundant in dark green leafy vegetables. If you look up information about which food sources contain the most trace minerals, you will always see leafy green vegetables towards the top of the list. Trace minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous and manganese are essential to 1000′s of functions in the body. Our muscles need them to flex and relax properly, our heart needs them to beat properly, our nervous system needs them to send proper signal around the body, our cells need them to stay hydrated properly and in fact all of our cells need them to function optimally!
3) Enzymes are only found in raw fruits and vegetables and raw juices. Cooking destroys them, even just a little cooking. These enzymes, of which many are digestive enzymes, help to digest the juices they come with, creating very little burden on the digestive system. This is one of the fundamental health benefits of juicing. The energy that would normally be needed to digest food, can now be used to take advantage of the antioxidants and other nutrients delivered by the juice for cleansing our cells and detoxifying the body. So detoxification is a potent juicing benefit of drinking green juice.
