Green Juice Recipe and Its Benefits for Health
Green juice recipes are the quintessential of health promoting drinks. They are loaded with antioxidants like chlorophyll, carotenoids and vitamin C.
Green Juice Recipe
1 cup of kale
2 cups of spinach
1 cup of collard greens
1 green apple
Rinse the greens well before juicing. The apple is added to this juice to give sweetness to the otherwise bitter greens. I recommend juicing the entire apple. The skin is loaded with fiber and antioxidants, and the core is also a nutrient dense part of the apple. This will produce a cloudy looking apple juice, but the cloud = goodness, and the juice still tastes fine.
Benefits of Chlorophyll
Dark leafy greens like kale, spinach and collard greens are among the best edible sources of chlorophyll available to us. Chlorophyll is actually the plant pigment that puts the ‘green’ in plants – the darker the green, the more chlorophyll the plant contains.
Chlorophyll is great for our blood. It is almost identical in its chemistry to hemin, which is an important constituent of red blood cells. When we eat (and especially drink) food sources of chlorophyll, our digestive enzymes actually convert chlorophyll into hemin and this helps us build red blood cells. This makes a chlorophyll rich green juice recipe a great choice if you have just had blood taken or if you have a low red blood cell count.
Benefits of Lutein And Zeaxanthin
Lutein And zeaxanthin are antioxidants of the carotenoid family and are sold as supplements for eye health. The good news is that we can also get an abundance of these two eye health carotenoids by juicing kale and spinach – two vegetables that are an abundant source of lutein and zeaxanthin.
So how does lutein and zeazanthin promote eye health? The retina of our eyes is the place in our bodies that contain the most dense concentrations of lutein and zeaxanthin. As antioxidants, they protect the retina from the damaging effects of free radicals that are found in UV light. This protection slows down the aging process of the eyes and also protects them from developing diseases like cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration.
The juicing benefits of lutein and zeaxanthin doesn’t end there. New research is finding that they may also protect our skin from UV light free radicals that can cause skin cancer.