Home made fruit juices are a very healthy alternative to buying processed or concentrated juices from the store. Even those brands claiming no added sugars, preservatives, or other additives like colors are usually bending the truth at the very least. How else do their products keep for ages in the store? Fresh juice looses most of its nutritious qualities, including vitamin content quite fast (within a few days at most) so the bought stuff really has little left to go for it. If your children seem addicted to bought juice, then take a look at how much sugar it contains per serve, and you might get a shock – I looked at some apple and mango juice today, which had about 25grams of sugar per glass – that’s several teaspoons worth. Sugar is addictive, and keeps you wanting more. The result is that most people don’t drink water when they are thirsty, and just drink something sugary because it stills the craving. Most people are not only chronically dehydrated and don’t even know it as a result, but also get way too much sugar. The evidence is in the massive rates of obesity and diabetes found even in young children nowadays.
Making your own juice is easy, and quite cheap once you have covered the initial outlay for a juicer of your choice. You can choose to invest in a very simple and cheap juicer that crushes just citrus fruit if you want to make lemonade, or you can spend more and buy a bigger juicer machine (usually electric though you can get manual ones too) that can juice anything at all, from fruits to veggies. One of the best value investments is a basic orange juicer press, which allows you to crush half oranges by hand. This has no electric motor or small delicate parts and is quick and easy to clean up. Norpco is a company who make a bench top orange juicer that even the kids can safely use. It is actually quite easy to get kids to drink vegetable juices like carrot, peppers (capsicum, not the chili sort!), and celery, but starting with Orange or another familiar fruit juice is a lot easier. Feeding your kids fresh juice is one of the best things you can do for their health.
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When it comes to heart disease, acai berry juice may just be as protective as the famously heart healthy red wine. One of the key ingredients in red grapes (and therefore red grape juice and red wine) that helps protect us from heart disease are antioxidants called anthocyanins, and acai berries contain a lot more of them than red grapes! In fact anthocyanins are also the plant pigment that puts the deep red/purple into the acai berry and red grapes. So blueberries and to a lesser degree cranberries are also sources of anthocyanins. The acai berry however, is the greatest know source on this planet to date.
So research shows us that anthocyanins help protect us from heart disease first and fore-mostly through their ability to help construct stronger blood vessels. Vitamin C is needed to create collagen, a substance that provides the elasticity and strength to arteries. When you add anthocyanins to the equation, the structural integrity and elasticity of the arteries is improved further. The anthocyanins somehow add a “criss cross pattern” to the “straight” fibers provided by collagen and vitamin C. This creates a very healthy artery that is like an elaborately interwoven net.
The great news about acai berry juice (made with the whole pulp of the acai berry fruit, not the pressed acai juice) is its also a good source of vitamin C in addition to its exceptional anthocyanin content – this doubles the benefits-and-nutritional-profile/”>acai berry juice benefits for our arteries! A strong elasticated artery is able to expand and contract properly to put the pump the blood around the body. This helps prevent hypertension by keeping blood pressure in a normal range. This also helps to prevent artery narrowness that can lead to artery damage and arteriosclerosis. Blood pressure can actual ‘blow’ small holes in narrow and weak artery walls. The body has to constantly patch up these holes and this can develop into arteriosclerosis.
Due to its ability to improve the structural integrity of blood vessel walls, acai berry juice also helps with hemorrhoids. The tenderness of the small blood vessels in hemorrhoids is what causes the unpleasant pain of this condition. So some people who have taken high doses of anthocyanins, such as acai berry juice, have found a reduction in their pain.
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