Juicing vs. Blending

‘Juicing? Isn’t that just when you blend up bananas, berries and greens?’

‘I can make juice in my Vitamix right?’

Wellllllllll it’s a bit more complicated than that. Juicing is a whole different process than blending. They both are extremely beneficial to us in their own ways and I recommend adding both to your diet but they are very different and I will explain exactly how right now. We'll start with blending.

So, BLENDING is when you take fruits, veggies, herbs, maybe some nuts and seeds, some powders and blend them all up in a blender. This process keeps all of the ingredients together and breaks them down so that we don’t have to go through the chewing process, which in this fast paced world is often overlooked.

(Side note... Did you know that when we don’t chew our food all the way, most of the time it ends up undigested and we never get the nutrients contained in it? It’s kind of crazy to think about right?)

Anyways with that being said, blending is a great way to get in a full nutritious meal, while at the same time starting the digestive process with the grinding and shredding during the blend. Blending really comes in handy when you’re short on time and have to get out the door for work or for that meeting you have that you’re already late to or when you haven't cooked breakfast for the kids but the bus is about to pull up, etc. Personally I try to have at least one smoothie a day. It's just too convenient and taste so good to not have one.

My favorite smoothie is definitely bananas, kale leaves, wild blueberries, dates, hemp seeds and two tablespoons of sea moss (or Irish moss) (click HERE to learn more about the benefits of sea moss). I use either coconut water or distilled water to give it a start to blend it all up and there you have it a quick and easy smoothie (not juice) in less than 5 minutes!

Now JUICING on the other hand can take a bit longer to prepare but the benefits (in my opinion) are MUCH LARGER!

Remember how with blending we keep all of the ingredients together and break them down before consuming? Well with JUICING, we separate the ingredients using a machine such as a slow masticating juicer. What this machine does is (we'll use cucumber for example) grinds the cucumber and shreds it between two steel plates extracting the juice and discarding the fiber into a separate container. What you're left with is a concentrated liquid containing an abundance of vitamins and minerals that are ready to be utilized at that very moment. No need for any digestion or breaking down of the food here. It's already in liquid form ready to be absorbed into our blood stream and most of the time will give us an instant boost in energy and focus.

Now let's take a second to think about eating all of the ingredients in the smoothie we talked about above. How full would you be? Pretty full right? Well juicing has about 2-3 times as many ingredients as that!!! Yeah, I know that’s a lot and just like with blending where we would be getting a bunch of vitamins and minerals with a shake of that size (which usually comes out to 32oz.) we’d be getting triple that in one 16oz. jar of juice! We can consume anywhere from 2-5 lbs. of produce in just one 16oz. jar of juice. Our fuel tanks are overloaded with vitamins and minerals that we don’t tend to get in the standard recommended diet! This is why juicing in my opinion is a necessity in ones diet. One Green Juice a week with have you feeling much more alive then a diet without one

So, what's the big difference between the two? FIBER! Now don’t get me wrong fiber is extremely important to keep things flowing through our digestive track, but we can get plenty of that elsewhere throughout the day and still consume juice to maximize our nutritional intake!

I hope this helped shed some light on the differences between Juicing & Blending. If you have any questions that I didn't answer here today, please feel free to reach out to me at julian@juliansjuicebox.com as I can talk about this stuff all day :)

Until next time, I wish you many blessings, radiant health & ultimate happiness!

Peace, Love & Light,

Julian