What Foods to Juice & Not to Juice (Plus, a $ and Time-Saving Alternative)

April 11, 2019 Dr Daryl Gioffre

Last week, I started a series about fresh green juices with my post, Everything You Need to Know About Alkaline Juicing. Go back and read that if you haven’t already so you’ll know why juicing is different than smoothies and how both are beneficial, the truth about store-bought juice, and which juicers I recommend.

Today, I’m finishing the 2-part series with what to juice. In this post, you’ll find out the best foods to juice, the worst foods to juice, and the shortcut you can take to get the power of juicing without the time or mess.

I’ve got a lot of information to share with you today, so let’s dig right in…

The Best Foods to Include in Juices

The number one rule of juicing and smoothies is ALWAYS INCLUDE GREENS. If you remember nothing else from this article, I want you to remember that.

Why are greens so important, as opposed to say, carrots? Those are great too, but by including dark, leafy greens, you’re adding chlorophyll.

Remember, chlorophyll is the most powerful way to reduce inflammation, and drive acid out of your body, because it cleanses and literally builds healthy blood.

Chlorophyll is actually the same molecular shape as the hemoglobin molecule (or blood molecule), the only difference being the center atom, where chlorophyll is magnesium, and your hemoglobin is iron. That’s how important this ingredient is for your blood.

If you want to build healthy blood, eat more chlorophyll–rich foods.

If you’re anemic and need more iron, add more chlorophyll in your diet. If you crave sugar, you need more magnesium, so add more chlorophyll in your diet. You get the idea.

So when it comes to including ingredients in your juice, the darker green the color, the more chlorophyll it has and therefore, the more powerful the juice is.

Foods rich in chlorophyll include:

Spinach
Kale
Swiss chard
Watercress
Green cabbage
Collard greens
Parsley and other herbs
Romaine
Dandelion greens
Broccoli
Cucumbers
Celery
Wheatgrass
Sprouts

While it’s not a bad thing to always keep one green, like spinach for instance, on hand to include in your smoothies and juices, it’s even better to rotate your greens everyday, such as using kale on Monday and Friday, spinach on Tuesday, romaine lettuce on Wednesday, and wild greens on Thursday, so you’re getting a big variety of different nutrients coming from different foods.

Then if you’re like most people, you want to include fruit too. Here are the top alkaline fruits you want to use:

Lemons
Limes
Grapefruit
Avocado
Tomatoes
Coconut
Pomegranate
Watermelon

Notice anything they all have in common? They’re all LOW in sugar and yet high in minerals, meaning that they are alkaline-forming as you digest them.

You can certainly use other fruits you like as well, but I recommend you include a max of 1 serving of sweeter fruits, and again, make sure you’re using those along with greens and low-sugar fruits.

Next, I recommend you add a superfood or two that will give you some healthy fat and/or protein along with all of the nutrients you’re getting. Chia seeds are the perfect food to add, but you could add black cumin seeds, or coconut water as well.

So for instance, you could combine cucumber, lemon, chia seeds, and pear like my Green Zinger Alkaline Juice. Or beets, grapefruit, turmeric, and lime like the juice I shared on Tuesday.

What Not to Include in Your Juice

The problem with most juice recipes that you might think are healthy is this: They are acidic because they contain way too much sugar! Not added sugar, but sugar from sweet fruits.

Most people assume that fruit is good for you, and if the fruit has a lot of sugar, like pineapple, they say it’s natural sugar, and that is okay for your body.

You might be thinking, isn’t all fruit healthy? Absolutely not.

That misconception is one of the quickest way to sabotage your efforts to be healthy.

While it’s true that a sweet fruit like pineapple has nutrients, it also has a lot of sugar. And that’s where juicing goes wrong. Too many people add part of a pineapple, maybe a mango, and some lime juice and they think they’ve made themselves a healthy beverage.

What they don’t know is that they are overloading their system with sugar, and that affects everything from blood sugar levels, to kidney function, to brain activity.

So you really want to minimize sugary fruits you include in your juice. One at most is plenty, balanced out with healthy fats and greens with fiber so that your body digests it over a long period of time, preventing that sugar overload. The goal is to work you way toward only needing a green apple, a pear, a few berries, or no sweet fruit at all.

The No-Mess, Time Saving Alternative

As big of a fan as I am of fresh green juice, it does have some limitations.

The first and foremost being that making your own fresh green juice creates a big mess in your kitchen, which takes extra time to clean up after the time you took to make it.

Beyond that, even when you try to get all the nutrients from a green juice, they are often lacking because of soil depletion.

Did you know that the nutrients in broccoli have shrunk by more than 50% in the last 21 years? That’s just since 1998! Or that it now takes 60 servings of spinach to give you the same amount of minerals as only one serving gave you a 1948? That’s crazy.

Here’s my point – a dehydrated green juice is way more efficient, powerful, and concentrated. It can also save you the mess and even be more cost-effective.

And, do you think it’s possible to get 21 different greens all in one seating? I didn’t think so either! Not to mention, the healthiest, cancer-fighting ingredients on the planet! In fact, I had an awesome Facebook Live today with my good friend, Liana Werner Gray, whose new book launches in less than 2 weeks, called Cancer-Free With Food!

And in this live session, we were talking about the TOP cancer-fighting foods, and take one guess what #1 on the list was? BROCCOLI SPROUTS! Have you ever had broccoli sprouts? Well, if you drink Alkamind Daily Greens, you have, as they are one of the 21 power ingredients in that dehydrated green juice powder!

Alkamind Daily Greens are harvested in their most nutrient-dense state, and immediately concentrated, so you take less to get more. Then they are dehydrated at 88 degrees Fahrenheit, which preserves ALL the enzymes in their 100% raw and organic form.

It works just like a seed – add that seed to concrete, and nothing happens. Add that same seed to the right soil, and boom! The greens work the same way – the dehydration keeps the nutrients in their dormant state, and once you add water, BOOM!

It’s almost impossible to get the wide range of assorted alkaline vegetables that we have in our Daily Greens powder into a fresh green juice, and even if you could, you would have to drink so much more to get what we’ve been able to conveniently concentrate into one little scoop.

If you enjoy drinking your green juices, that’s great! Something I recommend is make your organic freshly-squeezed green juice and add a scoop of Alkamind Daily Greens to it. Now you have a powerful drink!