Diet is health, diet is medicine, so said Socrates several hundred years back.

Everyone desires to live a long, healthy life. His efforts are always directed towards that goal. In case he falls ill, he endeavors to get a speedy recovery from the illness. This expectation of a man can be realized and hi efforts can meet with success through vegetable and fruit- juices. But the important problem is how to get all the nutrients that are contained in fruit and vegetable-juices, for the recovery from diseases depends on the availability of all the nutrients contained in fruit and vegetable juices.

Juices must always be fresh. Only fresh, live juices are effective for the cure of diseases. Carotene (which is converted into vitamin ‘A’) found in vegetables is very sensitive to oxygen in the air, e.g., if carrots are shredded and kept unused for 20-25 minutes, most of the vitamin ‘A’ is oxidised. Similarly, if lemons, oranges and other citrus fruits which contain vitamin ‘C’ are preserved for a month, about 40% of their vitamin ‘C’ is lost. Even a refrigerator cannot prevent this loss.

These facts emphasize that fruits and vegetables should be fresh so that all their elements can be obtained.

Another matter of importance is how to extract juice from fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables should be washed, shredded or cut before extracting their juice. Then immediately they should be put into the juicer for extracting juice. In case one wants to extract juice without the help of a juicer, juice extracting should be quick. This will save juices from being oxidized and all their nutritional elements contained in them are preserved.

Rinds and fibers of fruits and vegetables are rich sources of vitamins. So while extracting juice they should be properly crushed. However, care should be taken that juice ready for drinking does not contain fiber or rind. Juice diet aims at getting the maximum live elements with the minimum labour by digestive system.

To get the maximum benefits from the juices of fruits and vegetables. It’s not advisable to extract at a time the juice is required for the whole day. Extract juice when required to drink.

There is a special method for drinking juice. It should not be gulped. It should be drunk slowly with a spoon or with small draughts. By this process juice gets mixed with the saliva. The digestive juices which the saliva contains help to digest sugar contained in juice. Thus, the juice which goes into the stomach is then digested with 20-25 minutes.

When juices are consumed for the purpose of health or cure of diseases, do not add sugar, pepper or salt for taste or liking. This is injurious to health. Furthermore, these condiments adversely affect the precious nutrients of juices. If you dislike the taste of the juice of one of the vegetables, you can add some lemon juice or any fruit juice to it.

Canned or bottled juices are useless for those who desire to get the maximum benefits from the juice-diet because the process made on such juices and their preservation destroy almost all the live nutrients.

Canned or bottled juices are referred to as ‘fresh’ but it signifies that the juices have been extracted from fresh fruits. Thus, juices even extracted from fresh fruits, lose their live nutrients when they are preserved. Hence we should not mistake such juices for fresh. The most commonly used preservatives for canned juices are benzoic acid, sulphuric acid or sorbic acid. All these chemicals are injurious to health.

From the point of view of vitamin content fresh and tinned juices are miles apart. That can be seen from two examples. The vitamin ‘C’ content in fresh carrot-juice is 8mg, while that in canned juice is only 2mg. Similarly, the vitamin ‘C’ content in fresh spinach –juice is 51 mg, while that in canned juice is only 14 mg.

By consuming caned or bottled juices, chemicals contained in them would perhaps cause ulcer, kidney-diseases, dental carriers, cancer, etc. So freshly extracted juices of seasoned fruits and vegetables are consumed, they will be beneficial to health and cure of disease.

Method to extract juice

First of all fresh fruits and vegetables should be purchased. They should be of good quality. Fruits should be ripe but not overripe. Fruits ripened artificially with help of chemicals should never be selected. Fruits and vegetables grown with the help of compost natural compost manure are superior in quality to those grown with the help of chemical fertilizers.

Electric juicer is the best instrument for extracting juice from fresh fruits and vegetables, because it also crushes the fibers and rids of vegetables and fruits and pours out their rich elements into the juice. From this point of view there is no alternative to electric juicer. Also one can manually extract juice from fruits and vegetables by crushing and mashing them.

Before extracting juice from fruits or vegetables, they should be washed out and cut into small pieces. If their rind is not very hard and is edible, it should not be peeled off because some of the rich elements are contained in it. Immediately put the shredded pieces into juicer and extract juice. If necessary put some water. Filter the juice to avoid fibers. Juices of fruits and vegetables should be used immediately after they have been extracted.

One should eat juice instead of drinking it. Juice should not be swallowed hastily but taken slowly draught by draught.

After extracting juice, the juicer should be washed with warm water otherwise bacteria are produced in the juicer and they mix with juice when extracted next time.