Are you eager to explore the benefits of juice therapy? It can be as easy as pulling your old blender down off the pantry shelf and making a stop at an organic fruit stand. You can also use one of the high-tech juicers now available, which cuts down the preparation time for juice therapy. Buying a juicer might be what prompts you to give juice therapy a try.

Buy the freshest produce you can find, and be sure it is certified organic. Many grocery stores now have an organic produce section. Although the produce is often higher in price, keep in mind that you will be getting several times the amount of nutrients as you would in commercially produced fruits and vegetables.

Clean the produce and peel it, if necessary. Many cucumbers and apples are coated in wax to keep them shiny looking, and it’s easiest to remove the wax by peeling. Always peel bananas and citrus fruits, because the peels contain non-edible oils. Remove and discard seeds and pits from the produce, which also may contain inedible substances.

Cut the fruits and vegetables into small pieces if using a blender. Some high-tech juicers allow you to feed produce into the hopper whole, but you’ll probably get a more satisfactory juice if you do a bit of the work for the juicer in advance.

Start with watery fruits like melons and berries. Bananas can be delicious in juice therapy, and organic bananas are among the easiest organic produce to find in grocery stores. But bananas are dense and not very liquid. They can be used to thicken a juice therapy blend into a smoothie, especially if you freeze chunks of the banana first.

Don’t be afraid to add green produce to your smoothie. Spinach and kale are extremely healthful vegetables, but many people don’t like the taste. You can “hide” leafy green veggies in your juice therapy drinks where the taste is largely concealed by the stronger flavors of fruit. Don’t be put off by the way green vegetables change the color of your juice. A natural blend of colorful herbs, fruits, and vegetables may be brown or gray in color instead of deliciously pink, but the nutritional value is very high. If color makes the juice therapy beverage too unappetizing for you, consider making a separate green smoothie of just green, leafy vegetables with a piece of fresh pineapple thrown in for flavor.

It’s best to make your juice therapy beverage just before you want to drink it, because juice begins to lose its nutritional value soon after juicing. If you like to drink raw juice drinks first thing in the morning—but aren’t awake enough to do all the preparation—try cleaning and removing seeds from the produce the night before, then keeping all juice therapy ingredients in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator (or freezer) overnight. In the morning, simply pour your ingredients into a blender. Some nutrients will have been lost, but most will remain. Try drinking an ice-cold smoothie instead of a brewed cup of coffee. It will wake you up just as fast, and maybe faster!

Sources: Internet Health Library with contributions by AltMeds.com editorial staff.