Juicing: Squeezing Out The Facts

Fruits and veggies have been an important part of our diet for thousands of years and are still an essential element of healthy eating. In fact, Health Canada just released a new food guide that stresses the importance of incorporating more fruits and vegetables into our diet.

But how do you actually make sure you’re getting all those servings without feeling like a rabbit? After all, there are only so many ways you can creatively cook and spice up the same old vegetables.

Enter juicing...and we don’t mean super-processed, sugar-filled stuff you can buy from the convenience store on the corner. We’re talking freshly pressed, additive-free, with no added sugars, delicious juice. It’s actually a great way to get your servings of fruits and vegetables throughout the day. Juicing is taking the healthy living world by storm and we wanted to know more about this craze so we picked the brains of some professionals.

Gillian, the owner of Toniq Juice Bar, within our local community of Canmore, Alberta was kind enough to answer our many questions about ‘juicing’.

What advice do you have for people curious about the juicing fad?
I don’t think juicing is a fad – it has been around for decades – its more accessible now that people can afford juicers at home. Whether you decide to do an intense cleanse or just add a juice it to your daily diet – it’s an easy way to add more fruit and vegetables to your diet.

What would you say are the key benefits of drinking freshly pressed juice?
Breaking down solid foods and extracting nutrients requires a lot of energy from our bodies and unless food has been extremely well chewed, some of those nutrients may be passed through the body as a solid mass and not be absorbed. Drinking cold-pressed juice offers your body an abundance of nutrients, all of which can be absorbed quickly and efficiently and enables your body to use that energy for other areas.

Fun Fact: a 2oz shot of Wheatgrass contains almost 5 lbs of greens! Talk about getting your serving of vegetables.

What attracted you to juicing in the first place?
‘You are what you eat!’
I had been eating unhealthily for years, more and more research shows that cleaner eating (cutting out processed foods and refined sugars) and a diet rich in plants and vegetables can help your body thrive… I found it overwhelming at first to try to eat differently, so I embarked on my first juice cleanse – It changed the way I thought about food and after 30 days my taste buds craved the fresh flavour of vegetables –I lost weight, I felt energized, I slept better - juice is now part of my everyday diet.

How do you make your juice at Toniq?
We use an industry-leading, cold-press commercial juicer to gently extract every nutritious drop from an array of organic vegetables and fruits. This slow extraction process allows us to bottle our juices at their peak as it preserves enzymes and nutrients and results in the freshest tasting juice possible. Each 12oz bottle of our juice contains the nutrient equivalent of eating half a kilo of organic fruit and vegetables.

Our freshly pressed juices actually only last a couple of days refrigerated, and then they begin to slowly lose some of their nutritional value. We are currently experimenting with freezing our juice so we can provide a better shipping experience, cleanse offering and re-occurring order system for people. Freezing the juice helps it keep longer than a couple days – since cleanses can last a week or more, we need to find a way to provide this for our customers. Other companies pasteurize their juice under high pressure to seal in freshness, which helps them last longer. We argue that this process actually removes some of the juice’s natural goodness.

What juice that you make is your favourite and why?
Sometimes it depends on the time of day but mostly I love the flavour of our ‘deep clean’ – it’s just so green tasting! And it happens to include my three favourite ingredients:

• Celery – is anti-inflammatory and high in Vitamin K, Vitamin C, and Potassium, just to name a few key benefits.
• Parsley – very detoxifying! A source of chlorophyll, which is actually great for our skin and helps to clean everything from the inside out.
• Lemon – extremely high in Vitamin C and aids digestion.

Deep Cleanse is made with: Apple, Cucumber, Celery, Parsley and Lemon juice.

What advice would you give others at home, making their own juices?
Start simply, make it enjoyable. If you are new to juicing then start with a fruit and add a little vegetable – if you enjoy the taste, you are more likely to repeat the process. Try to vary the colour of your juices – drink a rainbow every day!

Have you tried juicing? We’d love to hear about your experience and thoughts about juicing in the comments below.

Follow Toniq on Facebook & Instagram or visit them in person - just a couple blocks away from our own Canmore location.