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Benefits of drinking juice are:

• healthy skin and nails
• fights off disease
• gives extra energy

We all know that we should be eating five a day, but do we know why?

Today most foods we eat are cooked. We cook foods to make them taste good, easy to eat, but most importantly safe to eat as cooking will destroy most harmful bacteria. Meat and chicken can store lots of nasty bugs so it’s important that they are cooked. However fresh fruit and veg are a different story as they can be eaten safely raw. When we cook food we are not only destroying bacteria but we are destroying enzymes which are the spark of life.

Without enzymes no tree could grow, no flower could bloom and certainly no human could exist. We hear loads nowadays about the miracles of genetic science but how many times do you open a newspaper to read about the miracles of enzymes? The poor enzyme works away quietly under the radar!

So why are enzymes so vital to life? Enzymes are the catalysts that allow millions of chemical reactions to occur in our body every day. Think of them as the supervisors who are kicking butts to get things done quickly. Without their help cells would need to generate a great deal of heat (much hotter than our bodies) and energy to perform actions which may take years to perform. With the enzymes' help they are performed in the comfortable heat of our bodies in a millionth of a second. The bad news is many enzymes are killed in temperatures used for cooking.

It’s not just enzymes which are killed while cooking, as bundles of vitamins and minerals essential for life are inactivated. Vitamin C and folic acid are good examples. Calcium becomes less readily absorbed when cooked. Now think about it : maybe our food tastes good cooked but what is it doing to our bodies?

This all brings us back to the question: why is juicing good for you? Perhaps now you have a better idea.

Juicing is good for you because you are using raw fruit and vegetables which are loaded with enzymes, vitamins, calcium, folic acid and other minerals. This is food our bodies can really get to work on.

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