Vegetables and fruits are super-foods in terms of their nutrients to calorie ratio. They are full of a variety of nutrients and fibers and at the same time do not have high calories.
The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest that we should eat 2 cups of fruit and 2 1/2 cups of vegetables every day. When consumed at these levels, fresh produce reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer. They are also invaluable when we are trying to lose weight.
However, sadly most of us are probably not even consuming half of what is recommended.
One of the ways we can have more fruits and veggies in our diet is to through fresh veggie or fruit juices or smoothies.
The big question is -What is better juicing or blending?
So let's try to understand the difference between the two of them.
Veggies and fruits are mainly composed of:
Micro-nutrients-Vitamins, electrolytes, minerals, phytonutrients
Macro-nutrients- Carb, Fat, Protein
Fibers
When we blend them we get all three of them fibers as well as micro and macro-nutrients. However, when we juice them we are discarding fibers so juice contains micro and macro-nutrients but no fibers.
The question is- Is it advisable to discard fibers?
In most cases- No. Fibers are incredibly important for our health and weight management.
Fibers have the following health advantages:
- Fibers prevent blood sugar spikes that many times happens when we drink 100% fruit juice.
- Fibers make us feel full longer and help to reduce our overall caloric intake.
-Fibers keep our digestive tract clean. Insoluble fiber, which is in dark leafy vegetables, adds bulk to our stool and stimulates our intestines into action. This is one of the reason fibers help prevent colon cancer.
-Fibers have a lot of anti-inflammatory properties.
On the other hand, fibers make our GI tract work little harder so if we have any gastrointestinal disorder like diarrhea, malabsorption or frequent bloating then we may want to avoid fibers in our diet for that short period of time. In that scenario juicing is better than blending. Also if we are doing juice fasting then we may want to rest our GI tract and juicing may be better.
Disadvantages of juicing:
- We lose all the benefits of fiber supplement. -Some 100% of fruits juices have a very high amount of sugar. - Research published in 2014 found that on average, fruit juices contain 45.5 grams of fructose per liter, not far off from the average of 50 grams per liter in sodas.
Takeaway:
Blending is superior to juicing unless if we have any gastrointestinal disorder that requires giving rest to our GI tract or if we are doing juice fasting.