We now own a juicer

Yup... that's right: a juicer. "Why?" you ask... I will tell you why.

First, it's a great way for us to use some of our veggies that we don't really love to eat by hiding their flavors in with something else we DO like to eat so that we continue to get the nutrients and vitamins from the food we don't love so much.

Second (and after this, I'm abandoning the ordinal numbering), there are just too many benefits to juicing to eliminate it from the diet. The way the body accesses and absorbs nutrients and the nutrient levels in raw food are just overwhelming. We're not going "raw" and we're not going to juice for 30 days straight, but we are absolutely going to make it a daily part of our eating.

And while we're not going to do a 30-day juicing thing, we ARE going to do a series of juicing "cleanses" and change the way we're eating to include more raw foods than cooked. I am still hunting up data to support a claim I heard that over 50% of your meal being cooked triggers an immune response that can ultimately end in auto-immune disorders (my interest in this partially to do with my own family's auto-immune issues) but the evidence around what is beneficially provided via raw foods isn't really in question. I had already understood the damage done by heating when I was researching enzyme therapy for children in the autism spectrum.

So we're going to try to move to having more raw food in our diets. Juicing will make it easier for us to accomplish this.

For the record, we got a Green Star GS-2000. :) It can make nut butters and juice wheat grass (if we wanted that) without having to change a whole bunch of stuff. You can even run frozen fruit through it to turn out a kind of sorbet. Awesome, since someone on my Facebook friends list just noted that their kids were THRILLED to have "ice cream" for breakfast (which was essentially frozen fruit they had somehow squashed into "ice cream" consistency but I can't remember how... but my juicer will do it!)

My husband says it looks like a little chef when you look at it head-on. :)

Of course, after reading the manual and watching the DVD and thinking I was otherwise fully prepared--I proced to make the maiden voyage be apple juice... using the "wrong" apples. :/