Hello, I have to ask a question about juicing, and overdoing juicing.

I got into the habit of drinking large amounts of green juices that are low in oxalic acid. I juice about 2 bunches of kale or 2 bunches of dandelion or collard greens etc. at a time. This results in 0.5-0.75 liters of green juice, which I consume right away.

Some juices, especially celery and beets give me really funky gas and so I avoid them. But dandelion and kale give me no negative side effect -- however I wonder whether there is some potential danger. As they say, some things in small amounts are medicine, in large amounts they are poison.
Especially now that I read a distinct warning on a juicing website about too much red beet juice (can cause fever etc.)

Does anybody here consume as much juice, or do you think I'm doing too much? I have to add that besides juicing, my greens intake is low, that's why I got the juicer.
Thanks for your insight in advance!

overdoing the kale might cause thyroid problems, as it contains goitrogens. i dont know how much is too much though. an alternative might be green smoothies, or just chowing down like a gorilla - then you'd get the benefits of all that fiber.

I am drinking 1 pint of green juice right now. I juice dandelion, beet tops, collard greens, turnip, and indoor greens. I have been doing this for years. My diet is basically green juices, wheatgrass juices, sprouts and non sweet fruits. I am doing very well.

haha...i like how you phrased it..."i got into the habit of"...doesn't seem like a problem if you can afford it...anyway..I wouldn't worry about overdoing juicing ever unless you are mixing it with meals or something weird. to me it doesn't sound like too much at all if you are sticking to the greens. I don't think beets are the greatest thing to juice either very frequently (or at all) but not for those reasons. One thing though is the juicing shouldn't be a replacement for eating greens. its something altogether different. keep doing what feels right and eat more tender lettuces for dinner. there is a legitimate point against 'fiberless' raw diets



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2007 01:06AM by anaken.

Thanks for your input, everybody ! I really appreciate it! I know juicing shouldn't be a replacement for eating greens, but some greens I wouldn't eat raw (kale) cause I don't like the dry texture etc
I do eat spinach, romaine etc...but I'm not kidding anyone, most of the time I think it's a compromise and I'm trying to take an easy way out (chugging instead of chowing)

jono- I tried smoothies when my juicer was broken, but somehow greens in smoothies make me gag. I can not get myself to drink it, I don't know why.

djatchi - yes I like juicing the top greens of stuff, too. I sometimes score free daikon greens from the Korean market

anaken - it's in my budget, 2 good green bunches cost $3 if organic, $2 if non organic. I don't think it's too much compared to my bad habit of going to one of the plenty juice bars they have around here.

I used to do green juice too, and I would drink about a quart a day. But I just started doing the green smoothies, and I love them.

Never thought I love them, but I probably put enough fruits in to really balance the greens.

Today I blended:

Large sprig of Watercress
2 large stalks of spinach
small amt of alfalfa sprouts
some frozen blueberries,
half banana
5 fresh strawberries
Enough juice to make it blend, I used bottled Orange and Passion Fruit
You could use water instead of the juice or make your own fresh juices for the green smoothies.

It was yummy..and I saved a glass for later today.

Love,
Prism

Actually, I wouldn't over do the green juices.

Fiber is an essential nutrient - one of it's jobs is to slow down sugar absorption into your bloodstream so your blood sugar level doesn't rise too quickly.

So by removing fiber, you're fractionating your food (it's then no longer a whole food, and whole foods are optimal) and removing an essential nutrient. You may also disrupt your blood sugar levels unnaturally. Our blood sugar levels need to stay pretty consistent.

Just my 2 cents. Whole foods should always be the first choice. Why mess with what nature has provided?

Sarah
[goingbananasblog.com]

Sparkler, youre a sweet lady, but really this is just a page from Dr. Doug's gospel.

whole foods are optimal for nutrition. jucing isn't about getting 'more nutrition' although i'm sure people 'supplement' with them in this fashion

as for the blood sugar thing, thats correct, but the juice gets absorbed so quickly that it quickly returns to normal. (talking vegetables here not fruits, fruits are different)

people need juice because their entire lives they have been 'messing with what nature inteded'. feel free to disagree and pursue 'healthful living' alone, but the idea that that is not an ideology itself is absurd.

as for it being fractionated, fractured, foreign, unnatural, thats in some ways what youre looking for, our bodies are so diseased to hell that a quart of alkaline hits the cells like a dam jackhammer because its so unexpected and concecentrated.

A green smoothy is inferior to whole foods. it may not be 'refined' but its like a mish mash of things, liquified, un-masticated (whether one chomps their jaws till kingdom come), makes people lazy etc.. so you get mango fiber and apple fiber and berry fiber and celery fiber all working in unison together for super nutrition! nah.

as long as you are eating fiber-rich things and not packaged crackers, cacao and honey, and doing it responsibly an attentively on an empty stomach there is no danger in over doing juicing.

Hi Anaken... cool name, btw.

Honestly, I feel it was rather condescending of you to say that I was just spouting Dr. D's "gospel". His is not the only material I've read or explored, by a long shot. I'm not someone who just picked up the 811 book last week and decided to try it out just for kicks.

That aside, you may be right...although I'm confused as to why you think people juice if it's not because they think it will deliver more/superior/quicker nutrition. Whenever I read of people who juice vegetables regularly, their juices seem to take up a large part of their diet. Most people seem to juice because they think it's a miracle food/cure.

I agree that smoothies are inferior to whole foods. But if smoothies are inferior, then juices are also.

I don't think it would kill anybody to drink veggie juice occasionally. But would it serve them better to eat whole fruits and learn to chew and absorb greens thoroughly over the long term? My gut instinct tells me yes, for more reasons than one. The original poster asked specifically about consuming large amounts. They even mentioned having issues with gas with certain juices, which in itself would make me question the juices just as they did. So my answer to the OP stands, for whatever it is worth, which may not be much.

Sarah
[goingbananasblog.com]

I'm going to go with the juicing pioneers; Dr. Norman Walker, who lived to be 99.5 yrs. old, Dr. Bragg, Dr. Jensen, Jack Lalane, The juiceman, Dr. Pavlo Airola, who all lived/are living to an very old age and drank/drink juices for many, many years.

Too much fiber, can be just as bloating & binding as not enough fiber, for SOME people.

Why is it always black or white, good or bad.... I don't confine myself to that.... I juice, blend & eat fruits and veggies whole. I prefer juicing because that works best for ME. I also enjoy a blueberry & greens smoothie, and salads.... it's all good!

What works best for you is not a hard-and-fast rule for everyone.

Relax people, drinking 60 oz's of juice, like I do somedays, is better than going to the corner gas station and buying a 32 oz Pepsi.

Just enjoy eating healthy & smile.

If something doesn't work for you, than don't do it. If green freaks you out, don't eat it, if it makes you happy, than eat it & drink it.

keep chugging
my intuition tells me

yes
green juice is superior

Hi Rawww,
that was an awesome post!!

I've got a really weak and sensitive system and too much fiber really gives me alot of problems juicing always helped so much. I feel best when juicing and blending raw soups and some salad too and juice

It feels so good to see someone else knows what I mean about fiber and digestive problems for some. I have a really awful time if I just eat and don't juice the fiber just gets all stuck and I get cramps and well everything and feels so awful and uncomfortable, juicing always helps me alot

I've been getting so discouraged I posted stuff places saying how good juices were and got so many people kept saying how you shouldn't juice and stuff and need all this fiber and it got so discouraging cause of how hard of a time I have with alot of fiber. Its soooo good to see more posts for juicing I just can't feel good just eating tonnes of fiber and no juice. The juice really helps me alot. I need juice to feel good.

Thanks for making this post its really encouraging for me



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2007 11:56PM by singinraw.

Hi Veronique,
ya green juice is superior!!!

spring is the season of wild greens too!!

I didn't mean to be condesending. to me it seems verbatim Dr. D. /vegsource. I don't see how anyone could ever make the distinction that somethng clearly not optimal is the same or better then something that is all together different.

without entering into too much of an argument about unknowns. the easiest way to prove this is the obvious. blending is inferior to whole foods, both nutritionally and because of its detriments as I have already said: laziness, consuming too quickly, lack of mastication, indigestion, poor food combinations or ok food combinations in strange proportions.

juicing, because it lacks fiber , serves a purpose for the body that was not raw vegan from birth raised by raw vegans from birth. Fiber is an essential nutrient, but not essential to get the extremely necessary alkalizing force from the large quantity of vegetables (greens). Like I said its the way it hits the body like shaking a tree for the almonds only the almonds that fly off are irradiated already! after you clean out you can re-grow fresh almonds.

heres an axiom I think works, i dunno i just made it up:

living a certain way because it is more natural, is oddly a philosophy no more natural the doing something artificial. any discussion about a food that is more optimal because it is more natural is really missing the point in a non-natural paradigm.

My daily juice:

Bunch each of Kale or colard, spinach, parsely, celery
1 or 2 cumcumbers,
several pounds of carrots
2 - 3 beets
2 - 3 apples
some times garlic and or hot pepper

Makes about 1 gallon, made with my K&K press keeps for 24 hours

when Doct. Shulze makes his tinctures, he observers there are never any explosions,lightning bolts or other ominuous signs that would seem to be a safety warning. I have made the same observations when making and drinking large amounts of juice.

La_veronique
This juice is good for mastachio man pictures, I allways must be sure to look in the mirror before leaving house.

elnatural_1

I've read of people over-consuming buckwheat greens in their juices and developing problems. You can read about it on Sproutman.com Go to FAQ and click on trouble shooting. I don't have a juicer, so I do the smoothie thing and I'm pretty happy with that - so far. I started to say that I thought that large amounts of green juice is a good thing, but I'm trying to "stay in my own hula-hoop". Which means not to offer my opinion so much as my experience - what I'm doing and how that's workin' for me.

Life Is Good!

alive!

anaken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> heres an axiom I think works, i dunno i just made
> it up:
>
> living a certain way because it is more natural,
> is oddly a philosophy no more natural the doing
> something artificial. any discussion about a food
> that is more optimal because it is more natural is
> really missing the point in a non-natural
> paradigm.

I have had a similar thought before. How is it unnatural, for example, for humans to construct skyscrapers and shopping malls, if that is in fact what we are doing?

-Erin
Raw Done Light
dogma-free RAW
Gazpacho For The Soul

alive! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've read of people over-consuming buckwheat
> greens in their juices and developing problems.
> You can read about it on Sproutman.com Go to FAQ
> and click on trouble shooting. I don't have a
> juicer, so I do the smoothie thing and I'm pretty
> happy with that - so far.

Apparently, ANY method that allows you to eat relatively large quantities of basically pre-chewed buckwheat greens can lead to trouble in some people (maybe in anyone -- "they" don't seem to know yet). I was eating up to a pound of buckwheat greens in my smoothies, and started developing symptoms within a couple of weeks. (But I suspect that individual reactions might vary all over the place.)

The symptom that finally enabled me to identify my problem as fagopyrism (i.e., photosensitivity due to eating buckwheat greens) was that my skin would turn red and itchy when exposed to direct sunlight EVEN THROUGH A WINDOW!!!

Here's a link to the most helpful article I've found on the subject: [www.gillesarbour.com]

I like eating my foods whole, rather than juiced. I would personally use juice for a temporary clean-out, but probably not as a major part of my regular diet.

Each to their own of course! If a person has problems digesting fiber, juice might be the perfect way to go. But Lemoned is probably also right to avoid the juices that make gas.

One concern I would have about juicing a lot of greens on a regular basis is that the glucosinolates in many of the more "bitter" vegetables/greens can interfere with iodine assimilation.

[www.earthtimes.org].

According to the article, "Faulty intake of iodine can result in problems like goiter, altering levels of thyroid hormones and other conditions related to mental and reproductive growth".

Maybe adding more seaweeds to the diet might help mitigate that effect.

The following link has some simple but very interesting information about the role of iodine and the thyroid (you might want to scroll past the complicated chart on the first page):

[www.localforage.com]

In my view, the evolutionary history of whole food nutrition is so extensive, that anytime whole foods are regularly altered from their natural state before ingestion, it can be expected that there will be some deleterious effect on the way the altered food reacts within our organism. Just a theory though.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2009 10:06PM by suncloud.

I prefer to eat the whole foods including the fiber but every once in a while it feels good to change things up a bit and do a couple of weeks of doing nothing else but juicing greens and eating fruit. I especially like to do this just before a water only fast as a way to make sure my body's reserve stores of nutrients is maxed.

lemoned,

I juice seldom, but I do blend. If the vegetal portion is very high in insoluble fiber, I pass the liquid through a sieve to reduce, but not entirely eliminate, the fibrous goop. Also, I vary my greens, because this is a good way to avoid tedium and to ensure one does not overload on a single class of nutrients(Victoria Boutenko discusses this extensively in her books). If you feel queasy or fatigued after a particular cocktail of vegetables, trust your gut. Most of us are making suppositions here about stuff, though there is considerable evidence that excessive buckwheat greens may be toxic, that brassicas contain goiteregens, and that tropical tuber leaves will kill you. So avoid/limit these, but in any case, do your research.

anaken,

living a certain way because it is more natural, is oddly a philosophy no more natural the doing something artificial. any discussion about a food that is more optimal because it is more natural is really missing the point in a non-natural paradigm

la, how I've missed the way your posts twist my melon. I feel so very obtuse after reading things like this . . .

lemoned Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hello, I have to ask a question about juicing, and
> overdoing juicing.
>
> I got into the habit of drinking large amounts of
> green juices that are low in oxalic acid. I juice
> about 2 bunches of kale or 2 bunches of dandelion
> or collard greens etc. at a time. This results in
> 0.5-0.75 liters of green juice, which I consume
> right away.
>

Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who is known for his research, advocates 2 lbs (1 lb raw, 1 lb cooked) green veggies each day.

"Green vegetables are so incredibly low in calories and rich in nutrients and fiber that the more you eat of them, the more weight you will lose. One of my secrets of nutritional excellence and superior healing is the one pound-one pound rule. That is, try to eat at least one pound of raw green vegetables a day and one pound of cooked/steamed or frozen green vegetables a day as well. One pound raw and one pound cooked--keep this goal in mind as you design and eat every meal. This may be too ambitious a goal for some of us to reach, but by working toward it, you will ensure the dietary balance and results you want. The more greens you eat, the more weight you will lose. The high volume of greens not only will be your secret to a thin waistline but will simultaneously protect you against life threatening illnesses."

..that's more than 2 average bunches of kale, collards or dandelion. Bitter dandelion, I find can be eaten at any stage in its growth up to a couple pounds (all raw) at a sitting.. same with raw rhubarb stalk tart as it certainly is. Kale is usually fine as long as it is harvested before it has started to bolt and go to seed at which point it can cause burning of the mouth somewhat like unripe pineapple can.

..2 bunches juiced, blended, or chewed is not too much,imo. I average one bunch though.

loeve, I am a big fan of Dr Fuhrman's body of knowledge also.

At one of his talks on oxalic acid he warns about eating raw rhubarb, however. Apparently oxalic acid is not a concern anywhere, but in raw rhubarb.

tamukha


<< la, how I've missed the way your posts twist my melon. I feel so very obtuse after reading things like this . . >>

no post of mine could possibly be twistier than your obtuse tomahawk-like name

bet yer name means something though
untwist my melon
and tell all

cocoa_nibs Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> loeve, I am a big fan of Dr Fuhrman's body of
> knowledge also.
>
> At one of his talks on oxalic acid he warns about
> eating raw rhubarb, however. Apparently oxalic
> acid is not a concern anywhere, but in raw
> rhubarb.

cocoa_nibs,
Dr. Fuhrman might have meant the leaves of rhubarb, which are often cautioned against for that reason. Rhubarb stalks have an oxalic acid content of 0.39 - 0.54 g/100g [helios.hampshire.edu] , comparable to that of carrots (0.50 g/100g) [www.nal.usda.gov] ; that's a little more than that of lettuce and less than of spinach.

..cooking makes oxalic acid worse, seems to me.. rhubarb is often cooked in pies.. raw rhubarb stalks are healthier, imo..

People with a history of kidney stones may want to keep track of oxalic acid, like those with hypo or hyperthyroid may follow goiterogens more closely.

blessings



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2009 12:14PM by loeve.

..more on rhubarb

"Rhubarb contains oxalate, which have been reported to cause poisoning when large quantities of raw or cooked leaves are ingested.

13.1 - The poison in rhubarb
Oxalates are contained in all parts of rhubarb plants, especially in the green leaves. There is some evidence that anthraquinone glycosides are also present and may be partly responsible. It is not clear as to the exact source of poisoning from rhubarb, possibly a result of both compounds. The stalks contain low levels of oxalates, so this does not cause problems."

[www.rhubarbinfo.com]

..I'm not suggesting people chew down pounds of rhubarb stalks; they are acidic on the pallet like unripe citrus, imo. However; juiced, blended or otherwise processed I believe the stalks to be an interesting and nutritious food. Tender young sweetened raw stalks are considered a treat in some places..

loeve,

I don't believe rhubarb stalks are ever sweet enough to eat as is. My house sits on the site of a former rhubarb farm, and when I was young we grew rhubarb from plants left behind by the builder. The soil was ideal for the plant, and in pies and cobblers, the stalks were spectacular. But every spring, when we dashed out into the garden to cut and gnaw on the first red stalks, my brother and I were rudely reminded why Mom always cooked them for serving--SOUR, eeew! Our maternal grandfather, the family gardener, was a chemical engineer whose father was a botanical pharmacist, and taught him alot about the chemistry of plants. He would always remind us that the leaves were poisonous, "see how the wild animals don't touch them?" he'd ask. We thought it prudent to avoid them as nothing else, not squirrel, not racoon, not rabbit, not deer, ate them.

la_veronique,

My handle is thusly explained: my given name is Tamara, and the Ukrainian diminutive of it that my mother preferred for me was Tamukha, which is roughly equivalent to the cringe-inducer Tammy. Tamukha is pronounced ta-MOO-hah; the "kh" indicates a harder "h," from the back of the palate, kind of like the "j" in jalepeƱo. My mother preferred Tamukha mostly because the syllable "mukha" also happens to be the Ukrainian word for "housefly," an insect which fascinated me in childhood. There's a story about that, but . . .

There are people who have done a month of green juice fasting and developed extremely painful oxalate stones in their kidneys afterwords, so personally, I would do that, ever.

Good point wild-aloe.

Tamukha, that was good advice of your grandfather not to eat rhubarb leaves. And the pies were so good weren't they...haven't had one in years.

Regarding the leaves..

"One often repeated story features the English government in World War I. It sent out an advisory encouraging its citizens to eat rhubarb leaves to alleviate food shortages and help the war effort. After sicknesses and deaths were reported, the recommendation was rescinded." Prof. Nancy Lowrey - Hampshire College

My rhubarb plants are from my maternal grandparent's place. They were florists and had a vegetable garden. The pies and sweetened sauce are still family spring favorites.

..after a little googling for Raw Food rhubarb recipes..

Ruby Red Rhubarb

5 rhubarb stalks
2 apples
Fresh strawberries, green tops removed
Fresh raspberries

Rinse well all the ingredients. Peel the outer skin of the rhubarb stalks with a vegetable peeler. Run the peeled rhubarb stalks, strawberries, apples, and raspberries through a juicer. Enjoy!

[rawepicurean.net]

loeve,

Thanks for the recipe idea! Maybe it's time to revisit my old childhood pie favorite : )