Let’s Talk Juicing and Juice feasting cleanse

There are a number of benefits to doing a juice feasting cleanse and regular juicing. One of the main reasons this should be your new “habit” are the high concentration of antioxidants, vitamins , minerals, liver enzymes and phytonutrients that the body gets in one shot.

About 90% of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables are found in their juices. Since it is a liquid, the body is able to absorb all of the nutrients much more quickly than actually eating the veggies and fruits. Plus, you’d have to eat quite a few veggies and fruits daily just to get a fraction of the nutrients you get from drinking on glass. It also makes a fast and easy snack that helps to quench that sweet tooth, and fill you up. It really helps with cravings and is quite filling.

One of the main things you will experience after juicing for awhile is the change in your palate, your Taste buds do change. Foods that aren’t organic or natural taste like processed junk just doesn’t taste right anymore. The artificial sweeteners used they use have a nasty aftertaste.

With natural raw organic juice, the sugar is fructose, a natural sugar your body can easily break down because it sees it as glucose. Glucose is a sugar that the body uses for energy, and everything we eat gets converted into this sugar. Fructose is a very similar molecule to glucose in its chemical makeup, so the body has less work to do. It also doesn’t have the acidic aftertaste caused by artificial sweeteners like saccharin.

Most of the foods we eat daily are riddled with preservatives, chemicals (like insecticides) and other toxins that can wreak havoc on our bodies. All of these chemicals and toxins create free radicals in our blood stream. Free radicals are responsible for the aging process, autoimmune diseases, and even cardiovascular disease.They cause cells to break down and die and slow the healing process considerably.

Antioxidants, phytonutrients and live enzymes are the antidote so to speak. Fruits and vegetables are full of nutrients as vitamin E , vitamin C , magnesium, calcium, and many more among others. In raw organic juice form, these nutrients go straight into the blood stream and neutralize these free radicals preventing cell damage and death.

The fact that the body doesn’t have to work very hard to digest juice, allows the energy saved from the digestion process to be used for other essential activities like building muscle or clearing out toxins already in adipose tissue (fat cells).

Many people also notice that they have quite a bit more energy after they start juicing. I’m one of those people. My energy levels drastically increased after about the third day of juicing. Of course, the same effect when happen you consume more raw foods or go vegan. Animal products, specifically the animal protein casein, are very difficult to break down, taking up to 72 hours to digest, and they also create an acidic state in the body known as metabolic acidosis. This causes the body to strip calcium from the bones to neutralize the acidic state. This can cause osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.

A juice feasting cleanses, or even just drinking it several times a day, and limiting your intake of animal products (or removing animal products all together) will allow the body to reverse this acidic state and start replenishing its calcium stores.

The juice feasting really jumpstarts the process of cleansing the body. It also helps you burn away all those fat stores. Many people do the it for three, five, or seven days. Some people go much longer, up to 60 days in some cases. These longer juice feasting cleanses are called reboots and they allow the body to burn fat, cleanse toxins and repair previous damage. Of course, you should always talk to your doctor before starting but any doctor with a nutrition background will tell you it wouldn’t be a problem and “you’re getting plenty of nutrients.”

The first three to 5 days are the hardest. You feel sluggish, and horrible. But this is the body “resetting.” Many suffer headaches and withdrawal from caffeine and sugar for the first few days or week it varies on the person.
But as the time goes on, all this changes. You’ll have a spring in your step, and you won’t feel loaded down by excess fat, salt and other toxins. You won’t have constipation; in fact you’ll be quite regular because of all the fiber.

This help to lower the risk of colon cancer, diabetes and many other diseases. Acidity and inflammation are the r
oot causes of all diseases. Feasting your cells with nutrients reduces inflammation and balances your pH.

Vegan Avocado Chocolate Muffins

img_0135The healthy fats in the avocado make these cupcakes as healthy as a bowl of kale and bean soup! OK, maybe not that healthy, but healthy enough to feel good about reaching for more. Each cupcake offers almost five grams of fiber and is just 230 calories. A regulat chocolate cupcake is 600++ calories! So you can indulge and have a second one.

Ingredients:
6 tbsp cacao powder
1 &1/2 cups gluten free whole wheat flour or you can use coconut flour
1 cup coconut sugar
1 cup mashed avocado
1 & 1/2 coconut or almond milk
2 tbsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp cacao nibs
2 tsp baking powder

Instruction:

1- Preheat the oven to 180c 350f
2- scoop out the inside of the avocados and mash or puree in a blender. Add the water, vanilla extract sugar and mix.
3- sift in the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and
4- Salt then stir then add the cacao nibs and fold in.
5- fold into muffin wrappers and bake for 20 minutes. Check with a skewer and if it comes out clean they are done
img_0136

Avocado Dill Dip Recipe

img_9920This avocado dill dip can bring a delicious wrap to that next level perfection. It’s perfect for wraps, burritos, tortillas or tacos. It has a very fresh, yet fragrant flavor thanks to our buddy Garlic.

Avocado is great for your skin, your hair and your health. It prevents cancer, inflammation and is bursting with antioxidants. The green fat fruit with a huge seed inside, as my mother likes to call avocado, contains Biotin, which is an important vitamin for hair and nail strength.

Dill has antioxidant, anti-bacterial and anti-cancer properties. It contains a lot of Iron and Calcium – both important for skin health maintenance.
img_9923 Lemon is highly alkalizing and full of Vitamin C, which is important for the synthesis of collagen – the protein, that holds the skin together and makes it nice and firm.

Garlic is not the one you want to mess around with – Garlic fights Cancer, Viruses, Fungi, Bacteria, Psoriasis, Acne, even Vampires and lowers blood pressure on top. It can also make your hair grow.

As you see the ingredients of this dip are pretty great on their own, but combined they’re even more beneficial for your skin and health.

For example Vitamin C from the lemon increases the absorption of Selen from the garlic. Selen is an antioxidant mineral, shown to also prevent cancer.
img_9921 Further the combination of Vitamin C from Lemon with Vitamin E from Avocado increases the antioxidant properties of both vitamins, so evil free radicals have no chance at damaging your skin.

Ingredients

1 avocado
1/2 lemon – juice it
1 garlic clove
a bunch of dill

Instructions

Chop dill, peel avocado, remove the big seed (as my mom likes to call it – a green fat thing with a big seed inside), juice the lemon, squeeze the garlic clove and put everything in the blender. Blend until smooth and you’re ready to dip!

Microbeads Toxic Substance Under CEPA

Statement by Environmental Defence’s Maggie MacDonald on federal government’s decision on microbeads
Jun 29, 2016

Taken From: http://environmentaldefence.ca/2016/06/29/statement-environmental-defences-maggie-macdonald-federal-governments-decision-microbeads/

Toronto, Ontario
We applaud the federal government’s decision to add microbeads to the Schedule 1 list of toxic substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), enabling the government to regulate the substance. The government can now move on regulations to ban microbeads under CEPA.

Microbeads are toxic and unnecessary additions to personal care products like toothpaste and body wash. They may contain toxic substances such as phthalates and bisphenol-A (BPA) that become absorbed on their surface, and can be consumed by fish and birds. Furthermore, every day they continue to be used, the Great Lakes become more polluted with microplastic. Researchers from the State University of New York estimate that Lake Ontario contains 1.1 million plastic particles per square kilometer of lake bottom.

Microbeads can easily be eliminated from personal care products and replaced with natural ingredients like almond and apricot shells. Several large companies, including Johnson & Johnson and Loblaw have already taken the lead and announced that they will be ending the use of these microplastics, effectively eliminating economic arguments for delaying a ban on these substances.

Also, other jurisdictions have already moved to ban microbeads. On December 28, 2015, U.S. President Obama signed a bill requiring that American manufacturers end the use of microbeads in products by July 1, 2017. The bill will also end the sale of products containing microbeads in the U.S. by July 1, 2018. Today’s announcement will enable the Canadian government to better align our regulation of microbeads with the U.S., in terms of the definition of the size of microbeads, and how quickly they can be removed from the market.

This announcement also comes at a time when CEPA is being reviewed by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. We are calling for improvements to risk management under the act to make sure toxic substances are removed from products in a timely manner.

While risk assessments have been completed for many toxic chemicals on schedule 1, development and implementation of risk management strategies for many substances assessed as “CEPA-toxic” has yet to be completed or is inadequate. For example, triclosan was declared toxic to the environment under the CMP in 2012, yet no ban or restrictions have been announced to date. We hope that this swift action on microbeads is a sign of things to come when it comes to the federal government’s attention to toxic chemicals.

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For further information contact:

Jen Mayville, Environmental Defence, jmayville@environmentaldefence.ca; 416-323-9521 ext. 228, 905-330-0172 (cell)