Don't Juice An Onion!

After watching Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead I stumbled upon another documentary about food, nutrition and human health called Food Matters. Oh it was right up my conspiracy theorist alley. The information was nothing new to me, especially concerning aspartame and margarine, but I gained a lot of inspiration to take my nutritional medicine, ie. the food I eat, to the next level. So the next day I went out and bought that juicer. Then I went onto the Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead website and printed up Joe Cross' juicing recipes. I purchased the majority of the produce at Costco, but there is a list of fruits and veggies that are especially sensitive to pesticide corruption, so I had to head to Sprouts for the things Costco didn't carry in the organic version. It was at Sprouts I realized how expensive organic apples are, and a few other items I couldn't afford the pesticide free version of. Never the less I went home undeterred and ready to cure what ails me with my new juicer.

In retrospect I never intended to stop eating food all together, just infuse my regular diet with oodles of accessible vitamins, so can't really say why I thought following the recipes was so critical. But follow them I did, until I got to one that called for an onion. Now as I shoved the onion down the chute it made me cry. When I took my first sip I thought I was going to hurl. For a girl who can barely stand raw onions it was a stupid thing to do. Why my brain didn't link the association before I did it is beyond me. Somehow I got that terrible juice down the hatch, determined to not waste any of my precious organic produce, and decided to throw Mr. Not Going To Die's recipes out with the bathwater. I could do better on my own. 

Learning how to infuse juicing into my life took some trial and error. I'll admit it is a time consuming pain in the ass. However, I feel a difference already. My flares are noticeably shorter, less frequent, less severe or something heading in the right direction. I am not as hungry and it really helps with my afternoon blurry vision and fluish symptoms, too. But it quickly became clear spending two hours a day juicing was going to lose its allure, and fast. So I now juice 2 days at a time and that seems to work much better. Yes I know I lose some of the nutrition but am still getting a lot more than I would from Ocean Spray. My husband has even jumped on the bandwagon and is enjoying fresh juice twice a day along with me. What works is a glass of fruit in the morning and glass of veggie in the evening. A shot of Worcester and Tabasco don't hurt the veggies, either. While I may not be getting the nutritional profile necessary to replace solid food I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I ate an apple, orange, nectarine, lime, 1/4 a pineapple, two cups of raw spinach, a fat stick of fresh ginger and handful of assorted berries for breakfast. Nor a cucumber, lemon, stalk of celery, four carrots, three tomatoes, a handful of both parsley and cilantro and two cups of kale for dinner. Or at least 50% of the nutrition contained therein. 

Thanks for joining,
Leah 

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