Most people ask whether to juice or blend!
One of the common questions is whether juicing has more health benefits, or whether blending is the best way to go. Let’s look at the difference between juicing and blending.
Juicing fruits and vegetables allows you to extract the water and the nutrients and leaving the pulp behind. On the other hand, blending pulverizes the entire fruit and vegetable and instead of making juice, you get a smoothie.
Whether you prefer juicing or blending, you are still getting everything you need thanks to the phytonutrients, vitamins and nutrients.
However, the difference is that, when you blend the pulp contains insoluble fiber, which is missing from the juice because the pulp is removed.
Two Types Of Fiber In Our Diet
1. Insoluble Fiber
Insoluble fiber is mainly found in brown rice, whole wheat and in the seeds and skins of fruit. It digests slowly resulting in a slower and more sustainable release of nutrients.
Health Benefits of Insoluble Fiber:
- It supports weight loss. This is because it keeps you full longer allowing you to eat less without feeling hungry.
- It supports healthy digestion, and prevents bowel problems.
- It’s the best to use in smoothies before a workout because it will give you a slow and sustained energy drip because the insoluble fiber digests slowly than the soluble fiber found in juices.
2. Soluble Fiber
Juicing extracts the insoluble fiber but you are still getting a lot of soluble fiber from the juice. Soluble fiber attracts water and turns to gel during the digestive process. This causes slower digestion.
Soluble fiber is found in blueberries, apples, other fruits and vegetables as well as, beans, nuts, seeds and oat bran. Soluble fiber is the main ingredient in psyllium fiber supplements.
Soluble fiber allows you to get 100% of main minerals, vitamins and antioxidants from juiced fruits and vegetables because it absorbs quickly and easily.
Health Benefits of Soluble Fiber:
- It helps keep the cholesterol levels healthy and also protects the heart.
- Bulks up stool to support healthy digestion and prevent ailments like diarrhea, constipation and vomiting. This is the reason why fiber supplements are made from soluble fiber
- Soluble fiber maintains healthy blood sugar levels to avoid blood sugar spikes that pose a risk to type 2 diabetes. It also helps those diagnosed to manage the condition.
- It keeps you fuller hence supporting weight loss and helps you keep your calorie count down, especially if its source is fruits and vegetables
- It eliminates the hard to digest insoluble fiber found in blended or whole fruits and vegetables hence helping older people and those suffering from digestive disorders.
Which Is Better: Juicing Or Blending?
Both are great! Juicing complements blending and vice versa. Both methods help fill the nutritional gap of the other.
- Juicing vegetables allows you to get a plethora of major nutrients without the bulk of the insoluble fiber for pure liquid nutrition.
- Both blending and juicing allow you to make a variety of tasty blends, for example, strawberries don’t juice very well, but kale and spinach does. So you make your vegetable juice, and then stir in the blended strawberries and voila! Best of both worlds, delicious and nutritious.
- When it comes to soft produce like bananas and avocados, blending is the ideal method.
- Blending allows you to get the benefits of the entire fruit including the fiber content.
- If your aim is to boost your nutritional value, the juicing is the way to go. Instead of spending all day deciding what fruit or vegetable to eat next, juices gets all your nutrients in one go.
- Instead of chewing a plate of vegetable or drinking a thick smoothie, juicing gives you an easy way to drink your nutrients. Due to the great variety of fruits and vegetables that can be juiced, juicing gives you more choices.
Final Thought
Taking advantage of both blending and juicing is the smartest way to access the best of both worlds.
We love our carbs! Sometimes we forget to take enough micronutrients. Juicing and blending will be the best way to boost your intake of micronutrients and improve your diets.
Plus when you think about it, juices and smoothies allow you to get more fruit and vegetable than you otherwise would.
You can only peel so many apples or chew so much kale each day, right?
Juicing and blending will make everything so much easier and portable.