No....not steroids....but another kind of healthy growth enhancers! My juicer has arrived and we just completed out first juicing session. I am so much more than thrilled! Even though I have been touting the benefits of juicing, and researched the juicers, ordered and anticipated the arrival of said machine.......underneath, I still had my doubts about whether or not I could actually stomach the drinking of VEGETABLE juices. Now those fears have been subdued as I just drank a big glass of orange-carrot juice. It was incredibly delicious! So, I now know I can at least drink carrots.
As you can see here, I've got tons of other veggies to try, so hopefully they go as smoothly. I'm still trying to find a good book with recipes. I may have to go out & buy one.
At any rate.....this is my plan.....to go thru these veggies one by one and create palatable flavor combinations so I not only tolerate, but actually enjoy what I'm drinking.
I should mention that all of these veggies (with the exception of the bag of Cuties) are organic. I can't stress enough the importance of buying organic.
Perhaps I should once again start at the beginning of my adventure. When I decided to embrace a more natural lifestyle, I began by eliminating preservatives and such in processed foods. I particularly watched for Partially Hydrogenated Oils AND High Fructose Corn Syrup. These poisons are everywhere, but especially in commercially prepared baked goods (cookies, crackers even supposedly fresh baked breads from your local grocery's bakery section. Read one of their labels!). I thought I was doing great!
But then again.....one thing leads to another.
Read that label again.
wheat flour, sugar, butter, salt
All natural ingredients, right? Not always so much......did you know that if an item states "sugar" as an ingredient, it probably includes a combination of sugar cane AND genetically modified sugar beets. In fact, nearly ALL sugar beets are now GMO. The only way you can be sure you're not getting GMO sugar is if the ingredient label states "pure cane sugar". What about wheat? Ask yourself, how was it grown? Commercially grown grains (as well as nearly all vegetables, legumes, fruits etc) are inundated with chemicals during the growing process, including poisonous pesticides & herbicides. Ok....butter sounds good, right? In fact, that butter probably came from a cow that received regular injections of drugs, hormones, & antibiotics, not to mention the forced feeding plans, and animal by-products in their feed. Add to that specialized breeding plans, and its nothing like nature intended.
What about simply washing fruits & veggies with a mixture of vinegar & dish soap? Well.....that may help a little, on some thicker skinned produce....but, in fact, pesticides are absorbed into the fruit and can't be completely washed away. Thinner skinned fruits & veggies like tomatoes & strawberries are particularly vulnerable, as well as root vegetables which absorb all of those pesticides so well as they grow in the soil.
So now.....we not only have to avoid preservatives in our foods, but we also have to avoid "natural" foods that have suspect growing methods. Pesticides, herbicides, GMO,, etc.
To make a really long story a wee bit shorter.......I've decided to simply BUY ORGANIC.
That's the simplest solution. Oops....one more thing.....even organic veggies can be tainted if they are packaged in a can with BPA laced lining. Tomatoes, again, are most susceptible to absorption of BPA.
I am shocked at how many organic companies package in BPA lined cans? Why don't they simply use jars? or BPA -free lining, as Eden Foods does?
DON'T BUY ANYTHING IN CAN'S UNLESS LABELED BPA-FREE!
I'll do another more detailed post soon regarding GMO. I think ts something most people don't really realize exists! They may have heard of it, but don't understand what & where it is.
Now....my next, personal step is growing my own vegetables. I don't even want to say how much I spent on that load of veggies up top (& it was from a discount type supermarket).
I do have one concern: how healthy is my soil? are there contaminants in it?
That will be my next research project.
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