Imagine a bucolic environment of natural beauty, a community of loving, enlightened beings who spend their time in harmony with each other. They have no pressure to compete, commute or make ends meet. They exercise their creativity and fill their abundant free time writing poetry, painting, playing music, reading and writing literature, doing sport, socialising and having fun, drinking tea and meditating. The most beautiful organic produce grows naturally around their modern village, no chemical fertilisers or pesticides are needed and the hard work is carried out by high tech robots powered by solar energy: the Ideal World.
No one needs juicing in the Garden of Eden, everyone eats 7-8 portions of great vegetables and fruit just picked from the ground, every single day.
I run a weekly juicing class and I usually mention the Ideal World early on in comparison to the Real World: rush hour commute on crowded public transport or busy roads, 8-10 hours a day, Monday to Friday, 11 months a year in cubicles in concrete and steel buildings. Stress, air pollution and pre-made, industrial packaged food devoid of nutrition and full of additives, flavour “enhancers”, processed fat and sugar.
Juicing brings to the Real World easily available micronutrients and enzymes in a highly digestible and easy format. A way to help keep the blood pH in check, good hydration to stimulate bowel movements. It’s a second-best shortcut that makes a lot of sense, if you really can’t eat enough whole fresh produce. It feeds good bacteria to the gut and it’s great if you want to detox.
I really enjoy my juicing class. It’s a chance to introduce many notions of nutrition while playing manually in front of people. I started 3 months ago and I developed it into a bit of a show, where the audience gets stimulated and inspired beyond juicing vegetables and fruit. I talk about the difference between types of sugar, micronutrients in vegetables vs animal products, types of fat and the concepts of oxidation and inflammation in the body.
If your life is demanding, you require a lot of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients just to support the organism’s basic needs. Juicing helps the body to recreate homeostasis (balance), and it’s not hard to introduce it into a busy, modern lifestyle.
Everyone likes the fruit-based juices, that’s easy enough. Most of us are addicted to sugar and everything is made really sweet by the food industry. Even apples or grapes are a lot sweeter these days than they should be. I am from Northern Italy and you can still find real grapes up there. Packed with resveratrol, they look smaller, dark blue, with thick skin and seeds, sweet enough but with an acidic aftertaste, nothing like the fake, thin-skinned, seedless stuff from the supermarket.
I am afraid, the healthiest version of juice involves a lot of greens. Sometimes people comment: “That looks really bitter, I could never drink it regularly”. To which I raise half glass of freshly squeezed emerald tinged nectar. I observe the intensity of the colour, smell the fragrance, say cheers and take a small sip with care and intention, savouring it in the mouth for 4-5 seconds to taste the complexity and flavours, like a real gentleman… sublime!
Do you remember, as a teenager, the first time you had a drink? You didn’t like the taste of it I am sure. Try making a child smell whiskey, even the most expensive and prized 12 or 50 years aged Scotch. Alcohol tastes horrible at first, yet some people can’t get enough of it.
Do you want to be very modern as well as looking after yourself? Become a juice snob. I wonder why no one thought to start the Green Juice Drinking Society yet. Scotch whiskey has its own society and a myriad of old clubs. Why not juice? It’s time for progress here people! Time to change the world!
As Oscar Wilde famously said: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
The Ideal World doesn’t exist but you can be inspired to lead a healthier lifestyle. Come live in Koh Phangan with me and do Yoga. Or at least swap alcohol for juice!