Juicing can be very beneficial to your health as it allows you to increase your intake of fruits and vegetables. One 
important key to keep in mind when juicing is to create nutrient combinations that will allow your body to absorb the most nutrients from your homemade juices. Fruits and vegetables offer amazing health benefits alone, but what if there was a way to get even more nutrients out of your fruit and vegetables when juicing? Some foods just work better as a team to create maximum benefit, and who doesn’t want to get the best out of what they’re eating? When certain nutrients are paired together they can create a super charge of nutrients that your body will readily absorb. Powerful nutrient pairs will not only increase your body’s ability to absorb more nutrients but will also help you gain control over your appetite, decrease weight gain and help protect your body against certain illnesses and disease.
Here are 3 powerful food pairings that will maximize your body’s ability to absorb the most nutrients from your juices and increase your body’s ability to fight off what it needs to fight off to keep you going strong!
1. Leafy Greens and Vitamin C: This is a powerful combination that can really maximize your body’s ability to absorb iron from leafy greens. While the body can readily absorb iron from animal sources most of the time, iron from plant sources like spinach, kale, Swiss chard and other leafy greens need the help of vitamin C to get the full benefit from iron and have it properly absorbed and sent to where it needs to go. This pairing needs to be consumed at the same time to get the benefits of enhanced iron absorption. Iron helps the body fight off fatigue and soreness by carrying oxygen to the muscles.
Some good juice combinations include: kale, Swiss chard, romaine, broccoli with kiwi, strawberry, lemon or orange.
2. Quercetin and Ellagic Acid: A study in the Journal of Nutrition (http://jn.nutrition.org/content/133/8/2669.full) found that these two antioxidants have a powerful effect on double teaming up on cancer fighting. Ellagic acid enhances the ability of quercetin (an antioxidant found in apples, grapes, onions and buckwheat) that also has a proactive effect on inhibiting and fighting cancer cells. Pair these two together and boom! You’ve got one powerful cancer fighting combo.
Tasty combinations include: Apple and raspberry or pomegranate, grape and cranberry. Add these two combinations with some leafy greens and you’ve got a super juice!
3. Vitamin E and Vitamin C: If you want to amp up your eyesight this is one combination that you can’t ignore! Vitamin E helps protect against macular degeneration (fancy word for loss of eyesight at the center of the vision field), which is one of the major causes of blindness. Pair Vitamin C with sources of Vitamin E and your body will turn it into a more readily absorbable form and immediately activate these two nutrients into ready-to-fight mode which in turn will help fight the loss of vision as we age.
This combination would be best paired in a smoothie rather than a juice since sources of Vitamin E are essentially fat based.
Good combinations include: Almond butter, sunflower butter with kiwi, bell peppers tomatoes, and strawberries. Pick at least one nut butter and one source of Vitamin C to add into your smoothie then build the rest from there!
Quick and Easy 1-2 Punch Juice:
1 orange
1 pear
1 apple
5 carrots
1 handful raspberries
½ bunch of kale
1 golden or red beet
Peel all fruits and vegetables as if you were going to eat them, juice in the order of your preference – it’s all going to the same place right? Enjoy!
Drink immediately if possible. If that’s not possible, place in glass jar, cap it tight and it should be good for 48 hours in your refrigerator.
Cheers!
