Removing the fiber from fruits, vegetables and herbs allows us to release the essential nutrients in liquid form, which otherwise would take a lot of time and chewing to eat. Liquid juice is also much easier for the body to absorb and digest. As we are now being encouraged to eat a bare minimum of 5 different portions of fruit and vegetables per day – juicing is an excellent way to get these nutrients in to our bodies, especially the foods that you never get round to eating with your everyday meals.

Apart from salads, most vegetables are cooked before being eaten in the western diet, unfortunately cooking foods destroys a significant proportion of the vitamins, minerals and enzymes contained in them as these essential nutrients are volatile to temperatures above 118ºF. Cooking also changes the atomic structure of the molecules – making it more difficult for the body to absorb and digest. Fruit and vegetables in their uncooked state are often referred to as ‘Raw Foods’ and there is now a large number of everyday people following a strict ‘Raw Food’ lifestyle. The use of natural ‘Raw Foods’ in treating cancer and other serious illnesses has proved successful where modern conventional medicine has failed.

Raw juice should be consumed by everyone but it is strongly recommended that juice be taken in moderation and should be made up from different food groups. Finally, drinking juice should never be considered a substitute for eating fruits and vegetables but should be looked on as an accompaniment to a good and varied diet.

Juicing is the separation of the liquid (juice) from the fibre (often referred to as the pulp). The juicing process breaks down the cells of the produce which releases the liquids and a sieve like screen filters the juice in to one receptacle and the fibres are discarded in to a separate container.

A Citrus juicer is a device that basically squeezes the juice out of a citrus fruit, the fruit must be cut in half before use and most of the pulp stays on the half fruit. A Centrifugal juicer Juices harder and whole fruits by spinning them through a fine mesh. This results in Pulp build up, usually in a storage device, and also a large amount of juice.

This tends to be down to the juicer, but as a rule you should only juice as much as the pulp collector or juice container can take. The Arshia Juicers with an internal pulp container can take 1kg of fruit before having to be emptied.

Not too much preparation has to be done, a Hand Blender is a powerful tool designed to puree’ things so it is more than capable of coping with most ingredients. The two golden rules are that the ingredients should fit in the beaker, and that you should be sensible, a whole apple is not going to blend easily, but cut into quarters it should be an easy task for your Hand Blender.

A blender is a device almost entirely for the purpose of turning foodstuffs to liquid. It is used mainly to make soups and other liquid foods, but can also be used to crush ice, when crushing ice add 15ml (1 tbsp) water to 6 ice cubes and operate the blender in short bursts. If supplied with a mill this is to grind coffee beans and spices.