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Juicing is Good For the Whole Family

Juicing fruits and veggies can be good for the whole family and holds great promise in improving the quality of our children’s diets. It is innovative, fun, interactive, easy to do, and it is a highly efficient way to drastically boost nutrient intake.

From a nutrition standpoint, one glass of juice can provide an average of 4 servings of fruits and vegetables and a greater dose of phytonutrients including antioxidants and other immune supportive compounds as compared with commercial juice.

Fresh juice is a vehicle for providing vegetables in a fashion that tastes good and is visually appealing. And it’s a habit that can prove to be a powerful tool in bridging the gap between dietary recommendations and real life.

Juicing is something that can appeal to a younger generation especially when introduced in the context of a movie, like Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead and when moms and dads are demonstrating healthy eating in their everyday life.

Kids Do Like Vegetables

Taste, choice, variety, presentation and advertising have consistently been shown to influence what young people eat. Children choose healthful alternatives when they are consistently available, tasty, appealing and attractively or creatively served. Increasing consumption of plant foods may not only help improve children’s health it may also help them do better in school.

When you’re introducing juices to children, I suggest starting off with a fruit-based juice that has been freshly made at home with the child’s favorite fruits. You can then add a few vegetables such as carrots, beets, sweet potato or butternut squash.

As the child gets used to drinking the juice and their palate adjusts to the flavors you can slowly start to add more vegetables. Avoid adding anything too sour or bitter, as it can put a picky drinker or eater off and it may work against you in the future if you trying make more permanent changes to your child’s diet.

 


Tips for introducing kids to fresh juice

Let them choose ingredients at the fruit and vegetable market so they can get involved and feel like they have a fun choice.

Start simple with 1-3 ingredients in small servings.

Encourage them to make juices with you and nominate ingredients that they may like to try, whatever fails you can enjoy!

Add more fruit and water if necessary.

Strain the juice if it’s too lumpy and they are sensitive to textures.

Slowly adjust the juicing to add more vegetables, as they get use to the juices but do this slowly.

Adding coconut water if the taste is too strong.  Coconut water, water and/or ice can tone down the taste.

Choose a fun glass or container with a straw.

 


Juice Recipes that kids will love:
Modify the recipe to suit your child’s taste

Aussie Gold  

Watermelon and Carrot  

Watermelon-Mint Smoothie

A New Orange Juice

 


Make more juice and save time with Nama’s Batch Juicing Accessories