Benefits of Juicing
Presenter: Katherine
Guest: Julie Dargan
Guest Bio: Julie Dargan is a nurse by trade. Then, studied naturopathy and got in a Bachelor of Health Sciences.
Juice Master Australia
Segment Overview: Julie Dargan of Juice Master Australia discusses the health benefits of their product. She aims to educate people about healthy diet routines with the help of fruit and vegetable juices.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio – Benefits of Juicing
Julie: Hi, Katherine. How are you?
Katherine: Good, thank you. Now, you’ve been involved with Juice Master for a while and you’ve had quite an extensive background in health. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
Julie: Yeah. I’m a nurse by trade. I was a nurse for 20 years. Always loved nursing, thought I would never leave nursing. Then one day, I suppose you could call it an epiphany, a moment, when I was just there with patients just surrendering to accept their medications and things. I thought, “If you just had taken control of you life and ate healthier and just looked after yourself, rather than just surrender to doctors, would you still be in this position?”
From that I went from being a nurse to opening my own health food shop to try and educate people, because it’s one thing to say, but where do people get the education from? Then, studied naturopathy and got in a Bachelor of Health Sciences, so I was able to really know how to research and be able to give people the information. This was all in Ireland.
Katherine: Yes. How did you come about bringing the Juice Master franchise to Australia?
Julie: Yeah. Well, this was in Ireland. I am Australian, lived in Australia and nursed in Australia. But then I married my Irish husband and I moved to Ireland, and we had our children there, so I lived there for 12 years. So we owned a health food shop there. About two years ago or three years ago I decided I just wanted to come home. I was getting homesick and I just wanted to come home. So I was looking for a business to come back here with.
I was looking around and I was just getting despondent with the amount of so-called health things that were on offer, and I always just seemed to find the fine print, like they were selling either concoctions and things like that. I thought, “No, I want it to be as pure as possible.” That’s when I stumbled upon Juice Master, which is a UK-based business. Jason Vale’s the head of it. He has beenjuicing for 15 years and spreading the juicing word, and it just resonated with me.
So I teamed up with him in the UK and became the Australian franchise of the Juice Master. We’ve been here for one year now, in Australia, but Jason’s been there for 15 in the UK, which I feel is great, because he’s got a great background and things, and just the feedback that we’re getting from people is just phenomenal.
Katherine: Yeah. I’m glad to see it in Australia, because Jason’s books are quite good bestsellers, and he’s quite well known in the UK and in Europe, so it’s great that he has a presence through you now here in Australia. Julie, would you be able tell me a little bit about the benefits of juicing?
Julie: Well, first of all what I like to say to people – we promote vegetable juices. Everyone always thinks it’s just your apple and your orange juice, and doesn’t that spike your sugar levels, and you know … we get the same comments all the time. But what we do is promote vegetables as well as fruit. Now, if you’re going to go and make a spinach and kale juice right now, you’d spit it out, because it’s just way too heavy in the green. You would add a little bit of fruit into it to make it more palatable.
But we promote vegetable juices because they’re more alkaline. They don’t spike the blood glucose levels as quickly. We blend in avocado. We might add in nuts and seeds into the blend. A little bit of oils, so you’re getting your essential oils in. Yoghurts and things like that. The benefit would be, is what you are doing is you are separating the nutrient contents from the food, from the fibrethat’s found in food. That’s the pulp that comes out. That’s the fiber. So all you’re left with is your vitamins and your minerals and all those things.
But then people get concerned about the fibre being outside, say in the pulp. You’re still getting insoluble fiber, and if you get yourself a really good juicing machine, like a masticating one, which is a nice and a slow one, you still do retain some of that fiber as well. So you’re still getting a little bit of fibre, but also, when you drink a juice, you’re getting the nutrients straight away. Some people, in this day and age, we’re so stressed, we’re so on the move that we might be eating it but we’re not absorbing it.
Okay, we’re not so much what you eat anymore but what you absorb. So by breaking it down you’re absorbing it. Now I’m not saying to everyone, you go and juice, Monday … every day, and that’s all you do, there’s no eating anymore. If you just introduce juicingone day, once a day or something like that, it’s a great way to get vitamins, minerals, and a good selection. I mean, I know, I juice every morning with my kale and my spinach, pineapple, cucumber, I might add in a courgette, a little bit of pineapple, a little bit of apple.
I don’t know how many people would cook that much in one meal. So you’re getting across a board, some that are rich in calcium, some that are rich in protein. You got your different varying levels, so if you combine a whole group together you get the great synergy in that juice.
Katherine: Right, yeah. If someone wanted to start juicing and you mentioned that the best way to start is maybe start in the morning? Would you say replacing your breakfast with a juice or do you have a juice and breakfast?
Julie: Well, it depends on what people have for breakfast. What I do is I blend for breakfast. I put everything into my blender, so it’s where I’m adding the greens, because that gives you more fibre. It’s the fibre that gets you throughout the day.
Katherine: Okay, so more of a smoothie? Yeah?
Julie: Yes, more of a smoothie for the breakfast, and then you can add your avoc—see, the more you add – if you added your avocado and more proteins into it, that’s going to satiate you more, but some people still will only go and have an apple and a pineapple for breakfast. Well, they’re going to be hungry by 10 o’clock in the morning. So if you’re going to do it, if you only have a small little amount and you think you’re going to be hungry come 10 o’clock in the morning, then you might add it with your breakfast, but you decrease the amount that you have for breakfast.
Katherine: I see. In terms of juice fasting, I know some people like to actually fast for periods of time, whether it’s three days, seven days or upwards of a month. Some people just have a pure juice diet. Can you tell us a little bit about the pros and cons of juice fasting and if you’re a complete beginner, what should you start of with? Yeah?
Julie: Well, at the moment we’re right in the middle of a big summer juice detox. That’s a worldwide detox that we’re doing, so it’s not only Australia that’s doing it, it’s the UK, it’s America, it’s everyone doing this. What that means is you’re just purely juicing for seven days. Now, for the first couple of days you will feel headaches, tired, lethargic, because that is detoxing, that’s the body is getting rid of all the junk food that you’ve been eating. The coffee, that’s what detoxing is, it’s getting the toxins out of the cell into the circulation and removed.
Because we give our cars a grease and oil change but we never do it to our body. So that’s what we are doing when we are detoxing. It’s always good to work with somebody, and that’s where we’re finding this great, because we have a Facebook page and people putting in, “Oh, I felt terrible today”, and we might give them suggestions. Like I would sometimes have an avocado, I would eat it or I’d eat an apple or a banana. I don’t limit myself to just the juicing because what we try to do is get people off processed foods.
So if you’re going to go and eat an apple, it’s not the end of the world, but if you went and ate a donut, then that is interfering with the whole detox method. So I try to promote raw food as much as possible. So if you’re going to break it, if you break it with an apple or an orange or even an avocado or a banana, it’s not breaking anything. Now, but when it comes to that, I do like to say – anyone who is breastfeeding or pregnant definitely does not do a detox. When you’re detoxing, you’re detoxing the body, you do not want to be interfering with the child at all.
So, when you’re pregnant and breastfeeding that is not the time. You can have a juice, say for breakfast, have one juice a day, but definitely not a seven-day detox. A lot of people are asking that question and they’re getting a confused by it, and I say to people, “You know, you have to wait until you’re breastfeeding or … having the children before you even start to detox, because it does come out in the breast milk, the toxins, and you don’t want that on the child.”
Katherine: No, that’s a very good point. To carry on from that, what about – there are people such as young children or maybe elderly or more frail, or some people are quite sick and they turn to juicing to help them get better. I can see the benefits for someone maybe [09:19 indecipherable] diabetes or what have you. But if they’re quite young or elderly or frail, do you suggest that they go do a juice fast?
Julie: Well, perhaps not a fast, no. I have two children and I’m not putting them on the fast, but what I have done this week is I’ve introduced a juice a day to them, just to try. Because it’s still cleansing a small amount. It’s still getting nutrients straight to the cells, so it gives them that little bit of energy, and it’s a great way to incorporate kale and spinach to children. I don’t like it wilted when I cook it, but unlike it juiced. Especially the frail, I‘m looking at a lot of these protein shakes that we are giving to them and it’s just a chemical cocktail.
If you can’t understand the ingredient that’s going into it, we shouldn’t be drinking it. But again, it’s to make sure that they incorporate a lot more vegetables than fruit and not just going ahead and just having an apple or a pineapple juice. They need to add more greens, and it’s just a great way to incorporate into … but definitely no, not a detox but just, say, introducing one juice a day.
Katherine: Yeah. Good advice. A lot of people don’t have a lot of time, and people might want to pre-make a juice so they have it over a few mornings. What do you suggest? Is it possible to do that? Does it have much of a shelf-life once you do, then put it in the fridge?
Julie: Yeah. As always, anything’s best to do it fresh, but if it doesn’t work, I store all my juices pre-ahead of time, it’s better than not doing it at all. It depends on your juicer. If you have a Phillips or a Breville quick, it just zooms through, you don’t chop anything up. That lasts only really six to eight hours, but only if you stored it in a dark air-tight container and filled it to the top. If you’ve got any air in the bottle, that creates the oxidation process.
It’s like when you cut into an apple. If you leave it on the countertop, you come back in half an hour, it’s gone brown. That’s oxidation going on. So if you left a juice just sitting there or in a nice, big Tupperware container with lots of air and the sunlight can get to it, that’s going to start breaking down. So in a [11:30 indecipherable] flask, airtight container in the fridge, it will last six to eight hours.
But if you have … you can put into the freezer, then take it out in the morning and then allow it to defrost through the day. But if you have the masticating one, which is the more pricier ones that you have to chop them up and it slowly churns the juice, that can actually last up for two days, for 28 hours.
Katherine: Oh, I didn’t know that.
Julie: Again, just do it correctly. So, yeah.
Katherine: Yeah. Oh, okay. That’s good advice. Yeah. What are your thoughts on organics versus conventional, non-organic fruit and vegetables? Would you recommend for juicing to go purely organic?
Julie: Well, it’s a cost restraint. If I’m going to say only purely organic and people go and they just can’t afford it for the prices, it’s defeating the purpose. I live out in the country. It’s great. I got a great farmer’s market. You get to know your direct food sellers, and so pretty much the cost of the veggies is on par with going to a Coles Regular. But if you’re living in the city and you’ve only got the major cities, it becomes way too prohibitive. Organic is always best, because even if you wash the vegetables, it’s still absorbed through the soil.
You can’t just spray something onto a crop. It’s going to be released up through the soil and things like that as well. So it’s just a matter of as much as possible, but if you can’t, don’t. We sometimes beat ourselves over the head to try and be as pure as possible and just do the best, but you do what’s in your capabilities, and it’s better than not trying at all. If you’re going to compare a non-organic carrot to a donut, well, it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?
Katherine: Yeah. Good point there. By the way, before I let you go, I wanted to ask you, I know the website has a lot of great resources and recipes on there, but at Juice Master Australia, do you provide any other services or workshops, for example?
Julie: Yeah. We do workshops. Currently I’m based in Victoria, so at the moment we’re Victoria-based, but I’m getting lots of inquiries around Australia. If I can get up enough numbers where we are going to go around Australia, we do workshops for the day, where people get to work with juicers, ask questions, understand. I often corporate raw food and taste testings and things like that. We also do three-day retreats, which is good if you all come together. You work with like-minded people and the result—the centre we have in Victoria is at the Hepburn Springs.
It’s just beautiful because we also incorporate massages and detox in the mineral springs, and the feedback has just been sensational. Come day three, people are glowing, their skin is clear, they’re clear-minded. It’s great to see the transformation. Some people are dragged along with their friends and they make it quite clear that they didn’t want to be there, but by day three they’re the best converts. Yeah.
Katherine: Sounds great. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Julie.
Julie: Okay. Thanks for having me.
Katherine: Hi. Thank you for joining us today. Today we’ve got Julie Dargan from Juice Master Australia joining us. Hi, Julie!
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