Juicing for the Budwig Protocol

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Juices | Sauerkraut Juice  | Juicing Routine  |  Juicing Tips  | Juicers

Making your own juice is a real treat. Part of the fun is getting the varieties you enjoy and blending different veggies, fruits and spices in with the basic ones. Think of all the different varieties of apples or beetroot you can buy, especially if you go to farmers’ markets or get them from your own or friends’ trees; then think of all the other beautiful fresh fruits, veggies, herbs and spices you could combine.

“Juicing”, making your own fresh juices, is one of the important cornerstones of the Budwig Protocol.  The Budwig Diet involves juices daily, on their own and in muesli and desserts.  It’s about high-quality juice from high-quality fruits and vegetables.  Juices in shops can be quite old – sometimes years old by the time you drink them, often pasteurised and over-heated, and usually from concentrates, so the result is de-natured juice; its flavour spoiled, most of its vitamins rendered useless and all of its enzymes destroyed.  This is why making your own juice is the best option on the Budwig Diet – but keep a few bottles of good- quality juice as a stand-by.

Fresh or carefully-produced juices taste like the fruits and vegetables they came from and have all their antioxidants and enzymes.  The best way to have your juice is freshly-pressed for every meal or at least made every day.  It is a good idea to keep some good-quality ready-made juice in the cupboard as a stand-by for the occasions you don’t have the time to press your own.
Johanna Budwig was never totally against good quality bottled juice and recommended Ferment Gold which is only available bottled.

Organic isn’t essential but for fruits you juice with, leaving the skins on it is a very good idea.

There is no point in overloading on one fruit or vegetable juice; so try to get plenty of variety in the juices you drink.

The Budwig Diet involves juices daily, on their own and in muesli and desserts.
Juices for the Budwig Diet

  • Juices specifically recommended by Dr Johanna Budwig include carrot, celery and apple, beet and apple, radish ( this could be ordinary little radishes which are a quick summer crop or winter radishes which are a larger, more common on the continent than the UK or even mooli a large oriental radish that is available much of the year) cherry, grape, blueberry and red currant and stinging nettle.
  • Mix and combine your juice to taste
  • On the transition diet fermented papaya juice is recommended
  • Juices are best made with good, fresh and preferably organic fruit and vegetables. They should be drunk as fresh as possible to ensure the vitamins and enzymes are still active. It is always best to press it yourself for that meal. If you are buying vegetable juices, the best are made from fresh whole vegetables/fruit, either fresh or as lightly pasteurised as possible. It is a good idea to keep some good quality ready-made juice in the cupboard as a standby for the occasions you don’t have the time to press your own.
  • Johanna Budwig permitted good-quality bottled juice and recommended Ferment Gold which is only available bottled.
  • Nettle juice (yes this really is stinging nettles put through a juicer!). Nettles are rich in vitamin C and in the UK have always been a folk remedy for cleansing the blood, especially in spring.Nettle juice  is recommended by Johanna Budwig, it is just about OK, but add some blackberries and the juice of a lemon and it’s beautiful.
  • Almost all fruit and vegetables, leaves such as spinach, chard or watercress  or even wheat and barley grass (very rich in nutrients you can grow your own very easily) can be pressed. The Budwig Diet permits all fruits and berries, especially in season ones and good-quality frozen are ok too. Although many of these are not specifically mentioned for juice by Johanna Budwig it is fine to use them to add variety and flavour to the basic list of juices.
  • Flax Farm have selected the range of Biotta Organic Juices for this website. They are organic, produced and grown in Switzerland with great  care and skill.  They are the best alternative to making your own and taste so amazing it is hard to make juices this good from fresh fruits and veg bought in shops.  So when you feel like a day off from juicing or are travelling these are ideal to have to hand – or just as a treat.  For more information see the Biotta website.

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Sauerkraut Juice

Sauerkraut juice is very important for the Budwig Diet; it must be drunk first thing every morning.   This is not the liquid the sauerkraut comes in, it is actual juice pressed from sauerkraut (lacto-fermented cabbage) itself. It seems extremely odd to the average British palate but it’s nicer than it sounds and after a while you will probably get to enjoy both sauerkraut and sauerkraut juice.  If you need a little help getting used to it, try diluting it slightly and adding a little freshly-pressed pineapple or orange juice to it.

Both sauerkraut and the juice are very good for the digestion and for alkalising the blood.  Fresh, raw sauerkraut is a rich source of beneficial probiotic micro-organisms. Ideally the sauerkraut for making the juice should be raw and unpasteurised.  If  you can’t find unpasteurised sauerkraut, and haven’t made your own yet you can buy ready bottled sauerkraut juice, made by Biotta it’s the next best thing to home made.

Biotta Organic sauerkraut juice
Biotta Organic sauerkraut juice

Making Your Own Sauerkraut Juice:

Simply add a suitable amount of your raw sauerkraut (you will probably have to make it yourself as fresh raw sauerkraut is hard to find) to your juicer and press the same way you would for any other fruit or vegetable juice.

Budwig Diet Juicing Routine

  • First thing, before breakfast, you must have a glass (a glass is probably about 7 fluid oz or 200 ml) of sauerkraut juice.
  • Breakfast: juice can be used to moisten ground linseed or add flavour to the quark-linseed oil cream for breakfast in muesli or add a cup of juice to the ground linseed, quark-linseed oil cream, liquidise the fresh fruits and berries and use a cup of juice to make a smoothie.
  • 10 a.m. take a glass of juice.
  • Lunch, juice can be used to add variety to the quark-linseed oil cream in desserts
  • 4 p.m. possibly another of veg or veg and fruit juice.

Juicing Tips 

If you feel you aren’t taking enough vegetables, try adding some spinach or kale when you juice – cabbage stalks juice  brilliantly.

  • The cruciferous family, cabbages, kohlrabi, turnips, kale, pak choi, broccoli and watercress all taste good pressed with apple and if you add some sort of sharp whole citrus fruits such as orange, clementines or kumquats, the juiced peel increases the antioxidants and tang.
  • If using fruit with its peel still on such as oranges or apples, always try to choose organic and rinse the fruit first.
  • Tomatoes, peppers, celery or celeriac, cucumber and courgettes are great with apple and beetroot, try a little garlic and/or onion or even chili peppers.
  • Apples, pears, quinces, rose-hips or berries – and seabuckthorn is great if you know of a bush.
  • Carrots and beetroot are great for colour and flavour.
  • Celery, fennel and celeriac make good juices.
  • Ginger and lemon or lime are the very best for giving juice a real lift and loads of extra goodness. In a vegetable  juice, chillies are surprisingly good.
  • Lemon pressed with apple and pear helps keep the juice form going brown.
  • “Grasses” which are whole grains of wheat or barley grown to about 7” or 200mm high are amazing sources of nutrients and ideal for an extra shot of greens in your juice. Wheat is perhaps richer in nutrients; barley tastes nicer.
  • Spinach and Swiss Chard make sweeter, less pungent green juices than you might expect.
  • Mangos and avocado don’t work very well, they are too mushy and clog up many juicers.

Juicers

You will need a juicing machine.

Whichever juicer you choose, you will be amazed at how good your own home-made fresh juice is. Within reason the more money you spend on a juicer, the better the juice, pressed at cooler temperatures and the more juice is extracted from the pulp – which makes it more cost-effective. Some machines are much easier to clean than others, the most important thing is to get a machine you like that way you will enjoy using it.   There are loads of different juicers out there.  Juicing on the Budwig Diet is going to be a big part of your life so get a good one. Some important considerations are:

  • A juicer you like using,
  • One that you will be happy to clean every day; some are  fiddly and a pain to clean.
  • The quality of the juice and temperature it reaches during extraction – less good ones generate too much heat.
  • One that makes juice, not froth and sludge – i.e. the best juices are less prone to separating but if they separate a bit, no matter, just give them a stir, they will taste brilliant and still be just as good for you.
  • The amount of juice the machine actually extracts. i.e. the left-over pulp should be dry and crumbly.
  • Amazon gives good customer reviews on juicers.
  • Cost. As you will be making so much juice getting too cheap a juicer can be a false economy because cheaper ones tend to be less efficient at extracting the juice and so the more expensive ones may work out better in the long run.

    Dualit centrifugal  Juice Extractor  from John Lewis, ,
    Dualit centrifugal Juice Extractor from John Lewis, ,

Different types of juicers:

The centrifugal  juicers are not too expensive.  Fairly good ones start at about £100. They work OK and are seriously noisy but great fun;  they tend to have a wide aperture so you can drop in whole fruit and produce a big jug of juice very quickly.  The various components are quite big so there is a big bowl of washing up but that is done quickly and easily. They are not good on leaves or grasses.

 To see a study to compare the nutritional value of juice made by different juicers: http://www.hacres.com/pdf/documents/other-juice-extractor-comparison-2007.pdf

Masticating juicers such as the ones below are good because they break the fruit or leaves first and then slowly press the juice out without heating it up; this produces the best quality juice with the most live enzymes and antioxidants. They are slower to use than the centrifugal type but better for leaves, wheatgrass and sauerkraut.

Auger juicer produces excellent juice for Budwig diet
Auger juicer produces excellent juice for Budwig diet

The horizontal auger style juicers have smaller feed tubes (means you have to chop most fruit and vegetables) and produce juice much more slowly but at a slightly lower temperature. They cope better with leaves and wheat/barley grass. The juice is clearer if you use the screen over the jug.   The components are smaller and a bit easier to clean.Priced from £160 upwards.

Masticating vertical juicers tend to be more expensive but have bigger feeds and are meant to be technically superior. These cost from £250 upwards.

And there are manual juicers such as the Lexen Manual Wheatgrass Juicer available on Amazon which are very cheap and according to the reviews work fine. These as around £25. These work well on leaves.

 

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food" – Hippocrates