Fruits good, fruit juices better

Miss Yemisi Olowookere, a dietician at the Garki Hospital, Abuja,  has advised Nigerians to consume high level of fresh fruit juices — and vegetables.

According to Olowookere, regular intake of natural fruit juices is very important to the body, due to the quality of nutrients derived from fresh squeezed vegetables and fruits.

She said that when juice is extracted from fruits or vegetables, the product is a concentration of minerals, vitamins and enzymes.

Highlighting the benefits of natural juice intake to NAN, she said: “Firstly, the juice hardly requires more digestion, so all its nutritional goodness gets rapidly absorbed into the system.

“Secondly, when you juice, you use more fruits and vegetables than you could actually eat. As a result, you drink a densely-packed amount of vitamins, minerals and other plant-based nutrients.

“Thirdly, juicing helps in liver detoxification and purging of poisonous substances from the body.”

To be clear, she said that by “juicing”, she meant  fresh homemade juice — not the “so-called, misleading 100 per cent real fruit commercial juices” in shops and supermarket shelves

Olowookere advised people to consume more of vegetable juices — such as carrot, cucumber, cabbage, spinach, parsley and celery — than fruit juices.

“This is because of high content of naturally-occurring fruit sugars in them,” she said.

“Vegetables and fruits can also be combined to make mouth-watering delicious and of course healthy drinks.

“Do not add any sweeteners to your juice and try to take them within 20 to 30 minutes after juicing them before they start losing their nutrients.”