Once considered the drink of drop-outs and hippies, confined to earthy-smelling health food shops and co-ops, the juice revolution has swept the nation. Now available at such trendy places as Jamba Juice and even sold in pedestrian grocery stores, the fresh vegetable and fruit juice movement is now a common part of American life. Read on for tips to learn how to be a part of this healthy revolution.

Learn to love wheat grass if you can. Start your wheat grass relationship off very slowly as it is an extremely strong tasting plant. The nutrient benefits are out of this world but some people think the taste is as well. Use strongly flavored fruits and small amounts of wheatgrass and work your way up to larger amounts over time.

Wheat grass is only usable by us when it has been juiced. We physically can’t process the fibers when it is in plant form. Learning to enjoy wheat grass will provide your body with benefits from nourishing your kidneys, providing vitalization to your skin and body, and removing toxic metals from your body’s cells.

If you want to be successful at juicing in order to maintain a healthier lifestyle, then be sure to keep your juicing machine on your counter or in sight all the time. If you keep a certain area designated as the “juicing area,” then you will be more likely to use it as it is intended.

Keep the juicer on your kitchen counter in plain sight. This ensures it’s available and ready to go at all times. Using it every day will be easy, if you see it and not have to waste a lot of time getting it ready.

Buying fruit and vegetables for your juicing can be easy by using all five senses to find the freshest produce to bring home. Sniff the item and make sure it smells good, like you would want to eat it. Squeeze it and feel if it’s too hard or too soft. Look it over for imperfections, and then take it home and taste a bit. Enjoy!

Sometimes we all get sick, even the healthiest of us! Maybe it’s not an illness that is holding you back, but instead you’ve injured yourself, and you just can’t get out of the house. Juicing does not have to be forgotten! Use whatever you happen to have in the house, or ask a neighbor if they have some items you could use.

Substitute meals on occasion with your juicing. There are multiple servings of fruit and vegetables going into your mix and this can equate to a very healthy meal. Occasionally substituting a juice blend for a meal will reduce the amount of nontraditional ingredients you are consuming from processed foods and you will get more than enough nutrition.

If you are going to increase the amount of natural nutrients you take in by juicing regularly, be prepared to go through a detox phase. If your diet consists of a high level of processed foods, your body will have to go through an adjustment phase when it is faced with handling a large influx of wholesome nutrients.

If you don’t like the taste of certain vegetables that you should be eating for their nutritional benefit, try mixing them with fruit or vegetables you do like! Use only one disliked vegetable in a recipe and the flavors of the others that you do enjoy will overwhelm your taste buds so you don’t even notice it!

Sugar cane juice can help build your immune system, but chewing on the actual sugar cane can cause tooth decay. Instead, juice your sugar cane along with fruit, vegetables, and other healthy additives to get the most nutritious juices possible every single day. Juicing can taste great and help you stay healthy!

In regards to juicing, it is important to consider consulting with a doctor if you are currently pregnant or planning on getting pregnant in the near future. This is important because you want to make sure that the potentially powerful effects of consuming homemade juice will be beneficial to your baby.

The best part of juicing is knowing that’s being put into your juice. No one really keeps track of what happens to fruit or vegetables at the point of growing, or what it’s then treated with, before it’s turned into commercial juice. Buy organic so you know that your produce is pesticide-free.

A great juicing tip is to make sure you store your juice in a way so that it doesn’t lose any of its nutritional value. A good way to do this is to be absolutely sure that there is no extra air space in your juice container.

If you’d like to sweeten vegetable juice, reach to beets or apples. Apples sweeten everything without adding a strong flavor that can turn you off. Beets are a great sweetener as they ARE vegetables, making them healthy and lower in calories than their fruit counterparts. Carrots are another lower-calorie option, and they keep blood sugar levels balanced, too!

Beware the efficiency of calorie intake from juicing! When you mash up foods like fruit and vegetables, they become much easier to digest. This means that everything they contain, from vitamins and nutrients to sugar and calories, will be taken into your body in full. Watch how many calories the items you juice contain to make sure you don’t stop your weight loss.

The juicing movement is on the rise but it hasn’t come far enough. The undeniable benefits of the raw juice of fruit and vegetables are essential to improving the overall health of the American public. With the increase of home juicers and the information coming out from National Cancer Institute’s about the benefits to long-term health from fruit and vegetables we will start to see more people join the juicing movement.