How to Make Healthy and Delicious Vegetable Juice Blends

Few people eat enough fruits and vegetables, but with a juicer, you can eat your daily quantity in just one 16-ounce glass. Juicing extracts the maximum amount of nutrition from fruits and vegetables and delivers it directly into the bloodstream. If you haven't fallen in love with fresh juice yet, it may be because you think there are only a few kinds that are tasty, like carrot and apple juice. But actually, almost any fruit or vegetable can add its own nutritional value to a tasty juice blend.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Pick a good juicer. To encourage a daily habit, it's worth your while to spend a little more money on an efficient, powerful juicer. I'm talking about $75 to $100. A good juicer will save you time and effort by accepting fruits and vegetables with minimal chopping and forcing, and by making more juice from less. Once you've fallen in love, you'll never regret it.
2. Buy your produce fresh and organic. Spare yourself the scrubbing of waxes, chemicals and pesticides, not to mention suspect GMOs. Choose only a few pieces of each kind so that you can use it within the next three days. Produce won't last much longer than that anyway, and you'll want to use it at its peak.
3. Mix and match. Variety is the key to a good diet and juice is no exception. Choose at least one or two kinds of fruit and one or two kinds of vegetable for a tasty, healthy blend.
4. Balance your sweets. Sweet fruits and vegetables, such as apples, oranges, carrots and beets, are a great way to improve the taste of your blend, but keep the proportion to one half or less. You'd be surprised how far the sugar content can go toward making the more bitter or salty vegetables taste good.
5. Use lemons. Lemons are renowned for their high nutritional content, and a good juicer can use the whole fruit, peel included. They can help cut the sugar content of your blend and are also great for neutralizing the bitterness of leafy greens. One lemon per glass will hardly be noticeable as a flavor, but will make all the other flavors brighter.
6. Use subtler fruits and vegetables to bring out subtler flavors. If you don't want to miss out on the delicate flavor of melon, for example, blend it with papaya, cucumber, celery, or even potato. You can also use subtler produce when you know you want to make one flavor dominant, such as carrots or berries.
7. Spice it up. For a kick, add a sliver of ginger or garlic to your juice. It will help boost your immune system and may be the perfect finish to your blend. And don't forget your herbs, such as basil and fennel, which easily blend with other veggies.