Posts Tagged ‘food’
The Lemonade Diet is a short-term, cleansing diet that is similar to a juice fast in many ways. While you are following the diet (10 to 40 days), your sole source of energy and nutrients is a lemonade made with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, purified (non-fluoridated) water, grade-B maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. In addition, each morning, you drink a salt-water flush, and each evening you drink a laxative tea. The only other beverages allowed on this diet are pure (non-fluoridated) water and peppermint tea.
There is a strict regimen for ending the diet, beginning with fresh-squeezed citrus juices for approximately 36 hours, and then gradually moving to raw vegetables and fruits or to cooked vegetable soups over the course of three to five days after ending the regime.
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The energy fruit contains is in the form of natural sugars.
The burning of these sugars is a ‘clean’ process.
The contents of fruit
As the interest in nutrition increases and people are getting more and more conscious about what they eat, the interest in fruit and its contents also grows. But we still don’t know that much about fruit and there is much to discover about the substances that fruit contains. We know it is healthy for us, and that people who are sick can be cured by a diet of raw fruits and vegetables. Even cancer can sometimes be cured by this diet but which substances fruit contains is a mystery. That a human being can live healthily on fruit alone has been proven by the fruitarians, they only consume fruit. Read the rest of this entry »
A juice fast is a type of detox diet. A juice fast involves the short-term intake of raw vegetable and fruit juice and water only. Proponents of juice fasting use juice because it’s thought to be a good source of vitamins and antioxidants.
A juice fast is considered an extreme form of detoxification because no solid food is consumed. More moderate detox methods, such as the detox diet include solid food.
Who Shouldn’t Try a Juice Fast?
• Pregnant or nursing women or children shouldn’t try a juice fast.
• People with diabetes, low blood sugar, eating disorders, kidney disease, liver disease, malnutrition, addictions, underweight, anemia, impaired immune function, infection, nutritional deficiency, low blood pressure, ulcerative colitis, cancer, terminal illness, epilepsy, or other chronic conditions shouldn’t try a juice fast or should do so only under strict medical supervision.
• People shouldn’t try a juice fast before or after surgical procedures.
• A juice fasting can reduce blood proteins and change the way prescription drugs react in the body. People taking prescription medications should consult a health professional skilled in detoxification before trying a juice fast, and should never discontinue or reduce their medications on their own.
It’s important to consult a qualified health professional before trying a juice fast.
Possible Side Effects of a Juice Fast
Common temporary side effects of a juice fast include headaches, tiredness, hypoglycemia, constipation, acne, increased body odor, and bad breath.
Other side effects of a juice fast can include fainting, dizziness, low blood pressure, heart arrhythmias, weight loss, hunger, vomiting, diarrhea, and kidney problems. If these side effects occur, there is a worsening of symptoms, or new symptoms appear, the fast should be discontinued and it should prompt an immediate visit to a qualified health professional.
Another possible side effect of a juice fast is diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and electrolyte loss.
If continued for a longer time, juice fasting can lead to nutrient deficiencies, particularly protein and calcium deficiency.
Grapefruit juice should not be used during a juice fast, especially by people taking certain prescription drugs. A compound in grapefruit can change the way certain prescription drugs are metabolized in the body. Recent evidence suggests that pomegranate juice may also have the same effect.
How Long Does a Juice Fast Typically Last?
A juice fast typically lasts for one to three days. A longer fast requires medical supervision and possibly monitoring to ensure that nutrient deficiencies don’t result.
What Does a Typical Juice Fast Involve?
• Proponents of juice fasting suggest fasting only during the warmer months of the year. Spring is thought to be the best time of the year for juice fasting.
• Seven or more days before the fast, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, dairy, wheat, animal meat, fish, and eggs are typically reduced or eliminated from the diet. This preparation diet often consists mainly of organic fruits, vegetables, and beans.
• Between 32 and 64 ounces of juice is usually recommended per day during the fast. The juice is sipped throughout the day. Typical fruits and vegetables include celery, carrot, kale, cabbage, apple, pineapple, cranberry, spinach, beet, and greens. Citrus fruits are often avoided.
• Approximately 6 glasses of room temperature or warm filtered water is often recommended in addition to the juice.
• Organic fruits and vegetables are usually recommended. If organic produce isn’t available, practitioners suggest peeling the skin off fruits and vegetables or washing vegetables with a non-toxic produce cleaner, usually available at health food stores.
• Freshly juiced fruits and vegetables are preferred, but if unavailable, practitioners suggest buying it from the health food store or juice bar as fresh as possible.
• Green vegetables and sprouts contain the pigment chlorophyll, which juice proponents believe are especially beneficial during a juice fast.
• A combination of fruits and vegetables is recommended.
• Variations on the strict juice fast include eating one meal a day in addition to the juice.
• Certain fruits and vegetables and their parts should not be juiced, such as the pits of peaches, apricots, cherries, and other fruits, apple seeds, citrus peels, carrot and rhubarb tops, tough skins (such as kiwi, pineapple, mangoes), and bananas and avocados.
What Do People Eat After a Juice Fast?
There should be a gradual return to solid foods. Read the sample guidelines on how to break a fast.
In this busy lifestyle, we have become highly dependent on unhealthy junk food and seem to have forgotten the health benefits of fruits and vegetables. A fruit vegetable diet is very effective when it comes to a healthy life. Read on to know more about fruit and vegetable diet plan, an important aspect of a balanced diet.
The first thing that comes to mind when we hear the term ‘fruit and vegetable diet’ is a vegan type of diet, which includes various types of fruits and vegetables, most often eaten raw, and totally excludes meat. But this is a myth when it comes to fruit and vegetable diet plans. The meat exclusion part of the diet plan makes many faces frown and its not surprising as meat tastes better than plants. Excluding meat from the diet is not a wise thing to do, more importantly because it fulfills the protein requirements of our body, but at the same time one should also understand that fruits and vegetables provide us with various vitamins and nutrients required by our body for healthy functioning, and thus should not be ignored.more
Fruit Vegetable Diet Ingredients
Fruits do contain fructose, a sugar which is easily converted to body fat, but the benefits of eating fruits are much more than the disadvantages. The fructose content is high in some fruits but moderate in others. Vegetables have two main advantages over fruits: firstly they contain complex carbohydrates which cannot be easily converted to fats and secondly they are low in calories. But this doesn’t mean that fruits are not important in the diet. A balanced diet should contain vegetables as well as fruits. Fruits such as apples, oranges, pears, strawberries, blueberries, papaya, cantaloupe, guava and blackberries contain fairly less amount of sugar and hence are ideal fruit vegetable diet ingredients. In fact green apples have the least amount of sugars in them. On the other hand, fruits like bananas and grapes should be consumed in less amounts or are best avoided owing to their high fructose content. Some important vegetables, such as cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, broccoli, lettuce, tomato, spinach, eggplants, collard greens, alfalfa sprouts and Brussels sprouts need to be compulsorily incorporated in your fruit and vegetable diet plan.
Fruit and Vegetable Diet Plan
In order to live a healthy life and for successful weight loss, a person is recommended to have at least nine servings of fruits and vegetables in a day. An ideal breakup would be four fruit servings and five vegetable servings a day. To make sure one is not overeating, the servings should be small and frequent rather than large and few. This will ensure that you are full throughout the day and also help you to stay away from unhealthy and unhygienic fast food. Cooking is also an important aspect of your fruit and vegetable diet plan. Raw foods are high on nutrients and if at all you want to cook them before eating, baking or steaming them is much wiser than boiling them as boiling tends to lower their nutritional value. Another important thing to be kept in mind is that the fiber content in a whole fruit makes it more nutritional than the fruit juice. It’s ideal to include fruits or fruit juices in your breakfast in the early morning. Halfway between your breakfast and lunch you can either eat some fruits or sip another glass of low-sugar (sugarless) fruit juice. Lunch should include a variety of vegetables, either raw or steamed. Boiling and deep frying will make your healthy fruit vegetable diet unhealthy. A fruit or vegetable salad can be an ideal evening snack, followed by dinner consisting of easy to digest food. More importantly your last serving should go in at least an hour or two before you go to bed.
Initially, getting used to a vegetarian diet will be a bit tough, especially if meat is the most important component of your diet but slowly you will get used to this healthy diet regime. A balanced diet is the key to success and this balanced diet should include all the nutritional fruits and vegetables. Good fruit and vegetable diet plans have many health benefits. It reduces the risk of various cancers and heart diseases. Eating fruits and vegetables will make you feel full and you won’t have to depend on unhygienic fast food which is the biggest threat to your health. Remember that the only success formula for a healthy and long life is a balanced diet, and balanced diet is not possible without fruits and vegetables