A FUN and EASY way to get more vitamins & minerals into your diet is by drinking freshly made fruit juices, vegetable juices, and by blending thick and frothy smoothies and shakes from frozen fruit.
A friend of mine describes drinking freshly made fruit juices like this: "If you have never taken a mouthful of cantaloupe juice or strawberry juice mixed with apple, you simply have not lived. Blueberry juice is a taste of liquid heaven."
Freshly made juices are a tremendous source of bio-available vitamins and minerals which are the partners of enzymes and co-enzymes. Vitamins activate enzymes and without vitamins, enzymes could not carry out their work, and we could not live.
Enzymes act as catalysts in hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions that take place throughout your body, and are essential for digesting, absorbing and converting food into body tissue.
Enzymes produce energy at the cellular level and are critical for most of the metabolic activities taking place in your body every second of every day.
Another benefit of drinking fresh juices and smoothies is that your body can absorb MORE of the vitamins and minerals than if you were to eat the fruits and vegetables whole!
Many of the nutrients are TRAPPED in the fiber and by blending fruits and vegetables, you break down the fiber and release the vital nutrients.
When you eat a raw carrot, you are only able to assimilate a small percentage of the available beta carotene.
When a carrot is juiced, removing the fiber, a LARGE percentage of the beta carotene can be assimilated by your body.
Of course, you still need to eat whole produce because fiber is also an important part of your daily diet.
Meeting you or your children's need for energy and nutrients is essential for good health. Children who do not meet their needs for energy may stop growing and gaining weight.
In severe situations, they can develop a condition which is life threatening called protein energy malnutrition.
Vitamins and minerals are only required in very small amounts, but a diet insufficient in these can cause SEVERE deficiency diseases.
