Mean Green Juice, WOW!

Have you seen the movie "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead?" It's on NetFlix and Hulu. A documentary about two men both of whom have the disease Uticaria, and are severely overweight. In the process of juicing, they cure their Uticaria, and Joe (the primary documentor) loses 91 pounds, while Phil (the secondary documentee) loses 202 pounds. It's worth watching.

One of my children has a compromised immune system, and during the summer, we went on a juicing regimen to see if it would make a difference in how we felt, or help. WOW! We felt so much better! We didn't do anything "wild," stuck with easy, familiar to the taste juices, like carrot & apple blend etc., mostly from Jay Kordich's book, The Juiceman (since that's the juicer I have, figured I'd go with the guy who really started it all.)

We really felt the difference when we went off it. I went from feeling light and airy to dead weight. It took my son about 3 weeks to descend from feeling great to sinus problems etc. Life just got so busy that we went back into bad habits.

During December, I became acquainted with YouTube's magic, and found a couple of channels from John Kohler. They re-ignited my interest in juicing, he showed me the value of juicing greens (something I had never tried before), and somewhere along the line I was introduced to Joe Cross' documentary "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead." 

Last week I had a pretty severe allergy attack, and this weekend my son came down with the beginnings of the flu. "Enough," I figured, "it's as good a time as any to try Joe's "Mean Green Juice." "

We have felt so much better today, and my son is doing loads better than he was yesterday or even this morning. It is another testament to me that there is wisdom in having a vegetable, fruit, legumes, beans heavy orientation, and light on the rest. I'm not talented enough to cook vegetables creatively, but I can run 'em through a juicer. I'm looking forward to adding more to our lifestyle, and plan on growing a lot of our own greens.

Here's Joe's Mean Green Juice recipe:

6 Kale leaves (in my juicer, flat Kale worked better than curly...I bought both to try)
4 celery stalks (leaves and all)
2 green apples (i cheated and only used one; trust me--you want both!)
1 cucumber (cut a small piece off each end)
1 piece of ginger (not bigger than an inch)
1/2 lemon (my juicer wouldn't take the rind, if yours does, you're better off.)

A friendly piece of advice. If you've been eating a "normal American" diet, heavy with processed foods, meat etc., don't drink this juice in the morning to start off. Do yourself a favor, start drinking in the afternoon or on the weekend when you can stay home and have close access to a restroom. You'll be glad you did!