Juicing and Fiber

Interviewer: You talked about the importance of fiber a lot. What about juicing? That's a big movement as well, and a lot of times when you do that, you take the fiber out. What do you think about that?

Nick Delgado, PhD, CHT: Right, right. So I came to terms with the whole idea of the difference between juicing and blending and whole superfoods. I found a middle ground because I thought that the greens could be juiced and concentrate all the super liquid nutrition to improve nitric oxide, to improve basal dilation, improve circulation. And there's probably chlorophyll and detoxifiers in greens.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

Nick Delgado, PhD, CHT: So there's a variety of greens: kale and swiss chard and arugula and carrots and different things that I juice- and then I take that juice and I put it in a Vitamix with whole food. I blend it so I get the fiber. I don't discard that; I keep that. The juicer discards the carrot fibers, but I can take that carrot fiber and throw it into the Vitamix, so it's still in there. But I wanted that juice to get the concentration, and I still wanted the fiber. When people see my salads, they're blown away. They say, "You're going to eat that salad that big?" I say, "Yeah, it's going to take me half a day to eat it," but it's a salad that's this big in a container. I have a little travel case I take with me and it's stacked with swiss chard and arugula and spinach and asparagus. I'll put a little hummus in there, an eggplant. It has 10 different vegetables in there with sauces and flavors, so I look forward to eating that big salad everyday. It fills me up and satisfies me.

To answer your question, I think if you had a choice between juicing and blending, I would probably just do the blending. But if you have the luxury of adding some juices to a shot of juice here and there of greens, do that as well. I think you need that super concentrated nutrition, but you still need that fiber and you still need to chew. I notice if you take the juices and you just swallow it down without swishing it around your mouth, you don't quite get the optimum nitric oxide levels. There's a test we can do for nitric oxide, which is very important for good circulation nutrition. That's where you need to eat the big salads with swiss chard and kale and arugula to get all of that chewing action to release these nutrients. I do all three. I don't choose one as better than the other. I think, do all three and it's easy to do all three. Juice, throw it into the Vitamix, blend, and then you have the super powders that go in. Then eat your big salads and you've got the best of all worlds.