CURRICULUM ~ Weekly Pocket ~ National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week ~ Remember Me Pockets: January

National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week
January 17 to 23rd, 2011
(Dates on information sheet are for 2010)

 Did you know January 17th through 23rd was "National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week" in the United States?

To be honest, until going through this information with Alisdair, I hadn't really even considered the differences between ordinary juice and the freshly squeezed version.  In my mind, juice was juice!

But it appears I've been mistaken all these years.  I told Alisdair about my friend from university days.  She decided to drink concentrated juice and went out and bought an expensive juicer machine.  She put large 5 pound bags of carrots through the juicer and drank the deep orange liquid for several days.  Then some of us, who were Donalda's roommates, noticed her skin was taking on a slightly orange tinge.  At that point, she decided perhaps some variety would be a good idea!

According to the material included in this pocket, "When you have the juice from a fresh piece of fruit or a vegetable, you have all the enzymes from it.  Enzymes are killed when heated, so store packaged juices lose this benefit.  Enzymes are very important to our bodies.  They trigger thousand of chemical reactions in our bodies, are important for digestion and absorption of nutrients, help our body tissue, and produce energy in the cells."

Fresh juice provide vitamins and minerals.  The minerals in fresh juices are:

Iron

Copper

Potassium

Sodium

Iodine and

Magnesium.

The activity also provides a worksheet with stickers of various vegetables that can be put through a juicer and used as a fresh drink.  These include:

Watermelon

Garlic

Carrot

Potato

Cabbage

Cucumber

Green Pepper

Spinach and

Beet.

Juicing also removes indigestible fiber.  If you eat the vegetables raw, some of the nutrients remain trapped in the fiber.  If you eat a carrot, for example, you only get 1% of the beta carotene from it.  If you "press and squeeze the carrot and get the juice from it, then throw away the fiber part, you have 100% of the beta carotene.  Fiber is very important and so are the nutrients in the plants.  Making sure we get both juice and raw veggies is a good way to be healthy and balanced."


Sticker Worksheet