Apple Lime Red Cabbage Juice

When you start juicing fresh fruits and vegetables at home, you'll discover an endless universe of combinations and flavor sensations that you'll never get out of a bottle at any store. And, while you're drinking those crazy colors of juice, you'll also be sipping the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that can help your body reduce inflammation and increase hydration, among other benefits.

A fun part of juicing is that when you mix different ingredients, you might not know exactly what the end product will look like or how it will taste. I love that about it. It's part kitchen science experiment and part art project.

Jump to:

• Why Learning to Like Fruits and Vegetables is the Key to Good Health
• Get Back to Nature
• Reshape Your Tastebuds to Enjoy Healthy Foods
• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Variations
• The Cold-Pressed Juicer I Use
• Other Equipment
• Storage
• Related
• Consider This

Why Learning to Like Fruits and Vegetables is the Key to Good Health

It's easy to say that vegetable juices are good for you. It's harder to adapt your palate to the earthy, sometimes grassy and often bitter flavors that result from juicing celery, leafy greens, cabbages, cucumbers, and the like. Believe me, the first time I tried a green juice, I really wanted to like it, but the flavor was so bitter, I just couldn't swallow it. That first experience made me curious though. Green drinks are made of some of the healthiest ingredients out there. I wondered why they didn't they taste good to me while others seemed to really like them?

When I want to figure something out, I will put my full focus on it, do my research to understand the underyling fundamental properties and how the systems work so I can manipulate them to meet my needs.

In this case, I learned that the body craves the flavors of foods that contain the nutrients it needs. Nutrients and flavor are supposed to be - and used to be - inexorably linked. Now, many "natural" flavors are made in laboratories and used in the production of processed foods. But, the flavors created in labs don't contain the nutrition cues signaled by the flavors grown in heritage agriculture. These artificial flavorings deceive the nose and tongue, causing cognitive deception. For example, your body might, at first, think you're eating strawberries if you eat a product that smells and tastes like strawberries but doesn't actually contain any strawberries.

In this way, processed foods and lab-made "flavors" break the connection between real flavors and nutrition. They fool the body into thinking that it's getting the nutrients it needs, but since it isn't, it's sense of satiety is confused. It wants to continue to eat to satisfy its needs, tricking you into eating more calories than you need - or even want.

Get Back to Nature

If you want to learn to love eating fruits and vegetables, eating more of them is both the destination and the path.

Studies have found that sensitivity and intensity of taste sensation changes with diet composition. For example, when you eat a low sodium diet over time, you'll develop a preference for lower concentrations of sodium. Conversely, manufactured and processed foods contain high amounts of salt, sugar and fat that appeal to our preferences and also reshape the way we taste.

Data suggests that if you eat a lot of high sugar or high fat foods, your preferences shift you toward the selection of foods with higher levels of these compounds. The converse is also true. In other words, the more sugary or fatty foods you eat, the more you will want. The less you eat of them, the less you'll want.

The chemosensory system is plastic and able to tune its receptive properties to the dietary environment. This means that your diet alters your taste sensations and perceptions.

Reshape Your Tastebuds to Enjoy Healthy Foods

It takes time to change how you think about your diet and how it is or isn't serving you. And, it takes time to develop new tastes and habits. If you are interested and motivated to eat more fruits and vegetables, here are some steps to take as you consider how to adapt your palate. Their only aim is to help you enjoy the deliciousness in fruits and vegetables that may be eluding you.

• Reduce or moderate your consumption of packaged and ultra-processed foods: Consume fewer foods containing the salts, sugars, oils, artificial flavors,colors, and chemicals in packaged and ultra-processed foods like breakfast cereals and bars, cola, energy and sports drinks, crisps, potato chips, pretzels, candies, frozen pizzas, pastas, chicken nuggets and fish sticks.
• Reduce consumption of artificial sweeteners: Nutrients and flavor are linked. The body craves foods that contain the nutrients it needs. Artificial flavorings break this flavor-nutrient connection, confusing the body into believing it has received the energy and nutrients contained in real food. But, when you consume artificial flavors instead, you supply the body with neither energy nor nutrients. With its needs unsatisfied, the body stays motivated to consume more until those needs are met.
• Try new-to-you foods: Expose yourself to the foods you want to eat as this can reshape your taste sensations. The more and the longer you eat healthier foods, the better they will taste!
• Consider how you want to feel after you eat: Then, decide what to eat based on whether it will deliver on that outcome.
• Slow down: Fresh food requires preparation time. Before processed food hit its stride with American consumers, most people dedicated time to buying and preparing fresh food. Now that fast, prepared, packaged and processed foods are the norm for most people, the tradeoff has turned out to be obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases. Taking a little extra time could be a life saver.

Ingredients

There are only 4 ingredients for this juice which makes it a cinch to make.

• Lime: The acid from the lime cuts through the earthiness and bitterness of the vegetables, adding a bright, refreshing flavor and balancing out the sweetness from the apples.
• Celery: The juice from celery adds a little light sweetness, a little saltiness, a little bitterness, which may not sound amazing in this sentence, but it works with the other ingredients.
• Red cabbage: Red cabbage is sweet and earthy, with a tinge of pepper.
• Apples: Apples balance everything out in this recipe. Their sweetness balances out the salty, bitter, earthy, and sour, bringing the mixture together into a purple elixir.

See recipe card for quantities.

Instructions

You'll need a juicer to make great juice without a lot of effort. I use a Nama J2 cold press juicer and have used this juicer since it came to market a few years ago.

To optimize the efficiency, taste and texture of your juice, load the hopper with softer ingredients first and then layer from softer to harder. In this case, you'll load the lime first, then the apples, the celery and then the cabbage. Easy peasy.

Variations

Every juice recipe can and should be made to your preferences and there is really no end to the variations you can try. Here are a few:

• Spicy: Red cabbage already adds a bitter bite to this juice. To add a spice to offset it, add a knob of fresh ginger.
• Sweeter: Apples add a mild sweetness. If you want an even sweeter juice, add some fresh pineapple or some oranges.
• A light freshness: Cucumbers are a great addition. They add a refreshing hydration to any juice.

As you make more and more juices, you'll find the combinations you like best. It's like an arts and crafts project every time, but with a mouthwatering outcome.

The Cold-Pressed Juicer I Use

As I noted above, I use the Nama J2 cold-press juicer. There are many reasons I chose this brand and model.

• Fast and easy prep: The J2 has a large hopper which speeds prep time, enabling you to load all of your ingredients and walk away.
• Pure-press technology delivers a better quality juice: The Nama J2 is a cold-press juicer as opposed to a centrifugal model, which means it uses a masticating system that crushes the produce and extracts the juice without adding heat or oxidation, delivering a healthier juice.
• Easy to use: It is easy to put together, easy to take apart and easy to clean. If you've ever used a juicer, you know this can be a huge impediment to getting yourself to make a juice in the first place. Problem solved.

Other Equipment

• Cutting board: Protect your knives by using a cutting board that works in your space. There are really three main options for cutting boards. Plastic cutting boards are economical, easy to wash and maintain but must be replaced over time. Wood cutting boards are more of an investment. They protect knives effectively, but do require consistent maintenance. Rubber boards are gaining notoriety and seem to be the best of both worlds, though they are not that available or affordable yet. A product to watch, I think.
• Chef's knife: Get a good chef's knife to cut your fruits and vegetables. The two popular options these days are a heavy duty German knife, like this one from Wustoff, or a lighter, more agile Japanese style knife, like this one from Shun.
• Airtight glass jars: If you plan to store your juice for a few hours or a day or two, you'll want to store it in airtight glass jars like these.
• Produce bags: Store your fruits and vegetables in mesh bags like these in the refrigerator so they can breathe instead of storing them in the plastic bags from the store. In a plastic bag, the produce will still aspirate forming trapped moisture and hastening spoilage. I use the produce bags from Lotus Sustainables.

Storage

It is possible to store fresh juices for a few days. Fill a glass airtight container all the way to the top to ensure there is as little room as possible for air. Then, seal it tightly.

My preference is to make juice when I want it and drink it fresh. To me, the flavor of the juice changes over time and I prefer it fresh.

Related

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Consider This

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