Vegetable Juice: The Key to Health

Several weeks ago I wrote a Health Tip titled “A Day On the Hallelujah Diet.” In this Health Tip I told of the importance of consuming raw vegetable juices on a daily basis. In response to that Health Tip and the emphasis on raw vegetable juices, I received the following response:

“I can agree that Adam and Eve ate non-meat foods, at least before the fall, but Genesis gives no indication of your push for raw vegetable juices in The Hallelujah Diet. They obviously hadn’t the juicers you promote in the garden. Isn’t it more ‘natural’ to include the fiber with the juice? God made the food that way and created us with a stomach for digesting….right?”

This is a very good question that deserves a good answer! Here is why we include raw vegetable juices in the Hallelujah Diet, and the evidence to support doing so whether addressing current physical problems, or to help prevent future problems...

God's #1 Dietary Instruction

When God created Adam and Eve, they were in a garden setting. Within that setting, God very clearly told them in Genesis 1:29 what was to be the fuel (food) they were to consume in order to maintain their physical bodies and sustain life:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed (raw vegetable), which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed (raw fruit): to you it shall be for meat (food)."

God told man that he was to forage for his food! And just like all the other vegetarian animal creations of God, man was to walk through God's nature, plucking these raw fruits and vegetables, and consume them in their natural raw form as provided by God in nature — it was the way things were meant to be:

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. . . .” (Genesis 2:8-9)

Man Plants Gardens and Orchards

It is interesting to note that even after the fall of Adam and Eve, after sin had entered the human race and they were banished from the garden, their original diet continued. On these raw fruits and vegetables that man planted and harvested, man lived to an average age of 912 years for the next 1,700 years, without a single recorded instance of sickness. These raw plant foods continued to be the exclusive source of nourishment for the physical body until the flood destroyed all plant foods in Genesis Chapter 7 (see verses 19 & 24). Only after the flood waters had destroyed all plant foods did God allow meat to be added to the diet in Genesis 9:3. Why did God allow meats to be added? I believe this addition of meat to the diet in Genesis 9:3 was not because there was a deficiency in God’s Genesis 1:29 diet. I believe it was for survival purposes because all the plants in the garden had been destroyed by the flood waters. After the introduction of meat in Genesis 9:3, man’s lifespan dropped from 912 years before the flood and the introduction of meat into the diet, to 110 years — in just 10 generations (see Genesis 50:36).

My Personal Experience With Sickness

In 1976, after being told I had colon cancer, I went searching for an alternative way of dealing with my cancer. I did so because of my mother's experience with the traditional medical modalities of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery after she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. At the time of mom’s death, I felt that these medical treatments, and not the cancer, that had ultimately caused her death. It was at this time I turned to an evangelist in Texas by the name of Lester Roloff for wisdom and help. Evangelist Roloff had been trying for years to get Christians (especially preachers) to improve their diets. He was not very successful. In fact, he experienced great resistance from preachers. Evangelist Roloff encouraged me to not go the traditional medical route! Rather, he encouraged me to do something as simple as change what I ate – from the Standard American Diet (SAD), a meat-based, sugar dessert, almost-all-cooked-food diet I had consumed for the previous 42 years of my life – to the raw fruit and vegetable diet God gave Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 1:29. He also encouraged me to drink lots of vegetable juices

My Diet Change... and Juicing

I took Brother Roloff’s advice, made the diet change, including lots of raw vegetable juices. Within just a few weeks, my rectal bleeding had stopped. Within a year, my baseball sized tumor was no more. That experience took place almost 40 years ago! As I write this, almost 40 years later, I am nearly 80 years of age and have been on a pure vegan diet — including lots of freshly extracted raw vegetable juices daily, as I have done since 1976. At nearly 80 years of age, I have a 39-inch chest, 32-inch waist, I weigh 143 pounds (at 5’9” in height), I have a muscular body, I don't wear glasses or hearing aids, and I take no medications. Have the raw vegetable juices had anything to do with my health?

Why Juice?

When God created us, He gave us a digestive system designed to process raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts — the foods He provided in nature — into a form that would make them useable at the cellular level of our bodies. Consider what H. E. Kirschner, M.D., has to say about this digestive process in his book, "Live Food Juices" (pages 20-21):

"Why not just eat the raw vegetables? As we have indicated in the previous chapter, for optimum health you need far more than you could possibly eat. The stomach just couldn't handle that much bulk. Then too, if modern research is correct, the power to break down the cellular structure of raw vegetables, and assimilate the precious elements they contain, even in the healthiest individual is only fractional--not more than 35%, and in the less healthy, down to 1%. "In the form of juice, these same individuals assimilate up to 92% of these elements. The juice of the plant, like the blood of the body, contains all the elements that build and nourish. It is a well-known fact that all foods must become liquid before they can be assimilated."

By juicing, we do much of the work of the digestive system (removing the fiber) before we put the food into our body. Fiber is merely carrier of the nutrients and has no nutritional value; by removing the fiber, we are putting only the part of the vegetable that contains the nutrients (the liquid part) into our body. By doing this, we get all the benefit of the nutrients without having to go through the digestive process. This means the nutrients can go almost directly to cellular level in mere minutes, raising the percentage of nutrients reaching cellular level from less than 35% (when we eat the whole food with fiber), to more than 90% when we drink the juice without the fiber. This is one of the keys to the results people experience on The Hallelujah Diet! It is also one of the primary reasons that we hear testimonies every week of people adopting The Hallelujah Diet, and within a year of much sooner, over 90% of their physical and even psychological problems are gone. This is because the body has a built-in ability to heal itself of almost anything that ails it. It also has the ability to prevent future sickness — but neither can happen unless the body is given the proper "building materials." This self-healing mechanism was placed there by God at creation, and has been passed down to each human being.

Stop Putting Toxic Foods Into Your Body

If we want to get well, or stay well, the very first thing we must do is stop putting into our bodies the toxic foods that have been causing the body harm and created the physical problems we are currently experiencing. Toxic foods include all animal source foods (meat, eggs, and dairy, especially cheese), refined sugar, refined flour, table salt, trans-fats and caffeine. These are the substances that cause most of the physical problems people experience today. In place of the toxic foods, we start putting into our bodies, which are comprised of 100% living cells, the raw and living building materials the Lord designed our bodies to be nourished with and to use as fuel, especially in the form of concentrated raw vegetable juices, and the miracle usually follows. And don’t be concerned about not obtaining enough fiber on The Hallelujah Diet! It still contains loads of fiber in the whole vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts consumed at the various meals of the day. A person on The Hallelujah Diet consumes far more fiber each day then does a person on the Standard American Diet (SAD).

True... There Were No Juicers In The Garden of Eden

There were no juicers in the garden of Eden... but neither was there a need for one. Soil nutrients had not yet been depleted and man’s physical body was not racked with physical breakdown as it is today. In the garden, even if only 35% of the nutrients made it to cellular level, the nutrient content of foods was plenty adequate to supply all of man’s nutritional needs. But today, because of the low nutrient value of our foods and the extensive repair job needed by the average body, we need to get nutrients to cellular level more efficiently and in greater quantities – juicing accomplishes this! It takes approximately one pound of raw vegetables to make an eight-ounce glass of vegetable juice. It would be difficult and very time consuming to eat a whole pound of raw vegetables; and even if you did, you would lose over 65% of the nutrients in digestive processing. By drinking an eight-ounce glass of raw vegetable juice, you are consuming the nutrients in a whole pound of raw veggies, and over 90% of those nutrients reach cellular level. An eight-ounce glass of raw vegetable juice, mid-morning, and mid-afternoon also gives the body incredible energy as well as taking away hunger. At the Gerson Institute in Mexico they are healing terminal cancers using 8, eight-ounce glasses of carrot juice per day, and 4 eight-ounce glasses of green juices from organically grown vegetables, along with a vegetarian diet. I drank one to two quarts of raw vegetable juices per day almost 40-years ago, which restored my body to health! Vegetable juices have been a major part of my daily nutritional intake ever since. There is absolutely no substitute for freshly extracted vegetable juice.

Thoughts On Juicing

If you live in the United States, it is important that the carrots be grown in California, because California carrots are grown in mineral-rich soils. The trace minerals are what make carrots sweet. The most economical way to buy carrots is in 25-pound bags, which will fit in most refrigerators; if kept sealed, they will stay fresh for a month. Twenty-five pounds of carrots will produce approximately 25 eight-ounce glasses of juice (1.5 gallons). Rhonda and I juice 25 pounds of carrots every week! If you have a juicer, try to add at least two glasses of fresh vegetable juice to your diet each day, (approximately 1/2 carrot and 1/2 greens), and if you don't have a juicer, you might consider purchasing one. I recommend the Champion juicer, the Green Star juicer, or the Hurom juicer if you are short on strength or counter space. A spinning basket juicer is certainly better than nothing if that is all one can afford, but is inferior to other types because it has a rapidly spinning basket that flings the juice through the air, causing oxidation.

A Blender is NOT a Juicer

Blenders cannot produce vegetable juice – they only blend together the juice and fiber of the vegetable, leaving the fiber in the juice. This defeats the very purpose of juicing! If the fiber is left in the juice, the food must go through the digestive process, during which at least 65% of the nutrients are lost. Blenders are wonderful for making green smoothies, blended vegetable salad, etc., which increases nutrient value 3 to 4 times versus chewing whole, raw vegetables, but blended foods are not a substitute for juicing. Nutrients are released from our foods only when the cell structure has been broken open by chewing or blending or juicing. Chewing vegetables and sending the food through the digestive system provides the least amount of nourishment from the foods eaten reaching cellular level. Because most of the cells are not broken open in chewing – a large percentage of the nutrients are not released. Blending the vegetables in a blender provides the second greatest amount of nutrients at cellular level. We obtain the greatest nutrient value from extracted juices — and thus juicing is the most powerful source of nutrition known to mankind.

What About the Sugar in Carrot Juice?

Many caution the drinking of straight carrot juice because of its high glycemic index numbers. We had Hallelujah Acres Research Director Dr. Michael Donaldson perform some laboratory testing regarding this. His testing revealed that a slice-and-a-half of home-made whole wheat bread or a baked potato, gave a significantly higher glycemic reading than a 12 oz glass of freshly extracted carrot juice. And we only recommend 8 oz at at time. However, we do suggest that, for most people, it would probably be best if they temper the sugar content of carrot juice with as much as a 50% dilution, using cucumber, celery, spinach, kale, or other vegetables in the juice.

At Hallelujah Acres we suggest that those who have no known physical problems and just want to maintain their excellent state of health, consume 2-3 eight-ounce servings of vegetable juices daily, plus 3 servings of an organic barley juice powder (BarleyMax). On a recovery diet, which would be for someone dealing with a serious physical problem, we suggest at least 6 servings of vegetable juices daily, plus 6 servings of a powdered barley juice powder (BarleyMax).

Don't Juice Fruit

Drinking fruit juice is not in your best interest — the best rule of thumb is to eat your fruits and juice your vegetables. Why? There is too much concentrated natural sugar in fruit juices and it can cause problems. With regard to eating whole fruit, I recommend that it comprise no more than 15% of one's daily diet. If a person is dealing with yeast problems (i.e., candida) or high or low blood sugar problems, it is recommended that they eliminate all fruit intake and carrot juice (which contains 16% sugar) until the problem is resolved. In other words, leave out the carrot entirely and just juice the green vegetables.

Store Bought Vegetable Juice Doesn't Count

There is simply no benefit to drinking store-bought bottled, canned, or frozen juice! All of these products must be pasteurized by law to prevent spoilage; pasteurization involves high heat that destroys everything in the juice that was alive – enzymes, friendly bacteria, and many nutrients. These are what make raw vegetable juice worth drinking! A pure vegan diet comprised of a high percentage of raw vegetables, a little fruit, and freshly extracted vegetable juices will go a long way to provide the nutrition we need to build and regenerate and maintain our living cells. It also helps to efficiently eliminate waste from the body.

Self-Healing Is Real!

A diet comprised of approximately 85% raw and 15% cooked plant-based foods is ideal! Day to day, percentages may vary a little, but maintaining the basics as best you can, as often as you can is the key. It is also important to remember that it is not the raw foods and juices themselves that do the healing! What they do is provide us with concentrated building materials the body needs in order to heal itself. Self-healing is built into all of us, and when we bring conditions conducive to healing about within the body, the body will almost always do what it was designed to do, which is – heal itself. The use of nutrients to enhance our God-given capability of self-healing has proven to be an extremely effective means of helping our body to prevent or heal a wide variety of ailments. Here at Hallelujah Acres, we have received literally thousands of testimonies from folks who adopted The Hallelujah Diet, reporting recovery from over 170 different physical problems. Once we understand the theory and experience the reality of using nutrition to help our body maximize its own self-healing capabilities, we will see this is the exact opposite approach of drugs. All drugs are chemicals, and these chemicals are foreign and toxic substances to the body, which merely cover up the symptoms of ill health. When we arrive at the point in our thinking that all healing is self-healing, we will realize that any healing that takes place must come from within the body. And the only way to do that is to give it the proper building materials it needs in order to regenerate and heal itself. And if we opt for promoting self-healing through nutrition, experience will show that drinking the freshly-extracted juice of raw vegetables is the most efficient way to obtain this nutrition. Fresh vegetable juice should be a vital part of the diet of anyone who is serious about using natural foods to build an immune system capable of preventing or eliminating disease. If you are not already on The Hallelujah Diet, give it a try!