Juicing On A Budget
Making your own juice can be expensive, but if you buy smart and follow our tips, you’ll actually find making juices is fairly affordable. A juice is a great snack alternative which can help with weight loss and can give you a great energy boost throughout the day.
Farmers Markets
Go and support your local farmers market as they have a whole host of fruit and veg at reasonable prices, you may also find that you can find some good bargain deals. This is also a great place to discover new fruits and vegetables at low prices to make juice recipes with.
Buying the Right Ingredients
Choosing certain ingredients will not only save your wallet but it can help produce more yield. Buying water-rich ingredients such as melons, citrus fruits, apples, cucumbers and tomatoes, will get you plenty of juice without having to juice lots of ingredients. Make sure to pair water-rich ingredients with foods like carrot and kale, as these ingredients don’t contain a lot of juice.
Another tip for making juice is to use more vegetables than fruit, as veggies tend to be cheaper and you won’t be intaking to much sugar. We always advise to stick to the 80/20 rule, this means 80% of your juice will come from veg and 20% of your juice will come from fruit, this will help reduce sugar intake. If you can manage to stick to this rule, you will receive the most benefits from juicing.
In certain supermarkets you can find cheaper fruits and vegetables for your juice that are deformed, they may have an irregular shape or they may have slight bruising. Either way, you're going to be juicing the fruit or vegetable so does it really matter if it has a funny shape or slight bruising?
Certain ingredients will have a better shelf life than others, so buying these ingredients is great as you don’t have to worry about food spoiling before putting them in your juice. Carrots, lemons, ginger, green apples, celery, and zucchini can all last around 2-3 weeks easily. All these ingredients are great foundations for most juice so you won’t have to go to the supermarket every couple of days to get fresh produce.
Take Advantage of your Freezer
You can use your freezer to prolong a lot of foods shelf life, but you can also freeze your juice. Using your freezer has two main advantages. One, you can bulk juice, this is great if you haven’t got a lot of time during your day to make juice. Two, you can buy fruit and veg when its cheap, then juice a big batch and freeze it.
Don't Throw Away the Pulp
Many people will discard the pulp when they have made their juice, but there are plenty of things you can do with the leftover pulp. Compost will love pulp as it gives the soil added nutrients. If your feeling adventurous you can also use the pulp in lots of different recipes.
Head over to juicers.ie to read more in depth about what you can really do with juice pulp.
Juicing is not a Meal Replacement
When you juice you should always think of your juice as a snack and not a meal. Substituting meals for juice will never work for weight loss in the long run. A healthy diet should include fibre from whole foods, as juicing gets rid of the insoluble fibre in foods, you should never really swap out the main meal for a juice.
Juice can get expensive, so don’t feel you have to juice every day to reap the benefits. You should juice to fit in with your lifestyle and if that means making a juice once a week then that's fine, you are still putting vitamins and minerals into your body which is the main point of making juice.
Get your Fruit and Veg from your Back Garden
Grow your own is a lot of effort, but you can save so much money if you grow some of the key juice ingredients. Try growing your own spinach, strawberries, apples, tomatoes, blueberries, beetroot, carrots, celery and cucumber all of which can be grown in the UK. Not only can you use these ingredients for juice, but you can use it for other recipes too. Now you're ready to juice like a pro!