When my daughter was … she had to have been between six and eight months old as I remember she was not yet on solids, I fed her first taste of dark green juice. I hadn’t intended to, but I was making my morning juice as usual and she reached out from her little play pen and up towards my cup. I gave her a taste in a glass baby bottle and the rest, as they say, is history.
She LOVED that green juice, and at the time I couldn’t help feeling so smug and proud! Finally, I’m going to do this right! I’m going to have one of the worlds healthiest kids! As I will explain in a future post, this was not how things would eventually play out. Did juice play a part in her issues? I don’t know.
Like I said, I’ll get to that.
HOWEVER, green juice HAS served us well, and I’m not knocking it in any way. I would simply advice past me to wait on giving that girl the green juice until she was old enough to understand the concept of “chewing” her juice.
… what?
Yeah, juice should be “chewed”, or more accurately, swished. Juice has long been held on a pedestal by many in the health community, including myself, as a miracle food that “doesn’t even require digestion!“. While it is true that juice can be considered a miracle food, it’s not exactly true that it requires no digestion.
What happens if it doesn’t get swished?
Well, it’s said to be akin to drinking sugar-water in a sense. Mixing the juice around in your mouth blends it with your salivary amylase, which is important because this enables your body to properly use the juice and absorb those nutrients you worked so hard to extract!
So, take Austin’s advice and swish, swish, swish!
