Juice: The Good and the Bad

In "the book," Dr. Natasha explains why we should stay away from juices we can buy at the grocery store. She gives four reasons:

1. They are pasteurized, denaturing the enzymes and destroying the good nutrients. 
2. At the same time, pasteurization turns the natural fructose sugar in the fruit into a source of concentrated sugar.
3. Commercial juices can to be mislabeled, not informing the consumer of certain preservatives and added sweeteners.
4. They tend to have molds and fungi which are irritating to GAPS patients.

Dr. Natasha recommends using only freshly home-pressed raw juices. For now, I have still been using a little bit of commercially available organic juice to flavor my water kefir. I add about 1/2 cup (4 oz.) of juice per quart/liter of water kefir. After adding the juice, I let the water kefir undergo a second fermentation for 24 hours to ensure that I am consuming as little of the sugars from the juice as possible in the finished beverage. I have not noticed any particularly bad effects from this; however, it does seem like I feel better when I drink the kombucha than when I drink the water kefir. No particular symptoms, it just "feels better" to me as soon as it hits my tongue. Could that have something to do with the fact that I don't add any juice to my kombucha?  Hmm. I'm not sure.

Hopefully, I won't have to worry about this much longer, as I just purchased a Vitamix. I hope to be able to make my own freshly pressed juices to add to the water kefir soon. I'll let you know how that goes!

References:
Campbell-McBride, Natasha, M.D. (2004, 2010). Gut and Psychology Syndrome. Cambridge, UK: Medinform Publishing.  p. 139-140.