Freezing Vegetable Juice

by Petro
(Pretoria, South Africa)

Q: Hi, I took note of your comments on freezing vegetable juice and that the minerals and vitamins are lost only a few minutes after making the juice. Up to now I normally make 60 liters of vegetable juice which takes about 4 hours from the start of the first veggies to finish and bottle it and put in the freezer immediately.

Am I actually wasting my time doing this? Does this mean I am actually drinking vegetable juice of which all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes are gone long before I even put it in the freezer?

A: Hi Petro. Wow! You spend a lot of time preparing your juices. I admire your dedication. My first question is... Are you doing this because you don't have time to juice on a normal basis?

If so, and this is your only option, then it's better then not juicing at all. Whenever we juice and don't drink it right away the vegetable juice does lose vitamins, nutrients and delicate enzymes. I do recommend you juice just as much as you can drink immediately and if you can't, then seal it in a dark or opaque bottle to prevent the breakdown of nutrients, and drink it within a few hours.

Your frozen vegetable juice does lose nutrients, but there are still nutrients in the juice, so don't feel like all of your work is going to waste.

Is it better to drink it immediately? Absolutely, yes. Are you wasting your time by freezing and drinking it later? Well, not completely, because the juice is still healthy, just not as healthy as it were if you could consume it right after juiced. But you are losing a good amount of the nutrition with this process....

If you can, (and I know it can be time consuming) juice only what you can drink immediately. It really is better for you.