Juicing is one of the best ways to help keep your body fit, healthy and potentially cancer free, says Janey Holliday

With celebrities such as Jordan promoting juice dieting and with juice bars popping up all over the country, we can’t escape the craze. Juicing at home though has a bad reputation for being time consuming and messy, but with more and more health and fitness professionals promoting juicing as the best way to start the day and with better juicing machines around, isn’t it time you switched to juicing?

1. Our digestive systems are our own natural juicing machines if you like. But years of overuse and abuse by too much sugar, bad fats, alcohol, chemicals and stress have left many of us with a sluggish and lifeless digestive system. Our systems are inefficient having a detrimental effect on mineral and nutrient uptake as well as energy and mood.

2. We should be eating around eight portions of vegetables and fruit a day, but most of us undereat this amount or eat over-cooked and processed versions where nutrients are stripped. The average person's daily intake of food is under 5%, leaving many of us mineral and nutrient deficient, leading to energy loss, mood swings, weight gain or loss and other health issues.

3. Juicing provides you with an express delivery of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, carbohydrates, chlorophyll and phytonutrients as well as antioxidants that fight oxidants that contribute to cancer, heart disease and aging. Fruits and vegetables are easy to digest and leave the stomach in about 30 minutes, going into the small intestine where the energy and nutrients are absorbed. But with juicing, they are absorbed in minutes!

4. A juice is made by using a juice extractor (juice machine and is a fairly thin liquid as the fibre of the food is left behind in the machine. It's best drunk straight away for the maximum nutrient hit and before oxygen gets to it and it starts to go off. This is why packed fruit and veg juices cannot be compared to those you make yourself or those bought in a juice bar.

5. Fruit or veg juice? Fruits contain sugar but when eaten fresh with the fibre in, won't give you too much of an energy slump, but when drunk in a juice form it has a much higher sugar content. Veg juice on the other hand is much better for you as its has very little sugar, but doesn’t taste anywhere near as nice! A mixture of fruit and vegetable juice is a really good option.

6. Tasty juices include: carrot, apple and ginger; carrot, apple and celery; apple, cucumber, ginger and mint; carrot, apple orange and ginger; carrot, beetroot and apple.

7. To start juicing at home, you will need to buy a good quality juicer (L’equip Mini Pulp Eject Juicer from www.ukjuicers.com is the best for a small kitchen and Anthony Worrell Thomson Breville Juice Extractor from www.breville.co.uk ) and ensure you have a good knife and large chopping board. You will also need to have some newspaper and a scrubbing brush.

8. For mess free easy-clean juicing, place your juicing machine on some newspaper. Place a plastic bag into the pulp section at the back of the machine and run a bowl of hot soapy water while you are setting your machine up. Once you have finished juicing, simply throw the plastic bag away, place the blade and removable top part of the machine into the hot soapy water and gather up any pulp that’s escaped on the newspaper and throw away. I it will take about 30 secs to scrub the blade and top parts that have been in the hot water and then you can put it away – easy peesy!!

9. Bananas and avocados don’t juice (but you can add one to your fresh juice and place in a blender to make a smoothie type drink) and you don’t need to peel the fruit or veg except oranges.

10. Drink straight away, although if you want to take it to work, squeeze in some fresh lemon juice and put the juice in a tightly sealed container. Shake well before you drink it.

Janey Holliday is a food and fitness consultant and runs website www.fitforaprincess.co.uk Janey has written for the Daily Mail for over two years - with Fitness Q&A, Food News & Five Minute Fitness series and health related features in the Good Health Section every Tuesday.