There are a variety of fruit and vegetable juicers on the market today. The two main types are centrifugal fruit and vegetable juicers and masticating vegetable juicers. The Magimix Le Duo is a centrifugal juicer. Check out a Breville centrifugal juicer review if Magimix is not available in your area.

What I love about the Magimix juicer is that it’s so easy to assemble that you can skip reading the instruction manual and get straight to the juicing!

The Magimix Le Duo is perfect for small kitchens as it takes up very little space on the work surface. The juice exit spout is about 15 cm above the work top so it’s easy to fit a jug underneath. A possible improvement to the Le Duo would be for the dispensing shute to be slightly higher so that a pint glass could fit below. That said, I quite like using a measuring jug so I can check the exact amount of juice that I make.

Adding fruit and vegetables to the Le Duo is done through an opening in the top of the clear plastic lid. You then use a plunger to push your fruit and veg down into the juicer. The opening is a reasonable size. It requires that carrots be chopped in two length ways and apples to be cut into eighths to be able to fit, if you use massive carrots and apples like I do anyway!

The teeth on the Magimix are amazingly efficient at turning solid vegetables into pulp and the centrifugal cylinder sucks out all the juice. Even though the feeder opening on the Magimix isn’t huge, the juicer is so powerful that it is literally a matter of seconds to go from solid vegetables to a vitamin packed juice.

Juicing for one person with the Le Duo is pure joy. There’s no need to empty the cylinder halfway through which can be the case if you are making a family sided batch.

Even if you do have to empty the cylinder halfway, it’s straight forward. Included in the package is a scoop that is the perfect size to remove the majority of the vegetable pulp from the juicer.

I had to pay nearly double the price for my Magimix Le Duo juicer buying it in the far east as opposed to the U.S. or U.K. However I feel it was worth it as it allows me to drink quality fruit and vegetable juices every day.

The Magimix Le Duo juicer also comes with a citrus juicer attachment. It’s so fast to blast out some squeezed grapefruit juice!

On the down side, the Le Duo doesn’t handle green leafy vegetables as well as more solid vegetables. The leafy greens get kind of stuck in the input funnel and it takes a bit of effort to push them through. It is much more suited to making alkaline fruit drinks.

The Magimix Le Duo is the only fruit and vegetable juicer I have ever used and even though it doesn’t deal with green leafs as well as I would like, for the foreseeable future it is the only fruit and vegetable juicer I shall be using. If you are following the alkaline acid diet or not, it is a great piece of kitchen equipment. Check out the Magimix Le Duo juicer today! You can read a further Magimix le Duo review on the site the Juice Fiend.

People in the U.S. may have a hard time finding this machine so you may want to consider a Jack LaLanne juicer instead. This is also a centrifugal juicing appliance that works in a similar way to the Magimix model discussed here.

The alkaline acid diet involves basing your diet around vegetables, citrus fruit, nuts, tubers, and legumes (alkaline foods) and steering clear of grains, dairy products, meat, excess salt, caffeine and alcohol (acid foods). Regardless of the term alkaline acid diet, most of you would likely agree that reducing the amount of so called acid foods while at the same time increasing consumption of alkaline foods is a good thing.

After scouring the internet I am beginning to discover some actual science upon which the alkaline acid diet is based. The science suggests that increasing the alkali content of the diet may attenuate bone loss in healthy older adults.

Eating more alkaline foods, or simply healthy foods, like vegetables as we all know is considered better than an acid diet of processed foods which often have high sugar and salt content.

The clinical experiment, quoted above, while not explicitly comparing an alkaline diet to an acid diet does suggest that the same benefits derived from dietary alkaline supplementation could also be observed by moving from the acid diet end of the spectrum to the alkaline diet side.

This study found that doses of bicarbonate reduced the amount of calcium excreted and had a positive effect on bone resorption – the process by which bones are broken down and calcium transferred to the blood stream.

Scientific information that backs up some of the claims made about the alkaline acid diet is reassuring. If a less acidic diet can play a part in reducing the breakdown of bone tissue it could be argued that the alkaline acid diet even promotes longevity. The study that this article about the alkaline diet is based on does not discuss how to lose weight fast. It’s focus was more about the overall condition of the body.

Not only that but from my own experiences moving away from an acid diet and now eating and drinking much more vegetables, I feel I am becoming much healthier. Put simply, I just feel better physically and mentally!

So there is scientific evidence supporting the alkaline acid diet. Undoubtedly there will be more available which just makes me more determined to find it as I proceed with my own alkaline acid diet.

Reference:
Bess Dawson-Hughes et al. Treatment with Potassium Bicarbonate Lowers Calcium Excretion and Bone Resorption in Older Men and Women in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & metabolism

I have seen a few juicers in Japan and compared to the Magimix one I bought my parents they are rubbish. They have a tiny cylinder that revolves and don’t have very many “teeth” with which to juice the fruit and vegetables.

As I searched the Rakuten online shop I actually came across a Magimix Le Duo juicer!

Remembering the fun I used to have with my family when we made our juices together with the Magimix Le Duo juicer, I felt compelled to opt for the same one.

After work I went to a nearby electrical store but was very disappointed with the standard of Juicers that they were selling. There was no Magimix in sight. So it was back to the internet to purchase online. It came to just over 31,000 yen.

Up till this stage I was feeling great that I managed to find a juicer I know works well. Then for some reason I decided to go and look at the Magimix website. There I discovered that the juicer I just ordered in Japan costs 87.99 pounds in the UK. That’s not much more than half what I paid for my Magimix Le Duo!

I’m hoping that my one has been adjusted to the correct voltage here. Perhaps if I used one from the U.K. I would find that it lacked power.

Even though I may have paid over the odds for my Magimix Le Duo juicer I am looking forward to its arrival. It will certainly help with my alkaline acid diet breakfasts and possibly a whole lot more.

I want to track down some recipes for making juice before my Magimix Le Duo arrives.

Edit: My Magimix Le Duo has arrived. If you are interested in a quality centrifugal juicer the review may interest you.

In particular, although finding food charts of acid foods and alkaline foods is easy on the internet, I am left wondering how much authority these various charts have. So far I have been unable to locate an acid alkaline food chart attributed to an actual scientist. This worries me somewhat as I view finding an authority resource on the alkaline acid diet as essential to being able to implement it successfully.

While I search for scientifically proven information, there are certain trends in the available information regarding acid foods and alkaline foods.

For example, on the acid side are things like alcohol, coffee, fatty meats and most things we typically consider unhealthy. I am still looking for confirmation of how much acid, eating these so called acid foods actually produces in the body.

However just looking at the above brief list, these acid foods have been proven to have a variety of adverse effects on health, e.g. excess consumption of fatty foods being linked with cardiovascular disease.

So forgetting about the acid food label, it makes sense to want to reduce one’s fatty meat consumption anyway.

For the time being, this is how I am implementing my alkaline acid diet. Reducing consumption of so called acid foods and replacing them with better alkaline foods. Really all I am doing is substituting high fat meats for all kinds of vegetables and at the same time looking to reduce my alcohol and coffee intake.

I’m still eating fish and chicken, rice and bread even though on many of the acid alkaline food charts you can see that these foodstuffs often fall on the acid side.

While I work on improving my diet in general, I will continue to research the alkaline acid diet in an effort to find scientific proof of the benefits it claims.

So far I am really enjoying making juice and eating and drinking substantial quantities of vegetables each day as I continue my journey on the alkaline acid diet.

There are a variety of ways to alkalize your body. The method used to alkalize the body that will be discussed in this health article is changing the pH of the body by dietary means through eating a high alkaline foods diet. Followers of the alkaline acid diet know that by eating more alkaline foods they can improve the body’s pH balance.

Eating a high alkaline foods diet can reduce the potential renal acid load of your body. This can have a variety of beneficial health effects. The alkaline acid diet food recommendations suggest eating alkaline acid foods in a ratio of 80/20 alkaline to acid forming foods. It is argued that this will produce a beneficial pH balancing effect. Typically foods to alkalize your body are vegetables and fruits. Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption means it is possible to alkalise your body by simply changing the foods you eat. Fruit and vegetables are beneficial to health not just for their alkalizing effects. They also have an abundance of minerals and nutrients.

Following an alkaline acid diet can improve energy levels, increase concentration, give a greater feeling of overall well being, make you more alert, improve health in general and ward off illness. Everyone knows the saying an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Perhaps the person who coined this saying followed the alkaline acid diet themselves! How much fruit and vegetables you have to consume to alkalize your body depends upon your current dietary regimen. If you eat a typical Western acidic diet, comprising of high quantities of meat and processed foods, then you will require more alkaline foods than someone who is a vegan. The alkaline acid diet is not about becoming a vegetarian although doing so certainly would have an alkalizing effect upon the body. Rather, by simply increasing your alkaline food consumption and reducing the low nutrition acid foods in your diet it is easy to alkalise your body.

how do you alkalize your body?

Alkalizing the body is not particularly difficult. All you have to do is start eating more fruit and vegetables. Perhaps this is easier said than done. One of the best ways to make it easy for yourself to alkalize the body is to make your own fruit and vegetable juice. Not long ago I bought myself a Magimix le duo fruit and vegetable juicer. Using a juicer means it is possible to have about five servings of fruit and vegetables in around a pint of juice. Depending upon the ingredients you use of course. Some produce more fluid than others. This doesn’t necessarily mean that more fluid makes it easier to alkalise your body though. It comes down to the fruit and vegetables you use.

Having one or two fresh juices a day helps alkalize your system and balance pH levels. Even if you changed nothing else in your diet but simply added juices to help alkalize the body this by itself would help reduce the acid load on your body. If you are trying to lose weight however, this might not be a good idea as even though juices are healthy, it would increase your total calories for the day. The alkaline acid diet can certainly be used for weight loss. If this was your aim you would want to increase your alkaline food consumption and use these to displace some acid foods in your diet that are of poor nutritional quality.

Just because a food is classified as an acid food however doesn’t mean that it is bad for you. This can often be a confusing aspect for anyone researching the alkaline diet. It is not a case of acid foods being bad and alkaline foods being good. This is too absolute a view point. For example, egg yolks are very acidic foods. They are also full of nutrients. So even though they have an acidifying effect upon the body, this doesn’t mean that eating acidic foods is necessarily bad. This is a very good reason not to be dogmatic in applying the alkaline acid diet to all your dietary decisions.

Ideally you want to alkalise your body with fruit and vegetables. Simply trying to eat or drink more servings of fruit and veg than you currently do is the best place to start. If you don’t eat much at present you could perhaps do what the saying says and eat “an apple a day”. Taking things a step further, having an alkaline breakfast of grapefruit or grated carrots is an excellent way to alkalize your body at the start of the day. How do you alkalise your body?

how I alkalize my body

Personally I feel that taking baby steps whenever you want to make dietary changes is the best way. This is how I am going about alkalizing my diet. Just gently increasing the vegetables I consume on a daily basis. My breakfast is always alkalizing as I use my juicer every morning. Then even if I don’t eat masses of vegetables throughout the day I know that by the time it comes to my evening juice I will be reaching double figures for the amount of fruit and vegetables I consume in a day. It is not difficult to alkanize your body, you just have to take the steps necessary to allow you to eat the desired amount of alkaline foods. Fruits that alkalize your body are an excellent way to go.

Other ways that make it possible to alkalise the body include eating a vegetarian meal once a week, or more often if desired. This doesn’t mean french fries and donuts for dinner. This kind of vegetarianism is definitely not a good way to attempt to alkalize your body. Simply because it won’t work. As stated above, it is not that meat is necessarily bad for you. All that is required to alkalize your body effectively is to eat adequate quantities of nutritious vegetables.

I have found alkalizing my body beneficial mainly for the general boost to my feeling of well being throughout the day. I now sleep a little less than before I changed my diet perhaps because I have more motivation and am involved with more activities. People looking to loose weight can also prosper on an alkaline diet. This way of eating itself may not be enough to loose weight but it certainly can help with how we feel about ourselves. Used in conjunction with an appetite suppressant such as hoodia diet pills it may be a good way to feel better and reduce body weight.

To conclude, alkalizing your body is simply about getting healthier. Eating more nutritious meals whether alkaline or acid foods is going to have health benefits. Including the alkalizing aspect of the alkaline acid diet puts the focus firmly on eating adequate fruit and vegetables while limiting foods with poor nutritional values, overly fatty foods, highly processed foods, foods with additives for example. Even if you don’t concern yourself with the alkaline diet, taking steps to alkalize your body will likely have positive health outcomes.

As part of my alkaline acid diet I am going to give up coffee for the month of May and observe any changes to my health. Living in Japan makes it easy for me to simply drink green tea instead.

If it really is an acid food I expect to see some positive health changes as I usually drink about five cups (not mugs!) a day.

A possible problem with this acid diet challenge is that I am continuing to increase my fruit and vegetable consumption. So positive health effects, assuming there are any, may come not from reducing my acid food consumption but from increasing the quantities of alkaline foods in my diet. Even with this caveat, I am going to continue with this test. Then in June, when I start drinking coffee again after my fruit and vegetable consumption stabilizes at a higher level of about ten portions a day, perhaps I will notice a change in my condition at that time.

I’m not sure how important, if at all, giving up coffee is as part of the alkaline acid diet. It will be an interesting challenge anyway. How addicted am I?

Other than the alkaline acid diet, there are other reported health costs and benefits associated with drinking coffee.

As I proceed with this dietary challenge, I will continue to research whether coffee really is an acid or alkaline food. This is possibly the hardest part of the alkaline acid diet, determining which side of the scale foods fall on.

Unfortunately I failed on my alkaline acid diet challenge as I only lasted 20 days before a sweet old lady gave me a cup of coffee and I felt it would have been too rude to decline. However even with the shorter time frame I gained valuable insight into its effects on my body as well as how it impacts my diet.

Regardless of whether coffee is acid or alkaline, I have decided that drinking it is okay for me so long as I do it in moderation. Too much and there is always a crash afterwards. Of possibly more concern is that drinking too much displaces other drinks from my diet, e.g. water and Japanese green tea. The alkaline diet and healthy diets in general stress the importance of consuming adequate amounts of water throughout the day. There are also notable health benefits attributed to green tea.

What I dis-like about the acid alkaline diet information available online is that the majority of it suggests that we should simply use the acid/alkaline food classifications as guidelines to help us make decisions on what to eat. In an attempt to alkalize the body we must not forget the importance of nutrition. By their very nature, alkaline foods are nutritious. However many acidic foods also contain plenty of vitamins and minerals and give other health benefits.

So is coffee alkaline or coffee acid? According to many of the alkaline acid diet food chart lists, coffee is acidic. However using the PRAL calculation, the acid/alkaline ash comes out as alkaline coffee rather than coffee = acid. The thing to remember with the acid alkaline diet is that making food choices to eat a high alkaline foods diet based solely on the ash pH may not be the only factor to take into consideration. Certainly if all you are worried about is the pH balance of your body, eating alkaline foods will alkalize your body. However nutritional values as well as pH balance is important too.

What seems to affect my body more than drinking coffee is consuming decent quantities of alkaline foods, namely fruit and vegetables each day. When I am eating over ten servings per day, the adverse effects of “bad foods” is diminished. I have always known that eating fruit and vegetables is a good thing. The acid alkaline diet literature has simply reminded me of that fact and made me excited to be doing so. Anyone trying to eat a high alkaline foods diet need not worry about acidifying effects of coffee.

For my next alkaline acid dietary challenge I am planning on completely giving up alcohol for the month of June. Drinking mildly alkaline coffee is something I will do on an occasional basis.

References: Remer T, Manz F. Potential renal acid load of foods and its influence on urine pH. J Am Diet Assoc 1995;95:791

As I aim to eat a more alkaline based diet, eating grapefruit in addition to making juice with vegetables a few times a week for an alkaline breakfast will be an enjoyable way to start the day.

A question you may have when you start to eat a shed load of grapefruit is “What do I do with all the peel?”. One option would be to use it in your garden. Now it’s not too much use throwing raw peels about the place so one solution would be to use a compost tumbler to help get things into a more nutritious state for the soil.

Firstly, we all know that eating a higher percentage of fruit and vegetables in our diets is a good thing. It ensures we get sufficient vitamins and minerals to keep our bodies healthy. The acid alkaline diet attempts to show that there is a further nutritional benefit from fruit and vegetables, predominately alkaline foods, which is the alkalizing effect they have upon us. The alkaline acid diet proposes that it is the acidity in food which causes our body to function sub-optimally.

Benefits of eating a healthier diet, like the acid alkaline diet include, potentially reducing the risk or severity of cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, gastrointestinal disease and acne.

Typical Western diets include too much of what are termed acid foods, in too high quantities. Consuming this kind of dietary acid load may lead to a disruption in delicate alkaline acid balance in our bodies and eventually may even lead to chronic diseases through continuous borrowing of the body’s alkaline reserves in an effort to rid ourselves of excess acidity. I have previously discussed negative health impacts of eating an acid rich diet.

alkaline foods

As already stated, fruit and vegetables are alkaline foods. This may seem strange when you consider that lemons have a pH of between 2 and 3. But according to the science, lemons are alkaline foods. It is not the acidity of the food itself that is important. Rather it is the protein and mineral composition which determines what sort of pH effect it will have on us.

The notion of acid and alkaline comes not from the actual acidity or alkalinity of foods in their natural state. Instead it refers to the ash the food leaves after it has been burnt, or metabolized by the body. So even though lemons are without question acidic in their natural state, after our bodies metabolize citrus fruits, they leave an alkaline ash.

A study that influences many acid alkaline food charts comes from 1995 and was conducted by Remer and Manz. The research paper, Potential renal acid load of foods and its influence on urine pH, lists many foods and provides values that signify how acidic or alkaline their ash is. Some highly alkaline fruit and vegetables include, spinach, raisins and dried figs.

acid foods

Eating so called acid foods is not a bad thing in itself. Rather it is eating a diet that contains too high a percentage of acidic foods that could become a problem. The acidity of foods themselves is not necessarily the problem either. Fish, meat, bread and rice all appear to be acidic. However eating a diet that neglects to incorporate a high percentage of alkaline foods along with foods from the acidic side of the scale may lead to health problems already mentioned.

There are plenty of acid foods that are good for us in many respects. Particularly acidic foods include brown rice and egg yolks. Unless you were being dogmatic about the alkaline acid diet, many people would still want to include these in their diets. So the important point to bear in mind is that eating acid foods is fine, even to be encouraged as by virtue of their acidity doesn’t make them un-nutritious foods. If you are keen on keeping your body in a healthy state of alkaline acid balance however, you must ensure that you consume plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables every day. Not only does this provide you with high levels of nutrients and minerals, they help your body neutralize the acidic effects of the acid foodstuffs that you consume.

References: Uriel S. Barzel and Linda K. Massey Excess Dietary Protein Can Adversely Affect Bone The Journal of Nutrition Vol. 128 No. 6 June 1998, pp. 1051-1053 http://jn.nutrition.org/

breakfast: carrot (2), orange (3) and ginger (slice) juice; white rice; natto
between breakfast and lunch: 5 cups of green tea
lunch: chirashi-zushi; soba noodles; prawn tempura; fruit salad + yogurt; green tea; iced coffee
afternoon: 3 cups of coffee + piece of cake
late afternoon snack: banana
post gym: almonds (5); cashews (5); banana/soy/protein shake
dinner: white rice; tinned fish (saury); kimchi; boiled cabbage
evening juice: apple (2), spinach (1 serving) and ginger (slice) juice

Alkaline foods: 2 carrots, 3 oranges, 2 bananas, 1 portion of boiled cabbage; 2 apples; 1 portion of spinach, small serving of fruit salad

Even though thinking only in terms of alkaline and acid food my diet appears to still be made up of too high a proportion of acid foods, I am feeling much better about myself because of the amounts of fruit and vegetables I am now eating. My current goal is to ensure I eat over 10 servings of alkaline foods each day. In effect, this translates to over 10 pieces of fruit and vegetables. The majority of this comes from juicing. Something else I would like to increase is the amount of solid alkaline foods that consume. Eating more potatoes instead of rice is one simple option I can pursue.

Starting the day with an alkaline breakfast sets me up well and consuming 5 or more portions of fruit and vegetables means it is easy to push on during the rest of the day to reach 10 or more servings of foods that alkalize.

Alkaline foods are really just healthy foods so the alkaline acid diet has a lot in common with a simple common sense balanced diet.

Reference: Remer T, Manz F. Potential renal acid load of foods and its influence on urine pH. J Am Diet Assoc 1995;95:791