Cold-Pressed
Is Juicing Good for You?
Yes and the reason is simpler than either side of the argument usually admits. Juicing gets more vegetables into people who would otherwise not eat them, in a form they will actually finish. Everything else is detail. Here is what juicing does, what really happens to the fibre and why that particular objection gets aimed at juice and almost nothing else.
More Vegetables, Fewer Excuses
Nobody sits down to a plate of raw beetroot, celery, spinach and cucumber at half past seven in the morning. It is not a realistic breakfast and it never has been. Press the same produce into a glass and it takes a minute, which is the entire point of juicing and the reason it works for people who have tried and failed with the alternatives.
Most of us in the UK fall short of five a day. Getting closer to it is a good thing and how you get there matters far less than whether you get there. If the method is explained on its own terms first, start with what is cold-pressed juice.
Why It Works When Salad Does Not
Everyone knows they should eat more vegetables. Almost nobody struggles with the knowledge. What they struggle with is the friction: the shopping, the washing, the chopping, the eating of something that takes twenty minutes to prepare and ten minutes to get through.
Then there is the waste. A bag of spinach bought on Sunday with good intentions is a slimy disappointment by Thursday and half the vegetable drawer goes the same way. That is money in the bin and vegetables that never got eaten, which is the outcome nobody planned for.
Juice sidesteps all of it. No preparation, no washing up, no wilting. One glass, finished before you have thought about it, containing more raw produce than most people manage in a sitting. Salads are excellent when you eat them. Juice has the advantage of actually getting drunk.
What Actually Happens to the Fibre
This is the objection that gets raised every time and it is worth answering properly rather than waving away, because the usual version of it is not quite right.
There are two kinds of fibre and they behave differently. Insoluble fibre gives plants their structure and does not dissolve, so when produce is pressed it stays behind in the pulp. Soluble fibre dissolves in water, which means it goes where the water goes: into the glass. Pectin, the soluble fibre in apples, carrots and citrus, is still in your juice. So the idea that juice contains no fibre at all is simply wrong. What juicing removes is one of the two types.
And the removal is not an accident, it is the trade. Insoluble fibre is bulk and bulk fills you up. Take it out and you can fit far more vegetable into one serving than you could ever chew through, which is exactly why a small bottle can hold the pressings of a heap of raw produce. You are exchanging the filling part for more of the produce itself.
That trade matters more to some people than others. If you are watching sugar in particular, it is worth understanding how the two types behave and we go through it with the actual figures in is beetroot good for diabetes.
Nobody Complains About the Sandwich
Here is what makes the fibre objection strange. Look at what most people actually eat on an average weekday: white bread, crisps, a chocolate bar, a ready meal, a bowl of cereal that lists sugar third. Very little fibre in any of it and no vegetables to speak of. Nobody writes articles about the fibre content of a meal deal.
Then a glass of pressed vegetables turns up and suddenly the fibre content is a scandal. It gets held to a standard that almost nothing else in a normal diet is held to and it is being judged against eating a whole raw beetroot rather than against the thing it usually replaces, which is a coffee or nothing at all.
Judged fairly, against a realistic breakfast rather than a theoretical one, a vegetable juice comes out well. It is worth adding vegetables to your day even if they arrive in liquid form.
The Rest of Your Diet Does This Job
None of that means insoluble fibre does not matter. It does and if you eat reasonably you are already getting it: wholegrains, beans and pulses, nuts, potatoes with the skin on and the vegetables and fruit you eat whole. Juice was never supposed to be the source.
The sensible framing is simple. Juice is an addition to a decent diet, not a replacement for one and it works best alongside meals with fibre in them rather than instead of them. Get that right and the fibre question answers itself.
Two Things to Get Right
Choose vegetable-led over fruit-led. This is the one that genuinely matters. Celery, cucumber and leafy greens carry very little natural sugar. Apple and orange carry a good deal more. Read the ingredients in order of weight, because that order tells you what you are actually drinking. There is more on this in low-sugar green juice.
One glass, alongside food. A glass a day is plenty and in the UK 150ml counts as one of your five a day however much you drink. If you manage a health condition or take regular medication, check with your GP before making any drink a daily fixture. Do your own reading and form your own view.
The Supplement Question
The obvious alternative to more vegetables is a pill and a multivitamin looks like the efficient version of the same thing. It is worth understanding what actually has to happen to turn a nutrient into a tablet.
A vitamin in a capsule is not the vitamin as it sits in a carrot. It has to be produced in a chemically stable, shelf-ready form, then bound together with fillers, binders, flow agents and a coating so it survives manufacture, transport and two years in a cupboard. Then it goes through testing to confirm the whole assembly is safe to swallow. It is an impressive piece of engineering. It is also a long way round.
And the research has repeatedly found that the shortcut does not behave like the food. Studies of people eating carotenoid-rich diets have consistently associated that pattern with better outcomes, while the large trials of isolated beta-carotene supplements failed to reproduce it and in smokers taking high doses the trials raised safety concerns rather than benefits. Most guidance now points back towards whole foods and mixed carotenoids from the diet rather than isolated high doses in a capsule. The compound never turned out to be the whole story: what was studied was people eating vegetables.
The same pattern shows up when a single vegetable gets turned into a product. Beetroot capsules concentrate an extract into a shell and the large milligram figure on the front is usually an equivalence rather than a weight. Beetroot powder is gentler, just the dried vegetable milled down, though almost no tub tells you how much of the active part is in a scoop. Both are worth understanding before you decide a pill is the simpler option.
Whether any of that applies to you is a matter for you and your GP, particularly if you take supplements for a diagnosed reason. But if the goal is simply to get more of what is in vegetables, the least engineered route is to have the vegetables. Five of them, pressed into one bottle, is a reasonable way to do it.
If You Want the Fibre Too
A blender keeps everything, insoluble fibre included, so a smoothie is more filling and behaves more like a meal. It also means less produce per serving, because the bulk takes up the room. Neither is better in the abstract, they just do different jobs and green juice vs smoothie works through the comparison properly.
If it is juice cleansing you are weighing up rather than a daily glass, that is a different question again and it is covered in is juice cleansing good for you.
Where to Look
Everything we make is cold-pressed and flash-frozen at the press:
| Range | Pick this if |
|---|---|
| Green juices | You want the lowest sugar and the most vegetables in the glass |
| Beetroot juices | You want the most-researched vegetable in the aisle |
| Celery juice | You want one vegetable, savoury and very low in sugar |
| Carrot juices | You are new to this and want the easiest way in |
| Juice shots | You would rather have something small and concentrated |
| Cleanse programmes | You want a structured multi-day set |
Nothing to Wash Up
Cold-pressed, flash-frozen at the press and delivered frozen across the UK, so nothing wilts at the back of the fridge. Browse the full cold-pressed juice range, or start here:
Frequently Asked
Is juicing actually good for you?
Yes, as a way of getting more vegetables into your day in a form you will finish. Most people in the UK fall short of five a day and a vegetable-led glass closes part of that gap in a minute. It works alongside a decent diet rather than replacing one.
Does juicing remove all the fibre?
No. Insoluble fibre stays behind in the pulp, but soluble fibre dissolves in water so it stays in the juice. Pectin from apples, carrots and citrus is still there. What you lose is the bulk and losing the bulk is what lets far more produce fit into one serving.
Where should the rest of my fibre come from?
Wholegrains, beans and pulses, nuts, potatoes with the skin on and the fruit and vegetables you eat whole. Juice was never meant to be the source. Eat reasonably and the fibre question takes care of itself.
Is juicing better than eating whole vegetables?
Different rather than better. Whole vegetables give you everything including the bulk. Juice gives you far more produce per serving because the bulk is gone. The useful comparison is not juice against a plate of raw vegetables, it is juice against what you would otherwise have had.
Is juicing better than taking a multivitamin?
They are not the same thing. A nutrient in a tablet has to be made into a stable form and bound with fillers and coatings to become a pill. Trials of isolated supplements have repeatedly failed to reproduce what was seen in people eating the foods, which is why guidance keeps pointing back to the vegetables themselves.
What about beetroot capsules or powder instead of juice?
Same question in a smaller shape. Beetroot capsules rarely state the nitrate content that all the research is actually about and the big milligram number on the tub is an extract equivalence rather than a weight. Beetroot powder is closer to the vegetable but has the same disclosure gap.
How much juice should I drink?
One glass a day suits most people, alongside food rather than instead of it. In the UK 150ml counts as one of your five a day no matter how much you drink. If you manage a health condition or take medication, check with your GP first.
The Bottom Line
Juicing is good for you for one straightforward reason: it gets vegetables into people who would not otherwise eat them, in a form that takes a minute and does not rot in the fridge first. The fibre objection is half right at best, because soluble fibre stays in the glass and the insoluble bulk is traded deliberately for more produce per serving. And it is a strange thing to single juice out for when most of a normal diet contains barely any fibre at all. Drink a vegetable-led one, alongside food and stop worrying about it.
More in cold-pressed juice questions, or browse everything in the cold-pressed hub.
Where to Start
Browse the full cold-pressed juice range, or go straight to the Daily Juice Box, Fresh Greens, Daily Beets or the 60ml Ginger Beets shot.
Related reading
- How long does cold-pressed juice last
- Is shop-bought juice healthy
- Cold-pressed juice recipes
- Flash-frozen juice
- What is cold-pressed juice
- Cold-pressed juice benefits
- Cold-pressed vs centrifugal juice
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