Calculating the calories for fresh vegetable juice

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7/12/11 7:33 A

I finally bought a juicer over the weekend, and I am looking for guidance on calorie counting as well. Thanks for all your posts, all good ideas. As one Spark Buddy pointed out, fruit is great for you, but contains natural sugars, so focus more on veggies in your juice! Today I am going to try out kale - have never used it, and found a recipe for kale and banana. I am also hoping to use it for summer "cocktails", without the alcohol!

Posts: 260
4/12/11 12:32 P

This ia a great topic so I googled it... here is one response on how to figure caloric content which seems perfectly logical to me...

http://www.ehow.com/how_5155227_count-ca
lories-juicing.html

Hope this is helpful.

Posts: 4,188
3/21/11 1:07 P

i wish i had the answer to this because i juice a lot and i always want to know how to track my calories. i actually track the vegetable as it comes up in SP. the stuff that i have is low in calories anyway. my juices consist of alot of green leafy vegeies and i usually used he fiber after that so it comes out accurate for me. i hate to waste stuff

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Posts: 1,197
3/21/11 12:31 P

I'm slightly skepitcal of Unidents's approach, for this reason: most of the cals are in the juice, much of the weight can be in the fiber, depending on the type of fruit and veg.

I'd just count it as if it were whole. But Unident makes a great point, that it's pretty low cal and not going to kill you one way or the other, if your count is off.

Posts: 1,121
3/21/11 11:34 A

I would track it the same as a low sodium vegetable juice mix, like V8. You can't use the straight calories from the individual ingredients because of what is lost in the juicing process, most prominently fiber, as mentioned by the prior poster.

Posts: 33,304
3/21/11 1:52 A

Basically, yes.

Looking at what you put in, apart from maybe the apple, it's all very low-cal foods. Getting it slightly wrong on these really won't matter. What will matter is how accurately you track everything else.

Remember that what you take out isn't pure fibre, it's still some of the goodness.

Maybe one time weigh all raw ingredients before adding, then weigh the slurry left afterwards, and work out the ratio. Then track that. So if you have 1/4 of the total weight left over, track 3/4 of the total weight of food you're actually putting in, eg 3/4 of one whole apple.

Posts: 403
3/20/11 7:32 P

Hi there :) I have been trying to increase my intake of healthy raw nutrients by supplementing with fresh juice. I don't have much of an appetite so "just eat them" doesn't end up working for me right now. (I do eat fresh whole fruits at breakfast and raw salads with dinner every night) Do I just count the calories for the vegetables as if I were eating them whole just disregarding the fiber? An example of my juice:
1 lemon (peeled)
1 whole apple
1/4 inch piece of ginger
3 large celery stalks
3-4 romaine lettuce leaves
1/2 cucumber
5-6 baby carrots
1 handful herbs such as parsley, cilantro, or basil

this makes about 16-18oz of juice

thanks for your help!