Meet our December's Master of the Month…
Describe your typical day of eating and drinking. I tend to get up and start the day with a hot lemon then I will have some kind of juice for breakfast. Maybe a Ginger Zinger or a green juice. I typically have a salad for lunch and a Smoothie and with a cooked vegetable soup or warm salmon salad for dinner.
Who inspires you to eat well and stay healthy?Still the same reason I got into juicing. I was really fed up with being overweight, and dealing with psoriasis, hayfever and eczema and feeling so lethargic. I read a little book on juicing by Doctor Norman Walker and it literally changed my thinking about food overnight and my life from then on turned very juicy! I began juicing, as a novice at first, I went a bit crazy, drunk buckets of carrot juice and even turned bright orange! But even as a novice I noticed things started to improve; my skin started to clear up, I had more energy, I was losing weight and feeling absolutely amazing. So I began studying it, refined my recipes and diet and slowly became the “Master” of juicing (that’s what my friends used to call me, and it just stuck!).
There was me, a guy from Peckham in London drinking lots of juice every day with everyone thinking I was a few strawberries short of a trifle, but I didn’t care, I was a changed man. I wrote my first book Slim for Life, sent it into Harper Collins, and the next day they called me up said it was the best thing they’d read on the subject in 25 years!
7 books later I’m still as passionate as ever that if I can do it, so can everyone else.
What is your biggest weakness when it comes to food and how do you deal with that?Without being arrogant I don't have any weaknesses. I never say no to having anything otherwise that will be all I want. It's about managing what you want. I will be good, eat well 80% of the time, but if I go out for dinner and want chips I will have chips, it's fueling your body the best way you can 80% of the time.
My top tip for:Improving your diet is… furnishing the body with the finest, easiest to ingest nutrients on the planet, and juicing retains 95% of the nutrients found in fruit and vegetables. Introduce a juice a day to your diet..
Staying healthy while travelling is… easy if you take time to plan it. I make juices and store them in containers so it will last me throughout the day. I make salads, have fruit to snack on.
Detoxing is… removing the toxins in your body and supplying the body with the finest nutrition in the fastest possible time. I make sure I do one of mu juice programmes at least once a month to make sure my body is fighting fit.
Immunizing is… eat plenty of these:
Avocados – the only complete fruit in the world in that it contains every major food group and a huge array of nutrients.
Beetroot – a blood builder, liver cleanser and beetroot juice is medically proven to lower blood pressure within half an hour of consuming it, amazing!
Apples – more vitamins than you can shake a bunch of grapes at and a real staple for many of my juice recipes because of it’s all round high nutrient content.
Carrots – the anti-cancer king and a real winner on the mineral front. In combination with apple juice, it tastes amazing and is fantastic for you too.
Last one – wheatgrass – you cant put it in a centrifugal juicer but juiced fresh through a masticator or in powder form it is phenomenal for the body. In fact whole communities in America live off wheatgrass juice and have huge cancer success rates with it too . Amazingly powerful.
How would you like to be remembered?I have come up with 3…
1) Attitude of Gratitude – More important than anything else is the appreciation of life and the position we have been granted. We are in the top 1% in the world when it comes to wealth, we have access to the best foods in the world and live in a free society. That fact alone is so often under appreciated. Also, some people might be surprised to hear that a lot of my books are more about the psychology of food than about juicing. We’ve spent so many years of our lives being subtly brainwashed by BIG Food and BIG Drink companies that it’s so important to try and untangle this web of clever and deceptive advertising. Appreciating and being grateful for everything you have right now and everything that will come into your life, even if you dont do anything else, will have the biggest impact of your life and health. It’s no surprise that some of the oldest people in the world are often the happiest and most grateful.
2) Movement is Life – More important than diet even, is the necessity to move your body every day. We have become a nation of people now sat behind a desk staring at a screen all day. You MUST make sure you get out and do something active a couple of times a day. Movement keeps the lymph system working, removing toxins and dead cells and an increased heat rate and oxygen are like superfuel to the body. I once met an 80 year old man that beat me 6-0 three times in a row at tennis. Now, I consider myself pretty good at tennis but this guy was phenomenal and I asked him what his secret was. He just said one thing, “move your body every day. I’ve been doing that all my life and I’m just as fit as I ever was”. What a living testament to his own statement! It is ridiculous that you even see kids these days unable to run, play and move because they’ve become a nation obsessed with computer games and TV, it’s heat breaking. So tip number 2, MOVE your body daily.
3) Nature’s Liquid Fuel – We are the ONLY species on the entire earth that cooks our food. I have never once met and gorilla that can cook me a good BBQ and I don’t think I ever will. The life force that the animals of the world live off, including us, is to be found in raw, uncooked fruits, vegetables, plants, nuts and seeds. Now in today’s modern world it’s pretty impossible to consume entirely raw foods, or huge amounts of fruits and vegetables. That’s where juicing comes in, you are giving your body all the vitamins and minerals it needs in liquid form, that goes straight to the cells where its needed. A combination of the right attitude, daily exercise and the right nutrition and you have the perfect combination to life-long health.
If you got to keep only 3 of your belongings: 1 thing from your kitchen, 1 thing from your garden and 1 thing from your bookshelf- what would they be?I would take my juicer from my kitchen, vegetables from my garden and my ipad from my bookshelf
If you could host a dinner party for 3 guests (dead or alive) - who would they be and what would you serve?I can't answer this as there's just too many people to invite!
Why do you believe that life is Better Raw?There are many foods out there touted as the new superfood, and there certainly are some foods that contain a super concentration of nutrients and antioxidants for example. BUT in all honesty all fruits and vegetables are superfoods really. They all nourish the body, provide an array of vitamins and minerals to help the body grow and repair and they are what our ancestors have been living on for years! People also ask me what particular juice I can recommend for their ailment, but I’m a real believer in the One Disease One Body approach, in that the body can not selectively heal. If you are feeding it an abundance of nutrients rich in live foods it wont cure one ailment without helping the body fix the rest.
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Our Master of the Month shares his favourite raw food recipe...
JASON'S TURBO SALAD
Serves 1-2
Why this is good for you: - This salad is rich in silica, helping the hair, nails, and skin.
- The cabbage is superb for many digestive and intestinal problems, such as bowel infections, parasites and colitus, and the broccoli is one of nature’s true super-foods, helpful for high blood pressure, liver problems and constipation.
- The grated carrot helps to reduce inflammation of the mucus membranes in the intestines and respiratory tract. This really is one hell of a power salad!
Ingredients:1 cup spinach leaves
1 cup rocket leaves
½ cup watercress
1/8 cup red cabbage, grated
½ carrot, grated
¼ cup broccoli, grated
½ sweet pepper (any colour), diced
4 black or green olives
Egg cupful of cold-pressed olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
1 lemon
1 lime
Flesh of 1 large avocado, diced into large chunks
Instructions: - Place the spinach, rocket and watercress leaves on a plate or in a small salad bowl.
- Top with the red cabbage, carrot, cucumber, broccoli, pepper and olives.
- Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar and juice from half the lemon and lime. Toss together.
- Place the avocado chunks on top and squeeze over the lemon juice from the remaining lemon and lime.
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If you’d like to know more about Jason Vale, I highly recommend that you start with one of his books.
is not only an educational book full of epic juice recipes, it is a highly entertaining read too. If I were being honest- it is the only health book I've read cover to cover AND re-read again! Yes- that good! Jason's mega juicy site is here: