Every now and then, I’ll happily share with you lifestyle- and diet-related things that just blew my mind when I first found out about them.
High Pressure Processing (HPP)
HPP is a form of pasteurisation that uses high pressure to pasteurise food.
I learnt a lot about HPP from this pretty cool website.
Here are the key takeaways from it:
HPP heats juices
High pressure creates heat that changes enzyme and protein structure of the juice.
HPP reduces microbial content
Pasteurising food kills bad bacteria to increase food shelf life.
With HPP, even the good bacteria (a.k.a probiotics/ commensal microflora) is killed off. Which is a shame because commensal microflora safeguards us against pathogenic microorganisms.
Some nutrients in juices just aren’t shelf-stable
HPP is used to extend the shelf-life of juices but some nutrients in juices aren’t shelf-stable so anything beyond 3 days and the nutritional value of juices are affected considerably.
Antioxidant, enzyme, and vitamin content degrade as juice is allowed to sit.
Which nicely leads us into the next point:
Be wary of nutrition labels on HPP juices
Why?
Because the vitamin content for the nutrition label was determined shortly after juice extraction.
Which means that the nutritional value on these labels are no longer valid information the longer the juice has been sitting around.
Know where to buy your juices
All juices available in gyms, supermarkets, and spas are required to be pasteurised.
You won’t be getting the best nutritional bang for your buck if you buy these.
How to drink juice
Having read all that about HPP you might be wondering well how should I drink juice to make sure I’m getting all the health and cleansing benefits?
According to this website, cold-pressed juice is the way to go:
“When drinking juice for cleansing, cold-pressed juice is the gold standard when the juice is fresh, organic, and consumed within 5 days of being pressed (…)
Cold pressing extracts juice from fruits and vegetables to retain more of the phytonutrients, vitamins, enzymes but only for a certain amount of time.”
To ensure your juice is as nutrient dense as possible, cold press raw organic fruits and/or vegetables as soon as you can.
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