How to Easily Harvest Prepare Eat Aloe Vera the Right Way

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for you. Today I will be harvesting aloe, and not only just harvesting aloe, but showing you guys how to harvest aloe the best way, and then even more than that, propagate the aloe into a new plant, and then also we're going to go ahead and process the aloe into the amazing gel and get the gel out of it. But you're also going to learn the benefits of aloe. First thing is, we're going to go to a nice aloe plant that has been growing for several years, and now this may shock some of you guys, but to harvest this, you're just going to take the whole plant, get underneath it, and you're going to wiggle it, and you're going to pull it up, you're uprooting the whole plant. Check it out guys, the aloe puts out all these pups. So like this right here is a new plant, just plant this in the ground, pull out this one, this is a new plant, put that in the ground, this is a new plant, look at all the roots on that. So we're just going to pull all these off, because we don't really need them right now at this moment. Here's more new plants, the roots, aloe puts out lots of babies. Alright guys, as you guys can see, I got all the pups off down below, and now we just left the root ball. So now this is going to shock many of you guys, what we're going to do next is we're literally just going to take a knife, and we're just going to cut off all the roots. You're like, John, if you're cutting off all the roots, you're killing it! Actually on the aloes, you don't. Actually we're harvesting it right now. So now what you're going to do on the bottom of this aloe, you're going to go to the bottom and start pulling off all the leaves, so you can see as I pull off some of these old leaves that were there, we're going to pull them off sequentially. This is the lowest one, we harvested it, but it's too dried out, not good. Pull this off, this way instead of cutting the leaf and then they drip all the ooze and gel out, it's easy to work with. This one's still kind of more dried out, so we're just going to pull that out. This one is getting more mature. So now this is a good one, but instead of doing it the way I'm doing it, I'm going to do it the wrong way where people just, oh, just harvest it, cut the leaf off. The problem is when you cut the leaf off, it's going to start oozing this gel. The white sap is actually the toxic stuff you don't want on you or to ingest, right. So that's why you don't want to harvest it this way. So we're going to go ahead and continue to harvest the way I was harvesting by literally pulling the bottom off, and now these are good leaves, right. So the next one we're harvesting right here, we're going to take inside and process. Next one is this one. We're going to take it off and process. These are nice huge leaves. We're going to take this one off and process. Next one, take it off and process. Check it out, guys. These are getting really fat now. We're going to harvest maybe a couple more here. Take it off and process. All right. We're going to kind of clean this up a little bit. And what we're going to do now is we're going to get this ready for planting. So you can see we have a nice area of literally I would call it the stem, and we're just going to shave this off a little bit. And you would think this is not a good thing to do, but on aloe, these guys are literally used to being cut down, tipped over. Now this is all we need. Look at this plant, guys. This plant, there's still a lot of mass in here. This plant is not going to lose its life, because why? The aloe stores all the water so that it can feed itself when there's no roots, when animals eat the roots, when it blows over, when there's a landslide and all the dirt gets washed away. It stores all the water so now it can send the water and the nutrients down to this area. And then in this area, actually new roots are going to form. So what we're going to do next is we're going to take this aloe and take it over this brand new pot here, and we're just going to go ahead and dig it up a little bit. We're going to dig a nice little hole. This is actually quite dry right now. We're just going to like literally stick it in the hole, and then we're going to go ahead and back fill the hole. And now this is fully standing up. And here's the thing, I'm not even going to water this. I mean, it's going to rain any time now. The rain will come, this will get watered, meanwhile when the soil is not wet, all the aloe gel and the hydration will be sent down to the roots so that this plant can grow brand new roots and continue to grow. So now that we've harvested the aloe, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and take that aloe inside and show you guys how to properly process it so that you don't get sick. It's very important, right? Aloe can make you sick, it can put you on the toilet, and you're just going to have to have like diarrhea because you didn't process aloe correctly. So now I'm going to go inside and show you guys how to process aloe the best way possible. Alright guys, next step we're going to go ahead and show you guys how to fillet the toxic. First step is, we're going to take a knife, we're going to cut off the part that is really not usable on one side, and then we're going to cut off the part that's not usable on the other side. This is the main part we're going to use, once we've got two slices, we're then just going to go ahead and go down and slice off all the little pokers there on both sides. As you can see, this is a very simple and easy process. The next step is imperative. This is starting to leak out the yellow sap, which is the alanine, which basically if you eat too much of it, it will put you on the toilet because you're going to just have like loose stools. So we need to get rid of this. So how we get rid of this is we have a clean bucket of water, we're just going to go ahead and then dunk the aloe into. You're going to let it stay in there for about three minutes, right? Very important, while the water is literally leaching out all the yellow coloring. The most important thing is that you're leaving it in for long enough, right? Because what's happening is all that yellow sap is being pulled out and pulled into the water and the reduction of alanine is like a thousand times less alanine when you're soaking it in the water. This is the step that most people neglect to do because they think they can just cut the aloe off the plant, eat it whole with the leaf, with the greens and all, and all the alanine, or you just blend the leaf whole and then it tastes terrible, you think you're doing your body something good, but then it's not so good because that has a laxative effect. So it's very important we want to remove this so that we can benefit from all the aloe vera complex polysaccharides. So anyways, once it is soaked for three minutes, the next step is you're going to then use, you could either use a knife or in this case I'm using like a cake spreader thing, you're going to put the leaf down and then you're going to basically put in the cake spreader right in between the gel and the green leaf, and then you're just going to go ahead and angle it all the way down to separate the leaf from all the gel. So you guys can see, we basically now have all the leaf, all the covering, and I missed a little bit so I'm just going to go ahead and take a knife and cut out the rest that I missed. Next up, we're going to go ahead then and do the same thing to the other side, to remove the other side of the leaf, the green part. So once again, we're going to start at the narrow end, put it underneath, and then we're just going to go ahead and run this cake spreader all the way down, angling it at a downward angle so that we get as much of the gel as possible. So you guys can see now, we've basically separated all the gel and you've got to hold on to this stuff because it's like really slippery, and the next step is you're going to then soak it in a clean bucket of water to just ensure that you have gotten all the alanine out. That's very important guys. Do the second step, let it soak for a couple of minutes as well, and then when you pull it out, this is going to be alanine free, so if you eat this gel, that's hard to pick up because it's actually falling off my hand, it's going to really, it should taste like nothing. There's no bitter taste, there's no nothing, it tastes like you're kind of eating nothing. So the next step is, we're going to go ahead and show you guys the best way to blend this into a smoothie. So this is the bucket that has the alanine, you can see all the yellow that come out, the pigment, and that's what you don't want, you don't want to consume that, that's why we soak it so that all the yellow pigment comes out in the bucket, and then the secondary bucket, you know, it's very clean, we maybe only pulled out a little bit. Alright guys, so next up, we're going to go ahead and do a blender comparison and show you guys why it's very important to vacuum blend your aloe vera as well as your other fruits and vegetables. You guys can see on this side we have a traditional Vitamix, the Vitamix works by, you put the items in, you turn it on, it blends everything up, right, it adds lots of oxygen, that's why when you put the ingredients in, you start here, you end up there, this oxidizes the oxygen sensitive nutrients, it also means it inflates the mixture with tons of excess air. On this guy over here, this is the Blendtec blender, and all we need to do for the Blendtec blender is buy this little lid here. This lid replaces the Blendtec lid, and this has dual pumps, that you put it on the blender, you press the button, it sucks all the excess oxygen out of the craft before you blend, so you can blend with 75% of the oxygen removed, so you don't damage the valuable oxygen sensitive nutrients in your, all your different blends, right, and especially things like berries and apples, there are proven published studies that show you have significantly more things like polyphenols, things like vitamin A and C that are oxygen sensitive. So today what we're going to do is we're going to blend up mangoes, in my original video I blended up sugar cane juice, which I no longer recommend, I recommend only blending whole fruits instead of juices, and then we're going to blend up the aloe vera that you guys just saw me fillet as well as extra aloe vera. So we're going to go ahead and once again just dump in the mangoes into both blenders, we have about approximately the even amounts. Next up we're going to go ahead and dump in the aloe vera into both blenders, once again we have approximately even amounts. On the Vitamix we really just put the lid on, you can just press it and go and you're done, like let it blend up. On the Void Systems Blendtec vacuum blending solution, you put the lid on, you lift the red tab up, you just then conceal this completely, you're going to then hit the on button, you're going to go ahead and then just press the go button. You guys hear that? You guys can hear the pumps coming on and what's happening is all the oxygen is being sucked out of the carafe and evacuated out, you can see maybe the carafe is getting sucked in like my cheeks, like that, we are evacuating all the excess oxygen, so now when we blend we're not going to mix in the excess oxygen, which is a very critical important step to do to maximize the health benefits of whatever you blend. Now vacuum blending your margaritas are not going to make your margaritas healthier, but vacuum blending things like fruits, vegetables, as well as aloe and other foods with polyphenols and oxygen sensitive nutrients will be significantly impacted. As you can see in no time this is up to 20 in this case and now we're ready to vacuum blend. So we're just going to go ahead and simply hit the smoothie button on both blenders at the same time. Alright the blenders stopped at the same time and now we're going to pour out the results for you guys to see. This is the Vitamix over on this side, aloe vera is so good you should put it in a wine glass, but as you guys can see this is nice bubbly and frothy. Next up on the Void we need to basically lift this up, you can see all the air is literally being sucked into the carafe, you got to hold this little tab up as you lift up the lid on the Void. Then next we're going to go ahead and pour this one out for you guys on the video. You guys see the difference of these vacuum blended versus non-vacuum blended mixtures. The Vitamix has significantly more air bubbles, it's also a lighter color because you are airing up your smoothie. When you add lots of oxygen in, all the oxygen sensitive nutrients can be degraded as well as now you're going to be swallowing extra air which will give you gas belching and bloating. When you blend up things like the aloe vera, it's a jelly, it makes a lot of foam so we want to prevent all that foam so we have the best taste, best flavor and of course the most nutrition. Next up we're going to go ahead and taste test the different aloe mango mixes. When I drink that I personally feel like I'm just drinking foam, it's so frothy, maybe you guys like that flavor of the frothiness, I'm not tasting a whole lot of mango flavor. Next up let's go ahead and taste the vacuum blended version, wow, I'm swallowing barely any oxygen, I'm tasting the mango more and the aloe vera is not all fluffy, it's actually not really dense. Let me taste that again, it's game changing guys. I no longer recommend traditional blenders, I only now recommend vacuum blenders. The taste is better, the more nutrition, better color and more importantly better storability. I don't recommend you store anything you make in a blender, in a traditional blender because all the oxygen will oxidize the nutrients as you store it. I know a lot of you guys have blended bananas in your smoothie and you make a banana smoothie, you drink it, it tastes good, you let it sit for a couple hours, you taste it, it tastes really bad. Meanwhile, something like this, you can store in a mason jar with the pure MVP vacuum pump, all the links for these products will be linked down below and you can store it for easily up to five days to a week without a problem. So literally you can make aloe vera smoothies once a week, you can have it all days of the week if they are properly stored and properly vacuum blended. You would definitely not want to do it with this because it would start to taste off, taste bad and you'd lose further nutrition. I think the last part of this episode, I want to go ahead and interview an expert about aloe vera and if you guys don't want to have to grow all your own aloe vera, harvest it, fillet it, dip it and then double dip it again, then you're going to want to buy the aloe one product because it's the only aloe vera that is truly raw on the market that you can buy because every other company heat processes their aloe vera. When you heat process the aloe vera, you lose the majority of the beneficial effects that you guys are probably looking for. So now we're here with Dr. Michael Haley who has done all the research on aloe vera, knows the best types as well as the best processing methods that he shared with me so I could share them with you. So Dr. Haley, the first question for you is, what was special about the aloe vera that we harvested and used today unlike other aloe veras that are out there because you can just go out and buy aloe vera at the drug store for example, like in a pot. Yeah, we're calling this Stockton variety which specifically Rodney Stockton had studied different varieties. He had determined this one to be the most medicinal so it's the one he chose to cultivate based on his research. But he also spelled out specific methods of growing it that I think are, make it all the more better. Meaning, not only what variety, with the Stockton variety being the best, but how you grow it, where you grow it, what kind of soil, how mature the plant is and you put all those things together, then you have a solid aloe vera juice gel. Wonderful, and that's what you guys saw how to make today, the aloe vera gel. So Dr. Haley, why is the aloe vera gel different than the aloe vera juice you would see actually at your local health food store? Yeah, the biggest difference, and that's what a lot of people ask, they'll say, what's so different about this aloe? And you can see the frost on this bottle and that's because we just took it out of the freezer. It's frozen. The only way to stop the breakdown of the mucopolysaccharides, and you're not even stopping it, you're really just slowing it down, and that's by freezing it. And then, in order to use it, of course, you have to melt it and refrigerate it. Well, in the refrigerator, it's going to probably break down faster, but 7 to 10 days, you're in pretty good shape. You'll shake it and it still sounds goopy, it still sounds like gel. If you leave it in your refrigerator for a month and shake it, it'll probably splash like water because the enzymes have completely broken down the mucopolysaccharides and there are none left. So if you're buying aloe off the shelf, shelf-stable aloe, the enzymes will have completely consumed all of the mucopolysaccharides down to the simple sugar. You won't have that gel anymore, unless you buy one that says gel. They put thickeners in it to mimic the gel. And then if it's missing those polysaccharides, the mucopolysaccharides, why is that important? It's kind of like, what do you want? Do you want something right from the garden, or do you want something further removed? The further removed from the garden is, the more it changes. And the less health benefit you get. Absolutely. So it changes into something other than that original plant food that you had. Yeah, so that's why I recommend, once again, vacuum blending that's going to remove the oxygen so you don't have to oxygenate it and it doesn't have to get all foamy. And potentially all that oxygen there may cause some issues with the enzymes that may degrade, that will, in many cases, I mean, other than aloe, can degrade the food faster. So you're not going to get the health benefits, right, because I'm all about optimizing the health benefits. And of course if you don't grow your own aloe, you don't want to buy the aloe vera juice at the store, then you're going to want to buy a product like the Stockton Aloe One product, which is basically the gel that actually Dr. Haley's company grows, processes properly, and then freezes, and the cold chain is never broken, so you have the most amount of healing benefits because, you know, a lot of people can't grow aloe that fast unless you're maybe in like the Caribbean, because maybe half of the year it'll grow for you, but it doesn't like really below like 60 or 70 degrees, it kind of just goes into suspended animation, just kind of hangs out, right. And then, Dr. Haley, so why is it so beneficial to drink aloe and drink it on a regular basis? You know, a lot of people drink it because they have certain conditions, and then they get over those conditions and they want to continue drinking it for the rest of their life. What I like to explain to people is, you see your skin, your skin is a window of what your inside looks like, and aloe is one of those things, if you put it on a sunburn, it literally cuts the healing time in half on a sunburn, you can see that happen on your skin, but on the inside you don't see that, and ulcers are kind of like sunburn, inflamed guts are kind of like a sunburn, and if you could heal that faster than the damage you're doing, that's a good thing. I like to tell people stop doing the damage, that's your fastest way to get well is to stop eating whatever's damaging your gut, but if you want to speed up the healing, aloe vera, there's nothing like it. Yeah, so I'd say obviously on my channel, I'm going to tell you guys straight up to grow your own aloe, to have a lot of it, to process it in the best way as possible, you retain the most nutrition, but for some of you guys you may not be able to do that, maybe you live in an apartment, yeah you could have a little aloe plant, but you're not going to get any sufficient amount of quantity from the aloe to get a really good benefit if you're having some kind of condition that you want to help. That's why I recommend actually the Stockton Aloe One product for those of you guys that want to drink it consistently on a regular basis without having to cut it up, soak it, fillet it, and all these things, right. So Dr. Haley, how can somebody learn more about your product as well as all the benefits of aloe vera on your website, what's your website and how do they get a hold of you? Go to HaleyNutrition.com and there's a phone number there, you can always call and even schedule a 15 minute free appointment with me, I'll answer your science questions and help you understand the benefits of aloe even more, and one more thing I want to tell people, GYG. Oh, the coupon code. Yes. Yeah, I hooked you guys up with a coupon code so you guys could get a discount on this. So I'm going to reactivate that old coupon code and we'll set it at 10% off whatever you purchase for the next, we'll say until October, how's that sound? Alright, great. And then from that point we'll probably change it from maybe a 10% down to a 5 maybe for the rest of the year or something like that. Okay, great. Okay. Alright, wonderful Dr. Haley, thanks for having me over today and I hope to see you guys soon. If you guys want more information on the aloe, I've made some amazing episodes with Dr. Haley in the past where we go a lot deeper than this short format did. We'll put a link down below so you guys could watch the previous videos I've made in the past. This is the most updated, latest information with the best processing methods. So I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode today. If you guys did, please be sure to give this video a big thumbs up, also more importantly share this with other people that are growing aloes so that they could learn the best way to process so that they don't get the, like the runs, like literally. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss my new upcoming episodes. I've come out here five, seven days. You never know what you'll be learning on my YouTube channel. Make sure you click the little bell so you get notified as many as you can and finally be sure to check out the past episodes. The past episodes are a wealth of knowledge. Over 17 episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teach you guys all about how to grow your own food as well as process it in the best way as possible. Links down below once again to Dr. Haley's previous episodes so you can learn a lot more about the aloe vera. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. We'll see you next time and until then remember, keep on growing.