There are so many juicers out there for you to choose from. Knowing some basics about juicing will help you choose the right one for you. Let’s get started! There are 6 things you need to considering before choosing a juicer:
- What type of vegetables and fruits can it juice?
- How much juice can it produce?
- How long does the juice it produces last?
- How much of the nutrients in the juice is kept intact?
- How much time does it require to juice?
- How easy is it to clean?
Keep reading and I will tell you some things you need to know about juicers and juicing. By becoming informed, you will know what to look for, and which juicer is the right one for you.
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JUICING GUIDE
Some basic knowledge of juicing:
- To keep sugar down, your ratios should be 80% vegetables and 20% fruits.
- Remove skin and seeds from produce that are not edible
- In time, juice will lose its electrons, called oxidation. Electrons are fundamental to good health.
- Some juicers take longer to juice than others. Think about how much time you have to spend juicing.
- Though some juicers take longer to juice, if you pick the right juicer and store the juice in air tight containers, you will only have to juice a batch every four days.
- Juice last longer if stored in the refrigerator in tight sealed containers, filled to the top, like mason jars.
- Drink juice on an empty stomach. This way, your juice isn’t competing with other foods that need to be digested. This is a quick way to get nutrients to your cells.
JUICING VEGETABLES BENEFIT LIST
Why you should juice
Get your daily servings
The daily recommended servings for fruits and vegetables is 6 to 8. Many people struggle with this. Juicing is a great way to ensure your body gets the nutrients it needs and remain healthy. Throwing a bunch kale, carrots, spinach and cabbage in a juicer will go down so much faster as a drink than having to chew it all up. It’s a delicious way too!
Boosts energy
Juicing is a quick way of getting your nutritional needs and getting a boost in energy.
There are live enzymes in your juice and they will be absorbed quickly into your blood stream. Enzymes are fundamental to good health.
Helps with healing
When you are ill and trying to heal, drinking juice is a great way to get the vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients you need. Your body won’t have to spend its energy digesting food. That energy can be conserved to use in repairing and healing what ails you.
Improves immune system
A third of our immune system is in our gut and prebiotics are essential to good gut health. Vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens, kale, rutabagas, and radishes are all rich in prebiotics. Juicing a bunch of these, raw and unadulterated is a great way to get these all in our system.
OPTIMUM JUICER
Knowing what each juicer does is vital to finding the best juicer for you. Here are the different types of juicers:
Centrifugal Juicer
This is the most common type of juicer. It usually has really fast spinning blades that spins against a strainer, separating the juice, called centrifugal force. Pros:
- Less expensive than other juicers
- Takes less time to juice
- You can use bigger pieces.
Cons:
- Not good for leafy greens.
- Extracts less juice.
- Oxidation is higher because a lot of air is sucked in during the juicing process.
- Has a lot of foaming and juice separation.
Blender Juicer
One might choose a blender type juicer because everything you put in the blender remains in the drink. Pros:
- Make smoothies.
- Fiber rich. Improves digestive health.
- Slowly releases nutrients into the blood stream.
- Flavonoid dense.
- You’ll feel full longer, great for weight loss.
- You can add other foods such as, nuts, avocadoes, bananas and dairy.
- No waste
Cons:
- Full of texture, making it harder to drink.
- Less nutrients are absorbed
- Some vegetables don’t blend well
Masticating Juicer
This type of juicer extracts by using slow spinning blades to crush, press, or squeeze the juice from fresh fruits or vegetables. Pros:
- Yields more juice
- Great for leafy greens
- Foaming and juice separation is minimal.
Cons:
- Costs a bit more than other juicers.
- Takes longer to juice.
- You need to cut produce into small pieces.
Twin Gear or Trituating Juicer
This is a premier juicer. Using two gears instead of just one as most masticating juicers have. This is the ultimate tool for those using juicing for healing. It uses a trituating method of rubbing, grinding, crushing and pounding to finely extract juices. Pros:
- It will tear open the produces cells membranes, releasing deep seated nutrients and enzymes.
- Breaks up more of the phytochemicals, resulting in juice that is rich in color, nutrients and enzymes.
- Built-in magnetic field and far-infrared technology, which enhances juice structure making it last longer.
- Longer shelf life.
- Handles green leafy vegetables and cereal grasses, like wheatgrass, extremely efficiently.
- Produces minimal foam.
- Maximum juice extraction compared to other juicers.
- With its bio-magnetic technology, it also helps minimize pesticides, chemicals and heavy metals.
Cons:
- Takes a lot more time to juice.
- Has a lot more parts and takes time to clean.
If you can afford this, this is the best juicer to have.
Hydraulic Press Juicer
These types of juicers produce the best quality juice. The Norwalk juicer has its own grinder but others like the People’s Press, require you to use a triturator juicer, like a Champion juicer, to grind the produce first. This will separate juice from pulp. You’ll then take the pulp into a special bag and press the rest of the juice out. Pros:
- Higher quality juice, enzymes are preserved to a higher percentage.
- Higher volume of juice produced.
- Less waste
- Produces minimal foam with larger bubbles.
Cons:
- More steps to juice, therefore, more time.
- More parts to use and learn.
- Expensive
HOME JUICE VS STORE BOUGHT JUICE
Store Bought Juice
I’ve seen bottles of juice at the grocery store that look healthy and refreshing. You can even order them online, all prepackaged and ready for your juice cleanse. The problem with these juices are, they are pasteurized.
The process of pasteurizing will destroy many of the nutrients and will cause oxidation (loss of electrons) After pasteurizing, some nutrients are added back in but they are not the original nutrients. Enzymes and antioxidants are destroyed and are not added back in.
Store bought juice is just not a good substitute. All you’re left with is a sugary beverage that is not healthy for you. I have seen some that are cold pressed and can be bought frozen, however, if you look at the nutritional information, they are still loaded with sugar.
Home Juice
Homemade juice, put through a juicer, using raw fruits and vegetables will give you what you need. They contain enzymes, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals that can’t be found any where else in the same form. With homemade juice you know what you’re getting because you made it yourself! I’ve heard it said that it’s important to pasteurize juice to keep bacteria away that can cause serious illness. I have consumed thousands of glasses of pure, unpasteurized juice and have NEVER gotten sick from it. It is important to clean the produce well and make sure your juicer is as clean as possible. Also, make sure the containers you are storing the juice in is very clean as well.
BEST SLOW JUICER FOR LEAFY GREENS
The most nutrient dense juice you can make is from leafy greens. They are packed full of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants and so much more. Green juice is low in sugar and calories. The greener the juice. The more nutrients it contains. Here are some leafy greens that are great for juicing:
- Kale
- Spinach
- Collard greens
- Amaranth
- Arugula
- Beet Greens
- Boston lettuce
- Cabbage
- Microgreens
- Mustard greens
- Romaine lettuce
- Swiss chard
To make green juice taste a better, you can add about 20% fruit juice or carrot juice. Carrot juice is sweet and is good for you. The best juicers for leafy greens are the masticating, twin gear and hydraulic press juicers. Centrifugal and blender type juicers don’t work with greens. If you use these juicers you won’t get much juice and you will lose much of the nutrient density.
ENZYME ACTIVITY COMPARISON OF JUICERS
Raw unadulterated produce, ready for the juicer is called living food. When you feed your juicer with this produce, you want to preserve as much active enzymes as possible. Michael Donaldson, Ph.D. of Hallelujah Acres Foundation, performed a study of enzyme activity using different juice extractors. Performing a study of enzyme activity is a sensitive way of measuring oxidation and degradation during juice extraction. This study was done to answer several questions, like:
- How much active enzymes remained in the extracted juice for each juicer?
- Does one type of juicer retain active enzymes longer than another type, therefore, making it possible to juice less often?
- Which is better, to freeze or refrigerate juice overnight?
- Does organic produce have more enzyme activity?
- Which type of juicer produces more juice?
6 enzyme activity levels were screened. These are cellulase, tyrosine oxidase, glucose oxidase, L-amino acid, amylase and peroxidase. Of the six, only amylase and peroxidase were high enough in carrot juice to be used in this study.
Amylase is an enzyme that breaks down starch into disaccharide maltose. It is present in our saliva and starts the digestion of complex carbohydrates.
Peroxidase helps protect our bodies from oxidative damage and keeps us feeling younger by reducing hydrogen peroxide to water. Hydrogen peroxide causes free radical damage and etabolic aging which is generated as a byproduct of aerobic metabolism (way your body creates energy through burning of carbohydrates, amino acids, and fats in the presence of oxygen).
I’ll give you a summary of the results. If you would like to see the full PDF then CLICK HERE
Enzyme content: Which juicer preserved the most?
The two-step triturator/press (hydraulic press) are the best juicers to prepare the best juice. These have a speed of 1,725 to 3,600 rpm and goes to show that speed has no effect on enzyme activity.
The next best is the twin gear juicer. Third is the masticating juicer and the juicer with the centrifugal basket but retains the pulp. Last are the pulp-ejecting centrifugal juicers.
Some juice guru’s claim that high speeds can affect juice quality. In this study it shows that the heat produced from all of these juicers had no effect on enzymes.
Enzymes are heat stable to at least body temperature and none of the juicers caused temperatures to that extent. It is believed the amount of air that is pulled in by centrifugal juicers is what caused degradation to juice quality. Any juicer that has a metal strain will produce more foam.
The amount of foam and smaller bubbles causes a greater amount of degradation due oxidation.
Shelf Life: It’s not about the juicer
According to the results, shelf life isn’t so much the juicer but how the juice is stored. The hydraulic juicers performed better than others, however, there were no significant difference with other juicer types. Oxygen plays a big roll in oxidation.
If there is no oxygen then the enzymes that require oxygen to lose its electrons (oxidation) will remain stable. Storing juice in clean, filled to the top, air tight jars, and stored in the refrigerator, held their enzyme integrity. Keep in mind though, that some juicers produced more enzymes than others, as shown in Enzyme Content.
When you juice, you want the juicer that will keep as much of the enzymes from the original produce. Especially if you’re juicing for healing.
Juice Volume: Juicer that produced the most
The same amount and type of carrots were used in the study for each juicer. A hydraulic press, People’s Press with the Champion grinder, to be specific, produced the most juice.
One and a half times more than the masticating and twin gear juicers. This makes this juicer the best overall for quality and quantity.
The centrifugal juicers produced about as much as the Norwalk did (hydraulic juicer). Quality from the centrifugal juicers however, is much lower.
Refrigerate or freeze stored juice
In this study, carrot juice was stored overnight in the refrigerator and the freezer. The results show freezing preserved peroxidase enzymes activity better. Juice stored in the refrigerator preserved amylase enzyme activity better.
Which produced more enzymes. Store brand produce or organic produce?
They both produce about the same amount of Amylase activity, but the organic produced twice as much peroxidase activity.
WHICH JUICER IS THE BEST CHOICE?
With all you have learned from this article, some of the important factors to consider are:
- Why are you juicing? Is it for better over-all health or is it for treatment and healing purposes.
- Quality and quantity of juice.
- Ease of use
- Time requirement to juice.
- How dedicated are you to juicing. The best juicers require a lot of time but have the best quality. If you’re juicing to treat cancer, perhaps someone close to you would be willing to do the juicing for you.
In choosing a juicer overall, the best juicer for you, is the juicer you will use. Period. Happy juicing!
DISCLAIMER
The content of this website is research done by me, Linda Edwards, author of blossomingwidow.com.Everything you find here is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, cure, prevent or treat any medical condition. The information you find here is not to replace your relationship with your physician or other medical professionals. The information is not intended for medical advice but rather, sharing with you knowledge I have gained through research and experience. If you apply any information you find here, it is based solely on your own discretion, and at your own risk. Linda Edwards / blossomingwidow.com shall not be held liable for any reason.