Kathy Stielsa

Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’

There is a huge selection in juicers that vary greatly in quality and price. Many people will naturally make the mistake of distinguishing a juicer by its price relative to what else is on the shelf. But when it comes to juicers, you really do get what you pay for and a cheap juicer cannot match the performance and quality you get with a power juicer.

The worst part is that someone who is just beginning to juice their own fruits and vegetables for the first time would not know if the juice is of inferior quality due to the poor performance of their juicer. The most important thing is the speed at which the blades operate. A good juicer runs at much lower speeds than a cheap machine. Too much speed means a lot more damage to the natural goodness of the juice.

We want our juices to be a raw as possible and the heat is like cooking the ingredients which breaks down or alters the structures of enzymes and nutrients. This defeats the purpose of juicing in the first place, which is to feed your body high concentrations of nutrients in its most natural form. A good blender will operate at about 80 RPM’s to minimize the effect of heating the elements in your juice.

Impact from high speed blades also will affect the nutrients in your juice by damaging the minerals with physical force. And while there is oxidation of the ingredients by juicing, slower blades make a huge difference in reducing the amount of oxidation. There will be less foaming in your juice as a result of slower blade action.

Noise is another factor in comparing the quality of juicers. While not always true, cheaper juicers of lesser quality well tend to make more noise than the rest of them. Better machines operate more quietly and the best juicers muffle the noise sufficiently.

When you pay a little extra for a better model, you are also getting the ingenuity of design. In general, juicers can be tough to clean but a well designed model takes the cleaning process into consideration and could make a big difference when you are deciding whether or not to juice today. Pulp collecting compartments that are easily removable makes cleaning breeze. Some brands are so well designed in this area it can be rinsed and cleaned in five minutes.

There are juicers that are not built for harder ingredients, especially leafy greens and wheat grass. This is an important consideration since vegetable juice is something you want to include in your juicing regime. So instead of buying a centrifugal juicer which can only do citrus and soft fruits, and then spending more money and counter space on a specific wheat grass juice, just look for a juicer that has multiple functions and can do all vegetables and fruits.