This vs. that

There are many different juicer models to choose from. Your selection can be based on price (in most cases even an inexpensive juicer is better than no juicing at all) or function. Function? Well yes, juicing is juicing but there are two different main categories of juicer available: centrifugal and masticating. Most people are familiar with centrifugal juicers. They've been around the longest and have been the most available. More recently, masticating juicers have begun to gain popularity.

The difference is in how the ingredients are processed into juice.

With centrifugal juicers, a disc with tiny sharp teeth spinning at high speed shreds fruits and vegetables and the spinning forces the juice through a fine mesh sieve/filter basket, resulting in rapid juicing with almost no pulp. It happens at high speed so there will be some oxidation that occurs, but don't worry about claims of heat from this type of juicing damaging enzymes/nutrients. It doesn't raise the temperature more than 2ºF, and if you are using refrigerated produce, even less reason to worry about that. Centrifugal juicers are faster, louder and use more electricity than masticating juicers.

With masticating juicers, an auger (picture a giant screw) smashes, crushes and grinds up the fruits and vegetables, at a low speed. There are different sized holes in the filter, which allows pulp into the juice. Because the juice is produced at a low speed as the ingredients are crushed, there is little oxidation. Pulp in the juice means you're getting some of the fiber, which is good for you and especially useful if you're using vegetable juice as a meal replacement since fiber helps you feel more "full." Masticating juicers are more quiet and use less electricity, but have smaller feed chutes so you have to cut your fruits and vegetables into smaller pieces.

This is how I cut up items for processing through a centrifugal juicer with a 3" feed chute:

Basically, if it fits in the feed chute you're done. I halve my cucumbers because I put the leafy greens between the two halves to make processing them easier.

This is how I cut up items for processing through a masticating juicer:

Everything is cut into much smaller/thinner  pieces except for the greens. I cut celery into lengths of only two to three inches, which keeps the stringy fibers from getting tangled in the auger.

So — is one type of juicer better than the other? Not necessarily. It really depends on your needs. Centrifugal juicers are faster, and models with big pulp bins make it easy to make a larger quantity of juice, which is great when juicing for two, etc. Masticating juicers are really good at processing delicate leafy things, which is a bit trickier in a centrifugal model. I think if you want to make juice in the morning and have some to take "to go" for later in the day, a masticating model might be better due to the lack of oxidation from low-speed extraction.

I recently switched to a masticating juicer as my primary juicer. I did have some concerns about the additional time I would need to spend both preparing the ingredients and the actual juicing. I've found it takes an extra ten to fifteen minutes (depending on how many ingredients and the quantities) from start to finish vs. with a centrifugal juicer with a wide feed chute.

If you like to juice in the morning but are concerned about time, cut up and prepare your ingredients the night before and keep them in a large plastic zipper bag in the fridge. (If you're using apple, you can rub some fresh lemon on the apple pieces to keep them from turning brown.)

The ingredients in the above photo (6 leaves lacinato "dinosaur" kale, 1 baby bok choy, 1 lemon, 1 large chunk ginger, 1 yellow pepper, 3 stalks celery, 1 fennel bulb, 1seedless cucumber) made about 32 ounces of juice.

I'm pleased that the masticating juicer makes far less noise than my centrifugal juicer, which I'm sure my downstairs apartment neighbors appreciate since I juice early in the morning. It also happens to require less counter space in my kitchen.

Potassium Powerhouse

Who knew? One morning while having a conversation about juicing, variety and nutrients, there was a "what if" moment — what if we juiced a fennel bulb (also known as anise)? Would it be disgusting? The very subtle anise/licorice flavor of fresh fennel is almost as polarizing as that of cilantro: people either love it or hate it. Taste not being the only factor for juicing something, I decided to look up the nutrition data for raw fennel.

What I found was astounding. One 234g fennel bulb contains 969mg of potassium, according to the USDA nutrition database. For someone like me who is combating high blood pressure with nutrition, this was a glorious discovery. Now, a fennel bulb of that size also contains 122mg of sodium, but that's not bad as long as I'm keeping a close eye on the total sodium in my diet. Fennel is also a fantastic source of vitamin C, and a decent source of folate, calcium and iron.

So how did it taste when combined with other ingredients in a juice? Almost imperceptible. We really had to "look for it" in the finished juice. Lemon and ginger easily masked any flavor the fennel might have added.

Here's a green juice recipe (this has become my go-to "Everyday Green" juice):
1 fennel bulb, stalks trimmed off
1 seedless cucumber
4 leaves of lacinato ("dinosaur") kale
1 yellow bell pepper
1 lemon, rind removed
1 chunk of peeled ginger root

You'll be hard-pressed to taste the fennel. If you do and that's not to your liking, simply add another lemon.

Fennel is my new "secret ingredient" packing a potassium punch, that I now add to almost every juice I make.

An easier way

Maybe I actually think of things nobody else has tried? I have watched too many videos and seen too many people do this the wrong way in person — at home and in commercial environments. The problem: juicing leafy greens in centrifugal juicers. It doesn't work well if you just shove them in and expect juice. They are leafy, rather than dense solid items. They hit the spinning teeth and mostly get ejected because there's not enough mass to really get any juice out of them. Yet all these people are pushing greens into their juicers, then saying "you need to follow after with something harder." This approach really doesn't help because by the time you add another ingredient, most of your greens have been shredded but not juiced, and are spun out and now in the pulp container. The answer? Put your leafy greens between other, harder items. Cucumber is perfect for this but you could also use stalks of celery or bok choy (or any other long item that you can surround the greens with — I just happen to prefer using only green items for green juices). By surrounding your leafy greens with something more dense, you are getting all of both to juice successfully.

In this photo there are two halves of a cucumber, with kale leaves wadded up between them. Push all of this gently through, pausing briefly as you go to not overload the juicer's motor. This has become my standard method for juicing leafy greens like kale and swiss chard, because it's so effective.

Tried and true vs. trying new

Although I have my tried-and-true favorite juice combinations, trying something new keeps it interesting. The grocery store had organic bartlett pears on sale for $1.79 a pound, so I thought "why not?" I've never used pears before, and suspected they'd go well with cucumber, ginger and lacinato kale. I did not add my usual lemon because lemon and ginger tend to dominate other flavors. The resulting juice was sweeter of course, but I could distinctly taste the pear and cucumber.

2 small organic bartlett pears (I cut them after taking the photo)*
1 seedless cucumber
3 lacinato ("dinosaur") kale leaves
1 chunk of ginger root (1-inch diameter, 2+ inches long)

* Like apple seeds, pear seeds when crushed or ground and ingested can apparently create trace amounts of cyanide when mixed with stomach acid. Although smaller apples and pears can go into some juicers whole, I don't recommend doing so for this reason.

Organic vs. Conventional Produce

Although eating conventional produce is better than not getting enough fruits and vegetables in your diet, there are many items that you really should strive to ONLY buy organic. If you're juicing daily, you're consuming a lot more produce than you probably had previously. That's great, but if you're consuming non-organic produce that also means you're ingesting more pesticides, fertilizers and fungicides. That's not good.

The Environmental Working Group has two lists that they publish, known as the "Dirty Dozen" and the "Clean 15." You guessed it, items on the "dozen" list should only be purchased when organic is available, as they contained the highest levels of pesticides. The "clean" items you don't need to worry about as much. EWG's web site has updates these lists here.

The current "Dirty Dozen" (and the top three are the worst offenders):

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Strawberries
4. Peaches
5. Spinach
6. Nectarines (imported)
7. Grapes (imported)
8. Sweet bell peppers
9. Potatoes
10. Blueberries (domestic)
11. Lettuce
12. Kale and collard greens

(Although not on this list, I still only buy organic carrots as well.)

The current "Clean 15":

1. Onions
2. Sweet corn
3. Pineapple
4. Avocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Cantaloupe (domestic)
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

Grapefruit goodness and making the time for juicing

Every now and then I like to try new combinations, even though I have my tried-and-true favorites. This morning's juice featured grapefruit, red bell pepper, granny smith apple, lemon, carrot, ginger, golden beet and tomato. I used one large and one smaller grapefruit. You could really taste the grapefruit over the other ingredients, which was the goal. As you can see below I also used a rather large chunk of ginger root.

The approximate nutritional analysis of this combination (which yielded over a quart of juice, enough for two people) per-person:

Percent Daily Values

Vitamin A: >600%
Vitamin C: >230%
Vitamin E: 14%
Vitamin K1: 40%
Thiamin: 15%
Riboflavin: 14%
Niacin: 15%
Vitamin B6: 27%
Folate: 30%
Calcium: 8%
Iron: 8%
Magnesium: 12%
Potassium: 30%
Sodium: 12% (mostly from the carrots)
Zinc: 5%
Copper: 7%
Manganese: 24%  

Making the time for juicing
I hear people complain that it takes a long time to prep for juicing. I don't think it takes long at all. I don't peel organic carrots or cucumbers. In this morning's juice I peeled the beet and ginger root, and cut the rind off the grapefruits and lemon. Everything else required a minimal amount of rinsing and prep. If I know I will be pressed for time or have to leave earlier than usual in the morning, I'll prep my juice ingredients the night before and store them in a bag in the fridge overnight. To keep apples from turning brown, rub the flesh with the rind-less lemon before putting them in the bag. In the morning, just pull the bag out and you're ready to go.

Martha Stewart does a green juice every day

Martha Stewart Starts Every Day With Green Juice, Seriously Digs Asparagus Season
from Grubstreet New York

"Every morning I drink a green juice made from fresh spinach, parsley, pear, ginger, orange, and cucumber from my farm."