My thoughts on juicers
If you're serious about juicing, you should be serious about having a decent juicer. There are a lot of models out there, and a wide range of prices. When doing online research to select a juicer, the things I look for in product reviews are:
- Ease of assembly/disassembly and cleaning
- Construction/quality of materials
- Included accessories
- Number of very positive reviews vs. negative
The number one reason people stop juicing once they've started, I suspect, is cleanup. I had a relatively inexpensive juicer in the late 90's and I wanted to use it. I really did. But it had a tiny feed tube, so I had to spend a lot of time cutting things up into pieces that would fit. It extracted very little juice, so after all that initial prep it didn't seem to pay off. It also took forever to clean up and since it was almost all plastic, it was permanently stained after the very first use. The results simply weren't worth the effort, and after a few months I gave it away.
Over a decade later, I decided I really want to give this another shot and thought there has to be a better way by now. I read about a lot of different models and about a couple of different types of machines (centrifugal vs. masticating). I read hundreds of reviews. In the end I selected a model that was not on the cheap end, nor was it the most expensive. What mattered to me were the items in the list above, and it had to be built to last because I intended to use it no less than twice a day. If you're only going to juice once a week, or a few times a month, you could probably get by with a cheaper model.
My juicer from summer 2011 to spring 2013 was the Breville Die-cast Juice Fountain Elite:
I still use this model secondarily. My primary juicer now is a Breville Juice Fountain Crush "slow"/masticating juicer:
There are a variety of brands and models available, both more and less expensive. Choose a juicer that suits your usage needs and budget.
Some notes about juicing
People ask me if I make big batches of juice and keep it in the fridge, to minimize cleanup. I don't. It's a bad idea to try to store fresh juice. Vitamins and such stay intact in the vegetables, but once juiced, everything starts to break down and oxidize. You need to consume fresh juice right away. Even if you don't, it will still have more nutrients than anything store-bought, but if you let it sit for too long, too much oxidation will take place and then you have the opposite effect of the antioxidants you started with. If you wanted to make some juice in the morning, put it in a sealed dark container and keep it in the fridge to have with or for lunch at work, that would probably be fine. Making a big batch and trying to use it over the course of a week, not so much.
Having a juicer that's easy to clean makes a big difference. From the time I pull the vegetables out until I've finished cleaning up (I start clean-up right away, while I'm drinking the juice) it takes about twenty to thirty minutes. That's as much time as it would take to prepare and clean up after any cooked meal, so I think that's pretty fast. I've never been late to work because of juicing. This should seem fairly obvious, but in case it eluded you, here it is: always clean the juicer parts immediately after juicing! I use warm water and mild dish soap with a non-abrasive sponge. The most involved part is scrubbing the mesh of the filter basket, which I do with the brush that came with the juicer. If your juicer parts can go in the dishwasher and you opt to do this, you should run the dishwasher right away. Vegetable pulp is not fun to clean once dry, especially from the fine mesh of a filter.
Juicing leafy things
Juicing leafy vegetables can be tricky in centrifugal juicers. They stick to the wall of the feed tube or get stuck in the filter basket, causing an imbalance. There isn't much pressure forcing them against the blades to extract juice. These issues mean a lot of the leafy stuff ends up in the pulp bin, which results in very little juice extraction. The way I get around this is to fold or roll up the leafy items into compact packages and sandwich them between more solid vegetable pieces, like this:
By compacting and encasing the leafy items this way, I get more juice (and therefore more nutrients) out of them — and it's easier to get them through the machine.
Vegetables vs. fruit
Juicing vegetables is a great way to get a lot of nutrients: vitamins, minerals. It makes it easier for your body to absorb them. That's good. Fruits don't have quite as many nutrients. When you drink fruit juice, your body is going to absorb a lot of sugar very quickly. This will just cause your blood sugar to rise and an insulin spike, which if prolonged can apparently cause all sorts of health problems. The advice I follow is: juice or eat vegetables, but only eat (rather than juice) fruit. The fiber you ingest when eating fruit slows down the absorption of the sugar. The exception is the small amount of fruit I add to certain juice recipes to help the flavor.
