As the famous saying goes “You are what you eat and drink”

Lot of us became JUICERS to improve our health and wellbeing. Raw produce  like soft fruits, hard fruits, leafy vegetables, root vegetables, inflorescent vegetables, stalk vegetables, tuber vegetables, herbs, wheat grass sprouts and germinating seedlings are used for JUICING.

To meet the demand to juice wide variety of foods, different manufacturers came up with different types of Juicers. Some juicers are highly specialized like Wheatgrass Juicer for Wheatgrass, Citrus Juicer for citrus fruits. Other non-specialized juicers work well with soft fruits, soft and hard vegetables, while falling short of giving good results with leafy vegetables.

Different juicers use different mechanisms to juice a wide variety of produce presented. All juicers separate the juice part of the produce from the pulp / fiber. Some purists want to have both the juice and pulp and this is achieved by regular kitchen blender or a specialized blender like Vitamix (blenders and commercial juicers will be discussed in a separate post). There are advantages as well as disadvantages using either a blender or juicer

Juicers can be classified into two main categories based on the mechanism through which juice and pulp are separated. They are as follows:

• Masticating juicer: There are two different kinds of masticating juicers
  • Twin Gear (Triturating) Type Juicers. These are the most versatile & most expensive juicers.
  • Single Gear / Single Auger (Masticating)  Juicers versatile and less expensive juicers
• Centrifugal juicers: Price and the functionality varies a great deal

What to buy? How do I decide? What do I look for? These are some of the questions most health conscious consumers go through prior to making a decision to buy a juicer or a blender. One of each would be a choice for the rich and famous. Most of us have to sweet to make a good decision. I hope that you will find detailed information to make a intelligent choice.

Twin Gear (Triturating=crushing or grinding) Type Juicers
Produce is crushed between two slowly moving rollers(less than 100 RPM). These interlocking rollers crush the produce with enormous amount of pressure that breaks the hard cellulose cell wall of the plants, releasing all juices of the cell, leaving only the dry pulp  This type of juicer takes little bit more time but can produce juice that is less oxidized and rich in enzymes . It produces more juice compared to single gear/single auger juicer or the centrifugal juicer. Over the long haul the extra money you spend on the twin gear juicers is paid off in the difference of the produce cost. Twin Gear juicers can milk the juice from any kind of produce. It extracts as much juice from wheat grace as any specialized wheatgrass juicer.  Creative uses of this juicer include making ice-cream with frozen bananas, fruit sorbets, nut butter and making homogenized baby foods. Some of them have attachments for making pasta and rice cakes.

Green Star GS 2000 Juicer

Green Star 1000 Juicer

Green Star GP –E1503 Green Power Gold Juicer

Single Gear / Single Auger (Masticating) Type Juicers

As the name indicates it has a single gear, but the canal in the gear progressively becomes narrow applying an enormous amount of pressure on the produce breaking the cell wall to release the contents of the cells. These juicers are slightly less efficient compared to twin gear juicers. The auger rotates around 80 to 100 RPM (depends on the manufacturer) which reduces the oxidation of the juice, which allows you to juice the produce once in two days or so. Single Auger juicers will do everything the twin gear juicers does, but cost less. These are almost as efficient as the twin gear juicers, except when it comes to juicing the leafy vegetables and wheat grass. You may get about 10% less juice compared to the twin gear juicer.

Recently Omega juicers came up with a patented revolutionary single auger upright masticating juicer with an additional pressing stage to increase the output of the juice. This upright design saves space and the additional squeeze step makes this juicer as good as the twin gear juicer juicing the wheat grass and leafy vegetables These are my favorite juicers as they are efficient, cost effective and can be used for all kinds of produce.

Omega VERT HD VRT350 Juicer

Centrifugal Type Juicers

Centrifugal Juicers are most affordable type of juicers. Most of these have a large feed tube to accommodate medium sized fruits. Titanium plated cutting disk with more than hundred knives rotating at 6500 RPM to 12,500 RPM, grates the fruit and vegetables. High speed rotation increases the gravitational force and presses the grated material hard against the micromesh filter separating the pulp from the juice The high speed rotation of the centrifugal juicers knife generates heat and foaming supposedly causing oxidation of the juices. There is no hard core scientific proof that there is greater oxidation in the juices produced by the centrifugal juicers. Centrifugal juicers are very quick producing juice from soft and hard fruit, hard vegetables. You may not get as much juice from the leafy vegetables. If your main purpose is to juice wheat grass do not buy a centrifugal juicer.

Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite 1000-Watt Juice Extractor

Breville BJE510XL Ikon 900-Watt Variable-Speed Juice Extractor

Breville JE98XL Juice Fountain Plus 850-Watt Juicing Machine

Breville BJE200XL 700-Watt Compact Juice Fountain

Breville JE900 Juice Fountain Professional Juice Extractor