Introduction to juicing
Fresh homemade fruit and vegetable juice is great for both the mind and body. To make your own juices, all that is required is a juicer and some fruit and vegetables to use as ingredients. The Breville BJE200XL juicer is an excellent choice because of its features and reasonable price. There are many companies that make these kinds of products including the already mentioned Breville as well as Champion, Black & Decker, Waring, Jack Lalanne, Hamilton Beach, Omega and Magimix. Of course there are other makers of these appliances too.
Everyone has heard the expression “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. This to me is one of the central themes behind fruit and vegetable juicers. They allow us to consume many more servings per day than if we tried to eat our way through the same quantity of produce. For example, six oranges makes a decent sized drink, possibly as much as 500ml. This is a great drink to have along with breakfast, but trying to eat six oranges as well as eat breakfast would be fairly difficult. The difference is that when we juice, we are removing most of the liquid from the fresh produce leaving only the pulp. This is what contains the fiber though. So by juicing we are not getting all the benefits that we could if we actually ate the whole fruit or vegetable. However as has already been mentioned, what we miss out on in terms of fiber is more than compensated, in my opinion, by the sheer quantity of fresh produce it becomes possible to drink when we make our own fresh fruit and vegetable juices. This means that the amounts of vitamins and minerals that we consume through drinking freshly squeezed oranges and so on will be much higher than simply eating a couple of pieces of fruit.
What to look for in a juicer
There are many different brands and models of juicers on the market today. Some are geared towards commercial use while others designed for use in the home. Factors that you may consider to be important include the cost of the unit, how much it can juice before it needs the pulp removed, easy of cleaning and how it juices. Looking at each of these in turn is easy. Firstly juicers may seem expensive initially however for people who already drink fruit and vegetable drinks that are purchased at a juice bar you will know that prices can easily range from $5-$10. So when we consider that the Breville BJE200XL juicer costs about $100 but that once we have our own machine we will be able to make our own drinks for less than it costs to drink out. In effect, the more you juice, the more you will be saving, while becoming healthier at the same time. Secondly the quantity of juice that you want to prepare at a time is an important consideration. This is because each juicer has a different capacity. What this means is that for it to work effectively you may need to remove the pulp that builds up inside so that you can carry on making fresh juice. This can be a pain because the cleaning up is often the least enjoyable part about making homemade health drinks. This leads on to the next point. How easy is it to clean your kitchen juicer? Really the easier, the better. If it takes too long or causes too much fuss to clean up, you may as well have done it already. Secondly the quality of the components used inside a juicer are very important to consider. Types of components inside a juicer may consist of high quality centrifugal juicers, slow or continuous juicers, and extraction devices. These consist of different types of pistons, trays, and discs. Centrifugal juicers are the most commonly used types of juicers. They are commonly found in restaurants and health related industries. Due to their popularity, they are perfect for a busy restaurant or hospital where both staff and patients do not have the patience to wait for bench space. Trays are used in sparingly in those establishments, and are usually used in large capacity for bunches of big objects and in smaller ones for more delicate tasks. Disc shaped juicers are most commonly found in supermarkets. They are used in producing chips, cereals, tartlets, pulp, and other food for consumption. Food dehydrators are next in the list of desirable accessories. These provide Convenience and enhanced texture through altered drying of food and beverages.
Further refinements and the quest for greater efficiency led to the introduction of jetpacks and other high performance juicing aids. These advancements have reduced the time that juice-drinking is done by a person, in comparison to a blender or food processor. This saves time that is important to overall health and well-being.
InConclusion, many juicers are great choices to consider, provided you do your research and understand your body’s needs.