Juicer Reviews

The first thing I have to say about these juicer reviews is that they are based on personal experience. No doubt there will be some who read and disagree with me. That's great! Just leave a comment below and give the balanced view.

Now on to centrifugal juicers.

These are by far the quickest juicers on the market. A fine grater blade is rotated at phenomenal speed and when food is dropped down a feeder chute it comes into contact with the blade and is shredded to extract the juice.

The resulting juice is expelled into a container and the pulp is either stored in the machine or an external tub.

These juicers do introduce a lot of air into the finished juice and for this reason the nutritional value can be reduced. It is always best to drink the juices straight away rather than storing them.

Because of the high operating speeds these machines generate quite a lot of heat and once again this can destroy nutrients as the juice is warmed.

Some centrifugal juicers seem to be unable to produce juice without leaving a layer of foam on the top. I personally hate this. We are not talking creamy cappuccino foam - this is more like scum.

The centrifugal juicers tend to be easy to take apart for cleaning and most of them have parts that are dishwasher safe - although this does need to be checked.

The utmost care needs to be taken if washing these by hand as the blade/grater is very sharp and it will attack fingers!!

So, as a user you need to weigh up the pros and cons of buying a centrifugal juicer:

Pros - Quick preparation and easy to clean
Cons - Reduced nutritional content and foam!

A masticating juicer, as the name might suggest, effectively chews the food fibres to release the juice.

There are a number of different options with regard to masticating juicers but the process is basically the same with them all.

Do you remember the old fashioned mincing machines? No, oh well, that analogy won't work for you. But if you do know what I mean, then masticating juicers work in a similar fashion!

A screw like mechanism rotates and pulverises the flesh of the fruit, vegetable or grass to break down the fibres and squeeze all of the juice out. The juice passes through a fine mesh screen and is gathered for you to drink.

These machines operate at relatively low speeds so heat is not a problem although it does mean that it takes a while to make your juice.

Some of the top of the range masticating juicers have gears to vary the speed of juicing, depending on what is being juiced.

Cleaning of the auger or screw is straightforward but getting the mesh filtering screen clean can be fun! At least it isn't sharp and it doesn't shred fingers.

These machines tend to be quieter than centrifugal juicers which can be a plus if you are an early morning juicer when the rest of the household are still sleeping.

Masticating juicers tend not to cope with soft fruit very well. A lot of the juice is wasted. Frankly, soft fruits are probably best processed through a blender or liquidiser anyway as it seems a shame to waste any of their goodness.

Pros and cons again?

Pros - Quiet to use, produces good quality juice, most will cope with wheatgrass

Cons - Slower to use, fiddly mesh screen to wash, higher price.

The idea of juicing grass really does need a special mention.

Green juices are incredible. They taste gross (personal opinion) but boy do they make you feel great!

In fairness, when I say they taste gross, that's not strictly true...I just don't like them very much! Green juice can of course be mixed with other juices for the wimps like me who find it unpalatable.

The green juices contain chlorophyll which is very good for the human body. It is incredibly cleansing and healing.

If you want to process wheatgrass you must be sure that the juicer you are thinking of buying will do this for you. Not all of them will. I have tried very hard not to name names here for fear of a court writ :-) but it is not difficult to establish whether or not a juicer has a wheatgrass function.

It is just something to bear in mind. Don't assume that all juicers will work with wheatgrass - because they don't.