This is the most common question I get asked in my e-mails and at my talks. Since top- quality masticating juicers and high-speed blenders are expensive, everyone starting a raw food lifestyle is trying to decide whether to invest in a juicer first or a blender. So here is what you need to know to make an informed decision.
Blenders & Juicers –
Both Essential to a Raw Food Lifestyle
Comparing blending with juicing is like comparing jogging with yoga. They’re both a form of exercise, they’re both very healthy, yet they’re as different as can be. To get the best health benefit you may want to use both.
The first rule of thumb for everyone on a raw food diet is that the key to success I that you absolutely MUST get high, quality, dense, easily absorbable nutrition, whether that is from juicing or blending! In this day and age it is almost impossible to get adequate nutrition just from raw fruits, nuts and vegetables, even organic. But with the addition of some fresh raw juices and smoothies it becomes easy!
Both juicing and blending give you a huge shot of dense nutrition that your body will absorb like a sponge. There are some important differences, but the main thing is that it isn’t a contest – both make a valuable contribution to a raw food lifestyle, though in different ways.
“Raw vegetable juices…are digested and assimilated within 10 to 15 minutes after we drink them and they are used almost entirely in the nourishment and regeneration of the cells and tissues, glands and organs of the body. In this case the result is obvious, as the entire process of digestion and assimilation is completed with a maximum degree of speed and efficiency, and with a minimum of effort on the part of the digestive system.”
- Norman Walker, "Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices", pg 9
Juicing is designed to extract as much densely packed nutrition from vegetables as possible by removing all the fiber (pulp). This makes it faster and easier for your body to assimilate all this nutrition without activating your digestive system. When you have fiber in a meal, or even a smoothie, it can take hours to digest and absorb. But with fresh raw juices your body can do the same job in minutes!
Of course, there is nothing wrong with fiber – it is an essential part of a raw food diet. You have to eat food! Juicing is only one tool you need in a raw food lifestyle to assure yourself of getting the high nutritional density a raw food diet needs to b successful. But it isn’t a replacement for eating real food. In addition, juicing is ideal for cleansing and detoxification as well as for people with very sensitive digestive systems that may be sensitive to a high fiber raw food diet when the first start.
The benefits of zero fiber means juicing is easy on your digestive system, so is often used for juice "feasts" or fasts as a method to gently cleanse and detox the body while giving the digestive system a rest. Smoothies and drinks made with blenders don't do that. A high powered blender like theVitamix or Blendtec cracks open the cellular wall of your fruits or veggies, releasing all the nutrients and making them easier to assimilate – but it is much more lick eating a meal since you still have all the fiber and other ingredients in the smoothie. You get better assimilation, but not the concentrated nutritional density of juice because you couldn't ever get as much food into a Blendtec or Vitamix as you get when you make just one glass of juice. For example, a typical juice recipe for me includes:
- 2 carrots
- 5 large kale leaves
- 1/2 a bunch of parsley
- 1 large cucumber
- 8 large stalks of celery
- 1 knob of ginger
You could never eat this much all at once if you had to thoroughly chew it. Blending it would include a lot but still no where near as much.
I use my Blendtec regularly to make smoothies almost every morning instead of breakfast. This is part of my Fast, Easy 75% Raw Food Strategy. The way that works is based on the fact that (with snacks counting as one meal) we normally eat 4 meals a day. So if you have 2 raw meals plus raw snacks you are automatically a 75% raw foodist! To make that easy I usually have a smoothie every morning, a big salad for lunch or dinner, all raw food snacks and then anything I want for dinner (within reason of course).
I use my juicer to occasionally replace meals when I want to lose a little weight, for a quick pick me up or during a fast – even a one-day fast. Finally, sometimes you want a smoothie with all the fiber to help "chimney sweep" the colon. Juice has no fiber so doesn't cleanse the colon at all. So both are good, ,but if I had to start with one I would start with a Blendtec or Vitamix because it is much easier to start a raw food program with smoothies than juices.
It is important to remember that even fresh, raw juices are highly concentrated, processed foods - only you did the processing yourself. So when you make fresh juice you are concentrating whatever is in the fruits or vegetables, from the vitamins and minerals (good) to the sugar (bad)! Of course, we all know that fruits are loaded with of sugar, but even fresh raw vegetable juice can be high in sugar – especially non-greens like carrots or beets.
The reason you have to be careful about making juices too sweet is that they can elevate your blood sugar, which is a problem for anyone with blood-sugar issues like diabetes or hypoglycemia. Even if you haven’t been diagnosed with hypoglycemia or diabetes you could have subtle symptoms that aren’t yet diagnosable from decades of eating processed foods that always have added sugar in them! If you have known blood sugar issues please talk with your medical professional before you start juicing.
It is easy to forget that both smoothies and juices are processed FOOD and quickly chug them down like water. But you must always remember when enjoying juicers or smoothies to “drink your solids and chew your liquids.” Because digestion actually begins in the mouth, it is best to chew your smoothies and juices to thoroughly mix them with the digestive enzymes in your stomach. Neglecting this can cause imperfect absorption, or even gas and bloating.
The Benefits of Blenders
- The fiber in smoothies, especially green smoothies, has a cleansing effect on the colon.
- Smoothies are more filling than juices and more satisfying for regular, long-term use.
- Sugar is absorbed slower because of the fiber. Smoothies let you to enjoy fruit without the inevitable sugar spike you could get from some juices. The fruit in a smoothies will be like eating whole fruits. For most people, however, I recommend avoiding too much fruit entirely because we all suffer from improper sugar digestion to some degree after decades of eating processed foods.
- Store-bought smoothies are designed more for their profit than your health. These smoothies are usually made with the cheapest, most commercial ingredients like frozen fruit, sugary juices and liquors for taste. It is rare to find a juice bar that will pay a few cents extra to buy organic ingredients, so if they didn’t thoroughly wash everything then you could be getting pesticide and chemical residues in your smoothies, too – far from the health-builder you were looking for!
- Blenders are easy to clean. Most of the time I clean my blender just by running it under hot tap water. I sometimes add a bit of water and dish soap to the blender and push the Pulse button for a few seconds. Because blenders are so much easier to use and clean blenders are often the first choice of investments when starting out on raw food. Remember, the easier it is the more you are likely to actually do it. When you start with a blender you give yourself the best shot at acclimating yourself toi a raw food lifestyle suceesfully.
- Smoothies are a great tasting treat for the whole family – especially kids. Smoothies are great for making fruit-based drinks because it contains the whole fruit and avoids a lot of the sugar rush kids get from processed, sugary drinks. You can easily mix and match flavors to please the taste buds of anyone in your family, from a favorite fruit to a dash of cacao powder.
- You can make a lot more than just smoothies with a modern, high-power blender. It’s easy to make everything from heated soups and sauces top salsas, salad dressings and dips.
- You can add supplements and super foods to your smoothies. A spoonful of hemp protein powder or spirulina adds a ton of dense nutrition to your smoothies. You probably wouldn’t add supplements to a glass of juice.
The Benefits of Juicers
Though I recommend blenders for starting out in raw food because it is easier and more convenient, virtually all long-term, serious raw foodists use juicers as well. As your diet becomes more and more raw-food based, you will need more and more sources of densely packed nutrition because your body will start to assimilate more nutrition from a smaller volume of food. To support this you need to periodically enjoy fresh raw juices both just for fun as well as for the occasional cleanse or detox.
- Fresh juices are the fastest shortcut to dense, easily absorbed nutrition. Fresh, raw juice gives you all the nutrients without requiring work by the digestive system, ideal for cleanses or detox as well as for people who have digestion problems and who need to heal themselves before they can properly absorb nutrients from raw foods. Though the fiber in smoothies helps “sweep” the colon, juice is also a great way to cleanse other systems in your body while giving the digestive system a rest.
- Juice is ideal for cleansing, detoxifying and healing. I have seen numerous people heal all kinds of chronic health problems by following a supervised juice fast or juice feast. The idea is to drink only fresh, organic raw juice for a period of time, allowing your digestive system to take a break while your excretory system can work on deeper detoxifying. When your body is eating cooked food you are consuming toxins faster than you can eliminate them so they build up in your tissues, eventually causing health problems and disease. But if you stop consuming new toxins and let your digestive system rest, your excretory or elimination systems no longer have to deal with incoming toxins and start working on eliminating older, built-up toxins in your tissues.
- Juice vegetables but consume fruits whole or avoid them altogether. Fruits need all their original fiber in order to slow down the absorption of sugar in your blood. Most vegetables contain less sugar and therefore don’t need as much fiber to slow down absorption (with the exception of carrots and beets).
- Juicing gives you a quick burst of energy since it takes so little time for your body to absorb the dense nutrition in juice.
- Whenever you are juicing for more than a day it is a good idea to help your system detoxify all the toxins your excretory system will be flushing from your body. For that, always drink plenty of pure water. Also, since there is little or nothing passing through a major excretory organ – the colon – you should help flush the toxins that are usually removed by the colon using enemas or colonics.
- Cleaning a juicer is a bit more work than cleaning a blender. Personally, I don’t think the time difference is significant – a matter of a handful of minutes.
- Juices are less satisfying than smoothies. With a smoothie you can feel like you just had a regular meal afterwards. After a juice, since there is no fiber, you usually don’t feel as satisfied. However, that feeling of satisfaction is a bit of “programming” based on old habits – not on what your body actually needs nutritionally. I have found that I quickly get used to juicing even during a juice fast. When fasting I always drink plenty of water, which helps make me feel more satisfied (of course, I drink high pH alkaline mineral water from my water ionizer). I also carry a thermos filled with fresh juice that I can sip on throughout the day during fasts just in case I do getting a little overwhelmed by hunger.
- A juicer lets you juice almost anything. You might never put beets, carrots or ginger in one of your smoothies, but you can juice them easily. Dark leafy green like kale are easier to drink in juice, but even in a green smoothie you can only add one or two large leaves of kale without messing up the taste.
