The definitive guide to choosing a juicer

Introduction

In the 1930's a chap called Dr Norman Walker invented a juicer which firstly grated and then cut produce. The resulting mass was then to be put into a linen bag and placed under a hydraulic press, directing juice down a spout. (Dr Walker lived to 108 years of age - he died in a surfing accident). You can still purchase this 2-stage "Norwalk" machine for around $2000, which is a very prohibitive price indeed.

And most of the juicers you will find on sale haven't evolved much since then, which brings us to...

Centrifugal juicers.

Centrifugal juicers work by using a flat cutting blade on the bottom of a rapidly spinning strainer. Cut produce is flung out over the sides of the strainer. Due to the centrifugal force, juice then passes through tiny holes in the strainer. Features intrinsic to this design include:

Ultimately, the technology inside a centrifugal juicer is not unlike that of a tree cutter. They're spinning at up to 10000rpm. The resulting frictional heat is not good for your juice.

Neither is 10000rpm an easy task for a motor when under constant resistance. The amount you can spend on a centrifugal juicer varies from £30 to over £100 - so what are you paying for? Well, in truth, mostly brand name and aesthetic design. While the cheapest of machines are certainly week hearted and not going to last you long, experience and feedback tells us that more expensive machines don't necessarily last any longer. In fact, if everyone who bought a juicer used their machine every day we think nearly every machine on the market would be withdrawn because with daily usage virtually all machines would fail within their first year, let alone within warranty.

And that's a brave statement for us to make - but far braver is the warranty provided with juicers. Most people we speak to that have burnt out previous machines never even took it back. We live in a throw away society sadly, but it's great for manufacturers.

Another fact of society is how many of us 'shelve' new products. In a recent survey juicers were found to be the most likely new item to be left in the cupboard, second only to the George Foreman style grills. We believe this is because of the above drawbacks of this style of juicer - as the high street centrifugal is by far the most purchased type of juicer in the UK.

Centrifugal juicers that handle whole produce.

WOW! what a feature, whole apples, whole heads of celery. Having said that, impatience isn't the highest virtue. One health food author tells us "it's great being able to put in a whole head of celery, but the motor keeps burning out and I have to take it back to the shop". Ultimately, this feature is one of convenience, but the process still destroys the juice, and you still have to clean up after every glass produced as the strainer clogs even more rapidly.

The juicers themselves have had no technical redesign other than a widening of their feeding chute, so there has been no consideration of increased motor resistance. Also, a wide feeding chute is extremely dangerous - an adult could loose their whole arm in there. Also, anything that doesn't fill the chute rattles all over the place, like a simple carrot. Generally there is immense volumes of foam and the juicers dump a lot of pulp into the juice which then requires straining. How many juicers do you want to buy this year?

One last word on whole fruit juicing: animals that live inside fruit. Think about it, even if your juicer can take whole apples, maybe it's worth quartering each apple first.... worm juice anyone?

Centrifugal juicers with pulp ejection.

A relatively small market place that holds a few domestic machines, and mostly commercial machines used by juice bars. Juice bars need juice QUICK (which is why they have to sacrifice quality and use the centrifugal process) and they can't afford to continually disassemble their juicer to clean it. In a centrifugal juicer that has pulp ejection, the sides of the straining basket are cleverly slanted, the air flow sending the pulp produced automatically into a collection basket without the need for cleaning. The process IS NOT full-proof by a long way, and offers no inherent improvement on all the flaws of centrifugal juicing already mentioned.

Please be aware that stringy, fibrous produce and wheatgrass is still not a success in this type of juicer. If you're looking to incorporate these into your juice read on...

Masticating juicers

A revolution occurred in the 1950's when Plastaket invented the Champion, the worlds' first masticating juicer. Masticate means 'to chew', and as the Champion is the only juicer with teeth we feel it's the only masticating juicer available. Many other web sites will class 'gear' juicers as masticators. We have put these into their own category below. The Champion juicer gives a greater yield then centrifugal juicers and the degradation isn't nearly as severe. But its cutter is running at 1425rpm - and that can be a problem.

When the Champion arrived on the scene over 50 years ago, Siegfried Gursche, author of "Healing with Herbal Juices," described as a 'tragedy' the extremely high speed of the juicer which causes lots of friction which heats and sometimes even steams the juice. Some nutrients, especially all live enzymes, are destroyed by heat.

Where the Champion excels (in terms of speed of throughput and yield) is with root vegetables. If you're planning to process A LOT of carrots, then the Champion would be a consideration for you (i.e. the Gerson Diet). Although, in our opinion you'd still be better off with a gear juicer, and you should make green juices your main stay.

Now lets take a jump into the 1990's. Suddenly an innovation occurred in juicing..

Low speed, gear juicers

Gear juicers operate anywhere between 70 and 120 rpm. Thus, in a gear juicer:

As a visual representation of the differences we have prepared two glasses of apple juice - one prepared in a single gear juicer, the other in a centrifugal juicer.

Apple juice extracted with a Single Gear Juicer Has a healthy, even color, showing that it's full of enzymes and nutrients 20% more juice yield Less foam

Apple juice extracted with a Centrifugal Juicer Has oxidized and turned clear brown - only water content with no enzymes and nutrients Poor juice yield A lot of foam

The rapid oxidization of apple juice makes this a good test for the colour and therefore vitality of the juice. Other produce would show similar results for the centrifugal produced juice, but typically the single gear prepared juice would exhibit less or no foam. E.g. orange juice is entirely foam in a centrifugal juicer and zero foam in a single gear juicer.

Many people have said or written that you need to drink juice produced in a centrifugal juicer straight after producing it. Usually it is explained that as the juice deteriorates you can benefit from the juice by consuming it straight away. PLEASE stop and think. If a process causes destruction, removing it from your sights quickly does not alter the destruction.

If you want to juice for health you must produce the juice yourself in a low speed gear juicer. This is the only way to gain benefit from the abundance of nutrition available in fresh fruits any vegetables when their fibre is safely separated. No other domestic or commercial juice preparation will give you the benefits of living enzymes, vitamins, minerals and other phytonutrients.

So now that we're totally convinced that it's only worth drinking fresh juice if prepared using a gear-type juicer, we are left with one question - single gear or twin gear?

Single gear juicers

A single gear juicer has a single rotating screw or 'auger', with an ever narrowing thread along which produce follows until crushed inside a conical sieve or 'juicing-screen'.  The juicing screen allows juice to pass through and collect in one container, whilst pulp is ejected at the tip or the gear and lands safely in a separate container. This process is very similar to the worm gear of a meat grinder. The auger is divided into phases that progressively crush and then wring-out the produce against the perforated wall of the juicing screen.

Single gear juicing offers you top quality juice with ultimate friendliness of use. You won't ever be put off using a single gear juicer, it will forever remain a joy.  PLUS, with a single gear juicer you can perform many food processing tasks.  By simply changing the juicing screen with an identical shaped part that has no holes, you transform a single gear juicer into a food processor.  So what can you do?

1. Grind almost anything, e.g. nuts, seeds, spices, meat, fish.
2. Homogenize foods, e.g. frozen fruits into sorbets, veggies etc. into baby foods.
3. Extrude dough with a variety of nozzles for pasta, noodles and breadsticks.
4. With a bit of effort you can also make your own nut butters.
   

Single gear juicers are very popular and there are a hoard of them available now, including the Compact, Oscar, Solo Star, L'Equip Visor, Matstone, Samson and Live Enzyme juicers. So how do these compare? Through our own direct long term experience and collation of user feedback as well as noting comments & reviews from online buyers, we have drawn up a pros & cons chart below.

Single auger performance

The performance of single gear is now very closely matched with the exception of the Visor (poor) and Live Enzyme (very poor). On this matter you will have to take our word for it because even existing users won't have had the benefit of testing 2007 models. All the manufacturers seem to work endlessly on improving the efficiency of the working parts. Naturally, they claim each month that the yield is now improved 20%. 

If you trust the claims and do your maths and history you'll be amazed to find that (hypothetically) you should be getting around 100 litres of juice from 500g of carrots - but you'll be dissappointed to find that in fact you'll still get something close the the 'standard' 250ml glass.

What IS true is that currently, single gears juicers achieve about 5-30% more juice (depending on produce variant) then when they first came on the scene in the early nineties. As far as every other statistic and comparative claim out there goes; ignore it! 

But what this does mean is that the performance of single gear juicers is now VERY close to that of twin gear juicers.  In the early days there was no match, but the performance gap has shrunk whilst the price gap has widened.  Now you can buy two or three single gear juicers for the price of a twin gear machine, which is really something to think about.

Single auger warranties

The chart below is missing the Matstone, Samson and Compact juicers, all of which would be on the same spot as the Champion. As with juice yield claims you should mostly ignore any hype about lengthy warranty durations. Ultimately, the motors in these machines are all destined to live the same life and will do so for a similar amount of time. What this chart really shows is how bold or how conservative the distributor is - and even this is based on a mathematical equation of what proportion of customers consign their juicers to the cupboard never to be used and what proportion of customers 'buy new' when something breaks... together that protects distributors from a very high volume of warranty claims indeed. So besides the Live Enzyme juicer which has a concerningly poor parts warranty, you can mostly ignore this chart (which we made by the way, and is now used on other sites to tell you to buy an Oscar!).  In any case, the MOST tried and tested machine of all those seen here is the Champion, at over 50 years of age, but even they stick to a 10 year warranty. The Osar, sold under the Omega name in America, only receives a 10 year warranty - but it's the same machine.

Single gear juicer with NO juicing screen

There is one single product in this category, the Live Enzyme juicer (which is an electric version of the inexpensive manual juicer known originally as the Easy Health). Both the manual and electric version were designed for use with greens, particularly wheatgrass exclusively. Due to the very high stringy fibre content of these foods they don't create pulpy juices, and thus a juicing screen is not necessary.

However, the absence of a juicing screen on these machines is coupled with claims of juicing all produce and headlining of 'the time you'll save not cleaning the screen'.

Proceed with caution. You will need to sieve, and softer produce is problematic. Ok if you like pulpy juice, but when you want just pure juice (without the pulp), the pulp quickly collects on the sieve clogging it up. If the sieve was integrated into the juicing drum then separated pulp would be deposited away from the juice, but with solely a sieve resting on the juice jug to rely upon you have to empty it too frequently and waste a lot of potential juice in doing so. This is very messy, especially with soft produce, including apples - and tomatoes will lead you to give up hope.

Finally, two augers are provided with this juicer for different produce - another unique feature. But presuming you require different types of produce, at some point you may wish to change the parts to juice the next item in your recipe. Messy and off-putting again.

Twin gear juicers

So why twin gear?

Well, twin, inward rotating gears have traditionally allowed for a far greater juice yield then with single gear designs. Now, single gear performance has pretty much caught up, making the cons of twin gear juicers more of a consideration. Assembly is a little more fiddle-some with more parts, the price escalates considerably, and feeding in produce is a slower affair than with single gear juicers. If you've used a centrifugal juicer then a single gear may feel a little slow, but a twin gear will surprise you, as many types of produce have to be forced in between the gears. Basically, a twin gear juicer performs its results by operating its gears at 0.1mm apart, around 4/1000 of an inch.

Whilst wheatgrass, herbs, and other leafy produce will 'self feed' as the gears pull inward, a carrot would require force. This is an important note for anyone who has any weakness in their forearms and especially wrists - if you're unable to use a hand trowel in the garden, then sadly a twin gear juicer may be too much for you.

This design of twin gear juicers often makes soft produce a challenge. Fruit remains feasible in a twin gear juicer, but juiced alone would require some extra patience. Twin gear juicers always provide a larger holed screen for fruits, but this again adds complicity for most users - which screen to choose and do I change at half time?

The latest model Green Power (Kempo/Hippocrates) produces approximately 25% more juice from wheatgrass than the Green Star, which it does so in approximately 15% less time, and without constantly backing up (forcing you to stop and reverse - or disassemble, clean and restart). Additionally the machine is smaller, lighter, has two less parts to assemble, is easier to clean, and simply doesn't incur regular part breakages like the Green Star.

Below are the twin gears of these two magnetic twin gear juicers. On the left is the Greenstar, on the right the Greenpower Hippocrates. Notice there is no nylon at the front of the Greenstar gears to prevent the metal from colliding.

Oddly enough there was in the original design but to simplify and lower the cost of manufacture it was removed. Mr Kim calls this the "clean gear" and now it is only available on his latest invention. What one cannot see but is massively important is the magnets inside the gears. As the original purpose of magnets was to prevent the gears from colliding they were optimized for each gear to oppose each other - not to enhance the mineral content of the final juice as is now widely accepted as their purpose. Thus, the smaller gears are the ones with an unrivalled magnetic capability, more details of which are below.

Excellent global marketing and celebrity endorsement of the Green Star continues to see this as the best known twin gear juicer. We know of dozens of customers who have 'upgraded' from their Green Star - and are now happy with a Green Power machine. Initially concerned that the Green Power isn't 'heavy duty' like the Green Star, they quickly realize that the size and weight of their old machine is of no more use than excess weight on a person. We even have customers who have retired their Green Star in favour of a single gear juicer and been very satisfied.

If your interest is mainly green/non-fruit juices, then twin gear juicers will offer you a great juice and the produce is very easy to feed. Please note however that modern single gear juicers offer near twin gear performance across all produce types, making the Twin Gear marketplace more of a specialist one. If there is a cheaper, easier to use machine then why should anyone bother with twin gear? The answer is MAGNETS.

Yes, there are magnets in the Green Power Juice Extractor. At the core of each rotating twin gear is a series of in-line magnets. When the twin gears are properly aligned, the two series of magnets produce a focused magnetic field of 2600 gauss in the minute 4/1000 inch clearance between the twin gears. As the juice flows through this focused magnetic field, the water molecule clusters within the juice are opened allowing them to recombine with minerals such as calcium, potassium, sodium, and magnesium into new molecular structures. This magnetic field process aids in extracting a greater percentage of minerals from the produce during the juicing process and is instrumental in keeping those minerals in a suspended colloidal form the body can use for a longer period of time.

An independent test has shown that juice from a combination of celery and green leafy vegetables contained:

95.4% more calcium
173.3% more iron
96.95% more magnesium
61.4% more potassium
205% more silicon
108.2% more zinc

That's it. That's your reason to purchase a Greenpower Magnetic Twin Gear Juice Extractor.

The other contenders in Twin Gear juicing are the Twin Health and the Angel. The feature that sets these juicers apart from the magnetic twin gear machines is their 100% stainless steel gears, auto-reverse function and soft touch operation panels. Please note that neither machine uses magnets in its twin gears and thus ultimately functions like an Oscar VitalMax only with more cumbersome parts and a more expense RRP for you.

Both the Twin Health and Angel juicers use an embedded soft touch control panel rather than sturdy switches. Like in modern cars the number of electric faults not affecting the mechanics but still disabling your machine is frustrating and totally unnecessary.

Our final word on the current Angel juicer is that it is being sold on hilarious claims that are badly translated from Korean (where there is no regulation) - vegetable marrow anyone? That's a courgette or any other member of the squash family - not a secret nutrient you need. The claim goes "this type of nutrient plays a significant role in the curing and regeneration of diseased cells in the body." Advertising Standards please. As for removal of pesticides, there has never been any test of this, and the motor warranty duration is disappointing.

The Twin Health is physically bigger in every way than the Greenpower Hippocrates, just look at how much bigger it's gears are over the Hippocrates! ).

The gears of the Angel are bigger still, see below.

But this immensity makes a juicer difficult to handle, assemble & clean, and yet it doesn't yield a greater volume of juice. People truly requiring magnetic twin gear produced juice for healing are often week especially in their hands and wrists. Additionally, the gear teeth of the solid steel gears of Angel & Twin Health are totally blunt, compared with the slightly cusped teeth on the Greenpower machine, so produce is made even harder to feed in. A further point about the Greenpower is that it has a significantly wider chute for feeding produce in - it has a square cross section - and at its widest point is 8mm wider than the chute of the Twin Health - making it noticeably faster and easier to feed in produce.

The Twin health gears carry a lifetime warranty (being 100% stainless steel, this is an easy warrantee to uphold). The stainless-on-stainless implementation is not seen as a good idea as it is the stainless-on-nylon implementation of the Hippocrates Juicer that ensures the stainless steel parts never come into contact and pass metal shavings into the juice. The Twin Health marketing material points out that nylon in the gears is less durable and can crack (entirely true should they be abused - with the Twin Health abuse would simply cause some other part to break instead). However, the Twin Health has a sentence in the instruction manual warning of "unspecified dangers" if the machine is run without putting in any produce to act as an 'insulator' between the gears - can they abrase?

The larger gears, and therefore larger juicing chamber of the Twin Health and Angel is highly undesirable for juicing in small batches, as juicing chambers must fill up before any juice is produced. With juicing there is an "initial loss" that is rarely discussed - produce lost inside the machine - without being output as juice or fibre. The initial loss is higher on the these large machines for all produce - almost twice as high for wheatgrass and over 7 times higher for sprouting broccoli.

About juice yield charts used in publicity material.

These tables are usually supplied without reference to the source - something we are particularly wary of. Additionally, the volume of produce used can give varying results. Usually, 1 kilo of a single type of produce is used, but may not accurately present how a mixed juice will work for you, and of course it is ignorant towards initial produce lost - do they clean the juicer between successive tests? Juicing large volumes of produce may give accurate results - but it glosses over the issue of initial produce loss - and that is not one of the Twin Health machine's stronger points.

Ultimately, all yield comparison charts show the juicer in question favourably, and we have ceased to display them in order not to mislead you, the customer. If you go home with the machine and do the test - you'll get different results. So please don't buy a juicer on the basis of a yield chart.

About manual juicers and citrus juicers

We haven't covered citrus juicers as we've always felt they are rather limiting, and easily available offline. Additionally, most people can squeeze a lemon easier than a carrot or a clutch full of grass! Only people juicing high volumes of citrus fruit need a citrus juicer - other wise you can just peel the fruit and get a better result in a gear juicer.

Manual juicers are often used solely as wheatgrass juicers because peoples existing electric juicer doesn't handle wheatgrass. Globally you'll see that manual juicers are marketed as either wheatgrass juicers or perhaps as being capable of handling leafy greens too - rarely are they marketed as being suitable for all types of produce.

The EasyHealth manual juicer weighs in at only 1 kilo making this a good travel juicer, or an inexpensive means of getting into juicing wheatgrass. Please note that it is totally ineffective with the broad range of produce most of us expect a juicer to handle. For this you will require a Go-Juice Manual Juicer, which works as effectively as an Oscar, so long as you are willing to wind the handle! There are more expensive stainless steel manual juices available, but considering the limitations there is little worth in the additional outlay when you could be saving up for an electric single gear.

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