The Honest Guide to Choosing a Juicer

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:

�� The strainers are HUGE and a pain to clean

�� The cutting blades are tricky to clean and some are particularly dangerous to handle

�� The process incorporates mass oxidization and therefore a 'dying' and brown juice

�� There is a lot of unpleasant froth

�� Leafy green vegetables are impossible, so no herbs and no wheatgrass

�� Pulp builds up in the strainer and efficiency falls rapidly

�� The centrifugal force pushes a lot of pulp through the strainer, resulting in a lot of pulp in the juice

�� These juicers can seriously damage your hearing, and won't be popular in a terraced house or flat, or if anyone is still in bed

Ultimately, the technology inside a centrifugal juicer is not unlike that of a tree cutter. They're spinning at up to10000rpm. 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fact, if everyone who bought a juicer used their machine every day we think nearly every machine on the market would be withdrawn because with daily usage virtually all machines would fail within their first year, let alone within warranty. This guide has been written as a result of the cumulative experience of several people, spanning over 4 years and many many juices. In this guide you will:

�� discover clearly the best type of juicer for you

�� pinpoint the best machine in each category

�� be saved from the confusion of conflicting promotional material

�� benefit from unique comparison charts and photos

�� gain links to background information and in dependant reviews

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 clog seven 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...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.

�� Leafy veg is still a NO - only now it gets caught in the teeth!

�� If you juice slowly (or the teeth are clogged with plant fibers) you get warm foamy juice as the cutter is spinning rapidly against the produce that hasn't yet cleared the juicing chamber. 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. To read more about why the Champion should be nominated for retirement, click here. Now lets take a jump into the 1990's. Suddenly an innovation occurred in juicing..

Low speed, gear juicersGear juicers operate anywhere between 70 and 120 r/min. Thus, in a gear juicer:

�� Produce is crushed - No cutting or spinning

�� Enzymes are preserved

�� AMAZING green juices become possible

�� Your juice is cold, as it should be

�� You lift a glass of living juice every time

�� They are the easiest of all juicers to clean (don't let anyone lie to you and claim that any juicer mentioned previously in this guide is easy to clean they're not).

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

�� Poor juice yield

�� A lot of foam 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 juicers, weare 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 screen which allows juice through and pulp to be ejected at the tip. This process is very similar to the worm gear of a meat grinder. The auger is divided into a two phase process of first crushing and then wringing-out the produce against the wall of a conical filter 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. In the UK the original Oscar 502 has just been made available again as the 'Oscar Living Juicer', a machine you'll see in juice bars like Planet Organic. There are a hoard of other single gear juicers available now, including the L'E quip Visor, Solo Star and Live Please take note that despite superiority claims of the enzyme content produced by different gears juicers, there is NO evidence or test ever been done to identify if one machine is more successful than another in this area. It seems that all promotional material for this type of juicer, including unedited web copy, claims superiority. We would advise not basing your purchase around such statements. Additionally there is no evidence that slower is better (relative to this category, i.e. 70rpm is not better than 120rpm). TRUE, slow speed has immense benefits over thousands of revs per minute, but the small differences in speed between juicers in this category are not cause for you to choose the slowest.

Single gear juicing was invented at the beginning of the nineties with the introduction of the Oscar 502, designed and Manufactured by a Korean company named Dong Ah which was founded by two business partners in 1988. One of the two businessmen betrayed the other, set up a nearby manufacturing facility, started a new company called Dong A Oscar (cheeky, hey?) and within a short time had produced the Matstone juicer - a copy of the Oscar design. Outside of Korea the machine was branded the Samson, and globally, Samson agents touted their machine as the new model Oscar. They cut a number of corners to make their Matstone juicers more affordable and pushed heavily with their marketing. In one country, an ex-employee of the Oscar distributor stole $75,000 and the customer database before setting himself up as the Samson distributor. In the UK, where there was no resident Oscar distributorship, the Oscar was long forgotten, many people believing to today that their Samson/Matstone machine is the 'new' Oscar. The story nearly finished with Dong A Oscar falling to bankruptcy on 26th September 2005.Enzyme juicers. These have not proved as efficient or reliable as the Oscar brand. We recommend looking closely at warranty durations, as the Oscar Living Juicer offers 12 years, and only one other machine beats that... Dual stage single auger juicers The latest innovation in single gear juicers is a 3 phase extraction auger working inside a dual stage juicing screen. Upon the initial crushing of the produce, any released juice is directed through the first stage of the juicing screen into the juice collecting bowl. The crushed produce minus much of its juice then continues its way through the machine, where there is a finer holed screen to obtain not only a higher yield, but a near pulp free juice. The picture below compares a dual stage juicing screen (top) with a single stage juicing screen (bottom). Clicking on the picture will show alarger picture. This process is claimed to obtain up to 20% more juice than ordinary single gear juicers and mostly yields like a twin gear machine. A test with carrots yielded 26% more juice! With other single auger juicers, the juice is only produced in the second stage, requiring larger holes in the juicing screen. Consequently a sieve is provided with other single gear juicers covering the juice collecting bowl to catch pulp. As juice is allowed to exit at the first stage this type of juicer doesn't suffer from a number of problems that affect virtually all other juicers:

�� leaks, especially into the locking clip and motor housing (this causes long term problems with the gearbox as fruit acids reach the lubricating grease within the gearbox causing extra noise and eventually a breakage.... additionally locking clips / face plates of juicers are tricky to clean and add to

your time).

�� poor performance with soft fruits (soft fruits hold more juice extractable at the first stage. When trying to pass this juice onto the second stage of ordinary single gear juicers, typically nothing happens at all and produce remains stationary in the juicing drum with the juice and all the auger does is stir it).There are only two dual stage single gear juicers available on the market, the Solo Star II and the Oscar 900 VitalMax. You'll note that both brands have been worn on earlier models. We prefer the Oscar VitalMax for a number reasons, including a lighter/sleeker design, as well as being easier to use and clean. Also, both stages of the Oscar juicing screen are stainless steel where as the Solo Star II has a plastic first stage. Lastly, the Oscar VitalMax is the only juicer to hold a 20 year motor warranty. Now that is a brave warranty to implement. Oscar assure us that their machine has been tested beyond 10,000 hours of use. They insist we juice daily, and insist that they use the finest motor and components in the world. Perhaps some tell-tale signs of this quality reside in this machines performance, and quietness, as the VitalMax is most definitely the quietest machine we've used. Since Oscar have been in business since 1988 it is safe to trust their warranty offering too. Single gear juicer with NO juicing screen. The Oscar VitalMax is absolutely the most reliable, best performing, quickest to clean, easiest to assemble and use appliance of it's type AND it has the least number of parts - just 4 plus the hopper! There is one single product in this category, the Live Enzyme juicer (which is an electric version of the inexpensive manual juicer known 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 he juice, but with a sieve resting on the juice jug you have to empty it frequently and waste a lot of 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 both, at some point you may wish to change the parts to juice the next item in your recipe. Messyagain.

Below is a chart of the power (watts) of the 5 most popular single gear juicers. This is an important comparison, because each one of these juicers has a 38mm feeding chute, and thus has the same task to endure. Ultimately, the higher the power, the lower the motor wear of a single juicing task. The power of a machine is exhibited in the juicing performance too, but if you compare this with the warranty chart above you can see exactly what you are getting. People have always thought of the higher price tag equipment as too expensive... but what they don't realize... how many cars do you want to buy in the next 10 years? How many vacuum cleaners do you want to own? How many times do you want to buy a stereo? Or do you want to buy something and be partially dissatisfied with it because every time you use it, it breaks on you? Or do you want to do it once and do it right? After all, you know, you get what you paid for in the sense, not that you pay less money because in the long run you can pay more money. One of the things I've always thought is that I hate buying junk. Because I end up buying it again. How many of you have bought many of the same product because you never bought a good one?

The thing about the Oscar is - it still exists, not just as a legend, but people out there still own their Oscar 502 and it's seen them through a decade. Even Dr Gillian McKeith is pictured using an Oscar in her books - she's owned that juicer forever. The Oscar is the juicer of choice of The Juice Master, Rose Elliot, and many many more - people who only want to buy once and get it right so they maintain their image when recommending theproduct to others. Twin gear juicers .So why twin gear? Well, twin, inward rotating gears have traditionally allowed for a greater juice yield. However, 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 holedscreen for fruits. When ever a web site tells you that the gears of their juicer operate closer than anyone else's, please be aware that they all operate at this distance, they all give the same figures and make the same 'uniqueness' claim.

Twin Gear juicing was invented by the designer of the current Green Star Juicer (Mr Jong G. Kim of Green Power), which was originally named the Green Life. Massive competition in Korea saw most juicer manufacturers go out of business, including Mr Kim. As Green Power had recently entered the international market, its parts suppliers joined forces to recover the debts of their customer. Simply, they sold off he moulds to Tribest (an American distributor) who have continued to market the machine despite there being no development or after service at source - in Korea. Mr Kim however continued improving upon his design over dozens of models. This tweaking has resulted in their latest offering (some 7 years newer than the Green Star). Under the banner of multiple names, the GPT-1303 is either a Green Power, Kempo or a Hippocrates juicer (slight variations on model number occur for each brand name). All juicers are identical, except that the Green Power is supplied with a video, and the Hippocrates is supplied with the video and with a copy of the Hippocrates Health Programme, written by Brian R. Clement. The latest model Green Power Hippocrates juicer 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 the 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 Hippocrates has an unrivalled magnetic capability, more details of which are below. Excellent global marketing 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 Hippocrates. Initially concerned that the Hippocrates 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 the Oscar VitalMax! 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 the Oscar VitalMax juicer offers 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 the 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 length of time. An independent test showed 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 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 aside is their 100% stainless steel gears, and auto-reverse function. Please note that neither machine uses magnets in its twin gears and thus ultimately functions like an Oscar VitalMax only with more  cumbers ome parts and more expense to you, the buyer. Both the Twin Health and Angel juicers use an embedded 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.

The Angel has a bit of jaded history, an original inspirer in the juicing market the manufacturer made many mistakes that saw their product vanish from the marketplace until recent re-introduction. The Twin Health is in fact related to the Angel, because the manufacturer took on a lot of Angels research team when Angel had financial troubles. The Twin Health is essentially a plastic re-modeling of an early model Angel no longer available. The purpose of creating a 100% stainless steel machine (not just the gear, but the entire machine) is to create the highest possible level of sanitation. The Twin Health fails miserably on this note with its poorly thought out moldings. If the original Angel were to be available, we would give this a shining report. The machine would also have a price tag of around £1000. The current Angel is a more viable selling option for the manufacturer, with multiple painted and plated parts that eventually cause 'silver' shiny flakes to come off. 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, it's gear teeth are totally blunt, compared with the slightly cusped teeth on the Greenpower Hippocrates, so produce is made even harder to feed in. Also, the Hippocrates 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.