What Is A Masticating Juicer & How Are They Really Better?
Juicing is an excellent source of nourishment. When correctly handled, juicing can be a diet supplement. Using a juicer provides a broad array of benefits for your health; the resulting juice is an efficient way to absorb the nutrients from fruits and vegetables into your body’s systems. These nutrients boost the immune system as well as satisfy vitamin and mineral needs. Choosing a juicer can be a complicated prospect, however. Of the varieties available, juicers that chew and grind prove superior to centrifugal juicers in every area except for price. While manual citrus juicers will suit a casual juicer who only wants lemonade or orange juice on occasion, a masticating juicer serves a variety of purposes.
What are Masticating Juicers?
To masticate is to chew, and masticating juicers do a good job of chewing up fruit and vegetable matter to press out the juices. As juicing is growing ever more popular as a lifestyle choice, people are seeking the most effective juicers. Experts and enthusiasts agree that, apart from their expense, masticating juicers reign supreme. This best juicer produces little waste, gets the most bang for the buck out of fruit and vegetables by forcing out as much juice as possible, is quiet, and can handle a wide variety of food types.
How Do Masticating Juicers Work?
When you make a decision among the juicer types, it helps to know how juicers work. Masticating juicers use gears or augers to grind food. While centrifugal juicers utilize a blade and dice and slice food, essentially like a blender, masticating juicers use either one or a pair of gears. Single-gear juicers grind food against hard surfaces, while double-gear juicers grind food between them. In this way, they are much like meat grinders. You simply feed the food into the top; the juicer grinds away and juice passes through a screen and out, while the minimal waste produced takes a different route out.
Advantages of Chewing Juicers
These juicers offer several advantages when compared to their main competitor, centrifugal juicers. First of all, they provide a high yield. Second, the quality of that yield is high; the juice that is produced has little foam, is fresh and thick, and can endure for up to three days in the refrigerator. This type of juicer works with hard materials and soft alike, from leafy greens to grapes to wheat germ. The slow motions of the grinder produce little heat, preserving enzymes that may be destroyed in faster machines that run hotter. Masticating juicers also tend to be multifunctional; you can use them as food grinders or processors.
Myth: The Slower the Juicer, the Better
The kernel of truth in this myth is that masticating juicers are slower, and these juicers are superior to other juicers. But it is not the speed that matters. It is the manner of juicing action. Chewing and grinding works slower than the chopping motion of a blender-style juicer, but the speed does not determine the quality or quantity of the juice yield.The determining factors that add up to quality and quantity are the degree that the juicing process breaks down the ingredients and the force used in separating the pulp from the juice. Chewing and grinding juicers can juice wheatgrass and greens on top of easier ingredients because the fine leaves pass through smaller gaps in between the gears that do the juicing. Doing this without heat-creating friction or speed means that this type of juicer must operate slowly. Speed is more a limitation of design rather than a key feature.
Problems with Alternative Juicers
Alternative juicers have a tendency to disgorge sections of wet pulp out into the garbage. This is problematic because wet pulp hasn’t had all the juice extracted from it. This is the sign of an inefficient juicer. There is also heated debate about the temperature increase created by a centrifugal juicer’s speed. Hotter juice can neutralize enzymes and minerals found in the juiced fruits and vegetables. Another problem with the speed of centrifugal juicers is a tendency to clog at higher speeds. The pulping mechanism can have a hard time moving pulp from the chute into the container. Because more pulp is produced than with its chewing competitor, this can be extremely problematic.
What Is a Cold Press Juicer?
A juicer is a machine used in the extraction of juice from fruits and vegetables. The process followed to extract these juices is called juicing. During the process, the juicer squeezes out the liquid from the vegetables and the fruits. There are several types of juicers;
Cold Press Juicers
Masticating juicer is another term referring to cold presser juicer. The juicer is slower than centrifugal juicer because it spends a lot of time extracting vitamins, powerful enzymes, fiber, and also tracing minerals from the fruits and vegetables. The cold-press juicer will allow you to get all the nutrients from the fruits. The speed is perfect because it is always between 80 to 100 RPM, something that is enough to extract the juices from vegetables and fruits.
Benefits of Using a Cold Press Juicer
- A cold press juicer is slow but very useful for the production of healthier drinks compared to the others.
- The slow extraction process does not allow the juice to heat up. This process is the reason why the enzymes, minerals and other important nutrition are left in the mixture.
- When using a press juicer, the blades tend to run slower than others. The slow rotation will reduce wear and tear, making the cold press type of juicer to last longer than the others.
Centrifugal Juice Extractors
The centrifugal juicers are the most common juicers that uses metal blades which spins against filters that can separate the juice from the vegetables or fruits through centrifugal forces. The juice contains different types of containers that hold the juice and pulp on separate sides. The juicer has a very fast metal spinning blade which generates heat that later destroys the enzymes and other minerals coming from the juicer. The heat will also contribute to the oxidizing of the nutrients and thus making it less nutritious. That is why the cold press juicer is the best when it comes to the extraction of the minerals.
Benefits of Using Centrifugal Juice Extractors
- One of the benefits is that the blade rotates much faster than other knives and thus making it possible to complete the entire juicing process quickly and appropriately.
- The process is time-saving and very useful for those in a hurry. A slow juicer might not be helpful to people who are in a hurry.
- The cleaning process of the juicer is much easier and faster. One can easily disassemble the blades and clean them properly. After cleaning, one can easily put the parts together without difficulty.
Food Waste Matters
A chopping juicer wastes much more food than its masticating cousins. It simply will not break down food thoroughly when the comparison is made. While its spinning blades bring juices out of a food, it lacks the chewing and grinding juicer’s squeezing action. Consumers tend to complain about the amount of food waste because it feels like pouring money straight into the juicer only to have large amounts of pulp produced with inferior amounts of lesser quality juice. To compare, a large amount of fruits and vegetables can be used to produce a single glass of juice in a juicer that chops up produce, while a similar amount in a grinding juicer can result in half again as much juice.
Preparation Times
The juicer that slices its produce, if used below its top speeds so it does not clog, does gain an edge in the matter of preparation times. An entire apple can be placed in the feeding tubes of some models of this type. There is little to no preparation time in juicing with a centrifugal juicer. The juicer that chews its produce, on the other hand. clogs with chunks that are too large; in fact, gears can break if you try to save time with larger chunks of fruit or vegetable. Before beginning to juice with this type of model, you must cut your food first, aiming for small chunks.
Degree of Noise
Speed is noisy. Centrifugal juicers are fast and loud because of that speed of blade rotation. The movement and motor create a great deal of noise. The slower grinding motions of gears in the chewing and grinding juicer’s system tend to be much quieter. Manual citrus juicers are of course the quietest, but citrus juicers that work by shredding the fruit’s flesh tend to be a little noisy as well.
Quality Versus Speed
High speed tends to be preferred in this era of high-speed internet and microwaves. You likely want your food processing to be completed as efficiently as possible. For effectiveness, however, you are going to have to sacrifice a little speed. Faster is not always better when it comes to attaining the juices of fruits and vegetables. Apples, carrots, and celery provide more juice in a juicer that grinds your food because it works so hard to break down these foods. At times, it is simply important to take the time necessary to do things the correct way.
Other Uses of Grinding Juicers
You can make a variety of things with this type of juicer, ranging from soup stock to nut butters and milk. For the former, pass such vegetables as carrots, celery, and onions through the juicer, combining the pulp with seasonings and water in a saucepan with a medium heat setting. Try making ice cream or sangria, or use a juicer to hide veggies in your child’s food when you have a picky eater on your hands. Add some of the pulp to hamburger patties or meatballs while you enjoy the juice, or mix in some juice with spaghetti sauce for extra nutrition.
Shelf Life of Juices
Juices from a chewing, grinding juicer will last two to three days in the fridge, although freshest is always best. Oxidation is an important consideration when examining types of juicers. Oxidation occurs even when you take a knife to your produce; it simply is a byproduct of exposing the produce to air. It happens whenever the cell wall breaks, exposing the insides to air. Centrifugal options oxidize more quickly because of their high-speed blades spinning. Masticated juicers have a lower degree of oxidation, hence the longer shelf life when properly refrigerated.
Juice Quality
Juicers that chew have a mechanism more like your mouth; foods are pressed and squeezed until they have dry pulp, having forced out all the juice. This produces a high-quality juice with little foam, that separates slowly, and has a high yield. Other juicers produce a liquid that has a lot of foam, separates quickly, and spoils more quickly.A juicer that grinds your food for you may have a higher price tag, but that goes along with getting a higher quality product that produces juice of a better quality and more of it. Your investment also means that you waste less food as you go, saving money over time. Your juicer will help you with various health and diet concerns. It offers produce with a different texture if you find yourself squirming at the thought of eating leafy greens or various fruits. Picky eaters thrive when they get to drink their nutrients instead of deal with the various textures and tastes. Masticating juicers chew up food slowly, safely, without enzyme-destructive heat, and with great value in the results.
In conclusion, learning the pros and cons of how juicers work is going to add many benefits to the juice-making process. Having understood the services related to these types of juicers, you will only go to the nearest juicer vendor for the one that fits your needs. Of course, you will be attracted by the cold press that produces a healthier juicer than the centrifugal one.