Juice Feasting™ | The Preparation Course
The Juice Feasting Kitchen
Q: What is the Best Juicer?
A: The one that is used!
Whatever you make juice with is your most important appliance on a Juice Feast. To get the superabundance of benefits from Juice Feasting, we are extracting vibrant, living juices from 12-15 pounds (!) of produce each day.
Some produce, such as leafy greens, has historically been difficult to juice, because each cell wall must be broken open to extract the juice. Some juicers do not have this capacity, such as centrifugal juicers like the Breville and Juiceman, or old-school juicers like the Champion. (These are still good little juicers for fruits and root crops, however. The best orange juice we have ever had comes out of our Breville Juice Fountain.)
To be clear, you can use either a blender or a juicer to make juice on a Feast, or a combination of the two. Historically, Katrina and I have used both a juicer and a blender to make juices, and we will cover in detail how each appliance can be used to make great tasting, vibrant juice.
What do we want in a juicer? Mainly:
+ Excellent extraction of juice from a full dynamic range of produce types
+ Efficiency and ease of use and cleaning
+ Enzyme Retention that is sufficient for healing and health.
+ Affordability
+ Durability
We want this Juice Feast to be effective, and yet as efficient as possible for you.
Your easiest way to make juice on a Juice Feast is with a Vitamix, straining the juice from the pulp with a nut mylk bag, so let’s start there. You can make all of your juice for the day in about an hour first thing in the morning with a Vitamix, and clean-up takes seconds. A high-speed blender is the most used item in our kitchen, and the best appliance you will ever own, while Juice Feasting and post-Juice Feast having the Four Means to Get Your Greens as the foundation for your diet.
Let’s look now at the Vitamix.
Vitamix 5200 or the Vita-Prep 3: Your All-Around Juicer/Food Prep Machine!
The Vitamix will be your most useful and used live foods kitchen appliance, without question. It is the appliance we RECOMMEND MOST FOR JUICE FEASTING AND BEYOND.
We know, it is just a blender, right? It makes smoothies, soups, salad dressings, sorbet, pâtés, and, most important in Juice Feasting, your green vegetable juices for straining through a nut mylk bag (see below).
Most of us do not have much time to make juices. We have kids or spouses to get ready for the day, and our life’s work to get on with. With a Vitamix, you can make every juice on the Feast fast: in about 45 minutes for a full gallon of fresh juice, tailored to YOU.
You may have a 1970s Osterizer Blender or 1990s Kitchen Aid blender… If you do, please trade that blender in for a Vitamix. You’ll never look back. Those honorable blenders from yesteryear with weak motors are not going to break open the cell walls of your greens enough to be able to expose the juice inside.
After the Feast, you will want your high speed blender to do the Four Means to Get Your Greens, which you can read more about on Day 83 of The 92-Day Juice Feasting Program.
Get this blender even if you have to sell your oven and microwave and coffeemaker to get it.
In fact, ESPECIALLY if you have a microwave and coffeemaker. :)
These bags are for use in straining juices (mainly Green Vegetable Juices) made in the blender. Also useful for making nut and seed mylks when not Juice Feasting.
When you order these, order 2-4 NUT MYLK BAGS. The reason is that these are essential for making Juices on your Juice Feast, and for making delicious nut and seed mylks beyond the Juice Feast. Make sure that you have enough of these, they will last you for a decade or more.
Also: clean your nut mylk bags in 3 percent hydrogen peroxide every week. The best way to do this is put a cup of hydrogen peroxide in a glass, and submerse your nut mylk bag in it with a spoon on top to hold it down. Just leave it like this while you are away at work, and rinse when you get home! Here are my instructions:
David Rainoshek, Founder of JuiceFeasting.com explains the importance of keeping your Nut Mylk Bags sparkling clean during and beyond a Juice Feast for your health.
Note: An old t-shirt, a pillow case, or a lady’s knee-high nylon stocking can serve the same function for Juicing until your Nut Mylk Bags arrive. These stop-gap options work temporarily, but they don’t clean up as well, and are not as sturdy as Ellie’s Pro Quality Nut Mylk Bags. We are still using ours from the 2008 Global Juice Feast.
JUICERS: General Info
So you can see we are recommending the Vitamix and Nut Mylk Bags for making Juices, for reasons of efficiency, and the fact that your Vitamix is going to make the foods (Green soups, superfood smoothies, sorbets, juices, nut and seed mylks) that will keep you well AFTER the Juice Feast, for many decades to come.
That being said, I have used many juicers in the last 25 years, including all of those pictured above. These appliances hold stories, and - like you - I could tell stories about all my juicers and what they meant to me. “In My Life” by The Beatles could be recast:
“There are Juicers I remember, all my life, though some have changed… some forever not for better, some are gone, and some remain… all these Juicers had their moments, in my life, I’ve loved them all…”
But in the interest of time, let’s talk about which juicers work best for Juice Feasting, if you are going that route over the Vitamix, or as a second juicing machine in your kitchen.
The press-style juicers: the Samson GB-9001, the Green Star 3000, and the Angel Juicer are the ones that derive the best juice for our purposes here. All of these press the juice, thus retaining the enzymes and without adding bubbly oxygen to the juice which causes it to go south faster. They are quiet and will last for years. On the price/ease of cleaning side, the Samson wins. I (David) have used that juicer for all three of my extended Juice Feasts, and most of my students who have gone the juicer route over the Vitamix route have purchased that model. My Samson is 17 years old and has been put through its paces, so until that juicer gives way, The Rainosheks will continue to use it, as there is nothing wrong whatsoever with it.
I also mention the Green Star and Angel Juicer for two reasons: they extract about 10 percent more juice from the produce than the Samson, and they juice wheatgrass better. That being said, these juicers are so time-consuming to use, I tell my students:
”You have to name each leaf one-by one as you put them through these press-style machines.”
So I don’t use ‘em much anymore, despite how beautiful they are.
This Juice Extractors: Enzyme Retention Study from Hallelujah Acres USA is to show you the good enzyme retention rate of a Green Star (Green Power) juicer. I still suggest going with a high speed blender and a nut mylk bag, for ease of use, unless you are feeling particularly inclined by your health challenges to take 3 times the amount of time to make your juices in order to get every last bit of nutrition out of your produce. That is exactly what I (David) did on my first Juice Feast, but I have gone the high-speed blender route ever since. Most of my students do, as well, and experience tremendous healing drinking juices made with the blender and straining bag.
To put a price difference on what you will save buying the Green Star or Angel Juicer for a 92 Day Program, at 10 percent better extraction, you will get another 9 days worth of juice out of the Green Star over the Samson. At $20/day average for produce, that is $20 x 9 = $180 worth of produce you will not have to buy if you go with the Green Star. But it will take you FAR longer to juice and clean! Twice as long, adding approximately 90 hours to your juicing time over the course of a 92-Day Juice Feast. And time is money, too. Either way, you will have one of the best juicing machines any person on earth has ever had access to. We are very fortunate.
For us, The Vitamix wins, hands down.
Quart-Sized Ball Mason Jars (Wide Mouth)
These Jars are the Official Jars of Juice Feasting, since 2004.
When Juice Feasting, Quart-sized, wide-mouth Ball Mason Jars are excellent for measuring the amount of juice you are drinking, and for taking juice on the go without concern for spillage.
Since they are made out of glass, you will not find the taste and health quality of your juices affected by storage in plastic.
Ball Mason jars store easily in a cooler, which you may want to use if your juices are going to be a while between juicing and a refrigerator at work. They are also great for mixing in any supportive elements of the fast, such as Green Superfood Powder Concentrates, Blue Green Algae, hemp oil, MSM, and so on. The lids seal up tight, so that you won’t find your juices spilling all over the place when you take them with you.
When you pick these up at the grocery store or order them online, make sure you get a set of wide mouthed Ball Mason Jars, so that you can fit your hand inside to get them clean. We also suggest that you purchase a Case of 12, so that you can always have enough to carry your juice, some are in the sink or dishwasher, and if a few get broken, no big deal. A case should cost around $12-20, and these are great for taking your smoothies, etc. on the go with you after the Juice Feast.
Finally, if you have a Food Saver device, there is an attachment that will allow you to vacuum seal these jars completely. If you want to do that, great. It will remove more of the oxygen and keep your juices more vibrant.
This little gem will make life a lot easier in the mornings if you are using more than just a few apples. And by the way, when you are juicing apples, you do not need to remove the seeds, so use those cores!
One of our favorite apple recipes is Granny Smith Apple or Gala Apple with lemon and ginger. Try it one afternoon, you’re in for a treat!
This cleaver is for one use: opening young coconuts.
You will learn more about young coconuts and how to open them during the 92-Day Juice Feasting Program on Day 18: Coconuts. On the Juice Feast, you can drink coconut water in place of some fruit juice, if drinking these higher-glycemic juices is appropriate for you.
Most Asian Markets carry these cleavers. I have linked this one from Amazon, which is the one we use. Make sure you get a cleaver that has a full metal handle, not the wooden covered ones. The wood will eventually loosen and render the knife useless. Our Stainless cleaver has opened tens of thousands of coconuts, and is the same as it was nearly 2 decades ago.
Bamboo is a beautiful grass that grows to a harvestable height and width between 3 – 5 years. Some species grow up to 2 feet per day. After harvesting, bamboo does not require replanting, it has an extensive root system that continually sends up new shoots, naturally replenishing itself, making it one of the most renewable resources known.
It is an ecologically renewable alternative to hard woods, and is 16% harder than maple wood, and 1/3 lighter in weight than oak. It can also be as strong as steel.
Bamboo holds the promise of a sustainable, cost effective, and ecologically responsible alternative to the widespread clear-cutting of our old growth forests. Why not begin with a bamboo cutting board, who knows, maybe one day you’ll build a beautiful bamboo house! Because bamboo is so hard and dense, it absorbs very little, making it a very sanitary kitchen cutting board. We like to take our kitchen bamboo board with us when ever we travel. That way we can have a little counter top/table no mater where we are!
Season/seal your Bamboo Cutting Board with Organic Flax Seed Oil or Hemp Seed Oil.
