Juicer Vs Blender

Which is Healthiest?

We often get customers contacting us because they are confused by whether they have read about the advantages of blending versus juicing. We also find that people who have read some of the things said by Vitamix about their blenders get confused by the concept of ‘Total Juice’ and here we want to dispel the myth that any blender is either similar to or better than any juicer. They are completely different machines with different functions and both have their own place in a healthy kitchen.

A lot of confusion has arisen about the different nutritional aspects of juicing vs blending. Blender manufacturers like Vitamix have waged a campaign of negative PR against juicing with a raft of dubious claims about blended ‘juices’ made in a Vitamix blender. In the past they’ve attacked juicing as wasteful and less healthy than using a blender and they’ve tried to make the choice for consumers into an either/or option. Similarly, the multimillion commercial venture known as the Nutribullet blender has built its reputation by going after the juicer market, claiming that it is a ‘nutrient extractor’. If you’ve seen the hype for this on the shopping channels or websites you could be forgiven for agreeing with us that this cheap chinese blender seems to be sold primarily on the basis of ‘nutribullshit’.

The argument that a blended drink is better than extracted juice largely rests on the claim that you waste a lot of goodness when you are juicing by discarding pulp, whereas you include everything in the drink when blending. This is only half true because with an efficient juicer you are mainly wasting the fibre element of the ingredients. Humans can’t digest insoluble fibre anyway, although it does provide a useful function as an intestinal broom in the healthy digestive system. If you already get enough fibre in your diet generally, what is the big advantage to adding more in the form of blended vegetable drinks? The whole point of removing the fibre when juicing is so that you can consume the liquid nutritional contents of much more fruit and vegetables and get a super-dose of phytonutrients. To understand this point more fully we need to look at  what is potentially misleading in the claims made by Vitamix.