Can You Juice With a Blender?

Proponents of juicing may tell you that you can't juice with a blender. The truth is you can, though you'll need the help of a strainer and certain items, such as carrots, are more difficult to work with in a blender.

Health Benefits of Juicing

A glass of homemade juice is a healthful addition to your diet. When you make your own juice, you're not only avoiding the added sugars, flavors and artificial ingredients many store-bought juices contain, you're retaining the pulp and fiber that even 100 percent juices eliminate. Plus, you're able to come up with your own original fruit and vegetable blends to meet your personal tastes and health needs.

Some feel juicing is imperative to a healthy lifestyle because it speeds the absorption of certain nutrients. While it does speed absorption, the benefits are debatable.There's a downside. Along with speedily absorbed nutrients, the sugars are rapidly absorbed as well can adversely affect blood sugar levels.

Eating whole fruits and vegetables deliver the same nutrients to your body. With juicing, however, you're likely to consume greater quantities of fruits and vegetables than if you were eating them raw. Also, you may find that you enjoy certain, unexpected, fruits and vegetables, such as parsnips, in a juice when you don't enjoy them in whole form. A balanced approach would be to incorporate juices in with your diet, but still enjoy raw, whole fruits and vegetables as well.

Juicing in a Blender

Juicing in a blender takes a more work than with a juicer. When prepping your produce, cut small chunks and avoid seeds, stems and other parts that you don't want to ingest. Also, experiment to see with which fruits and vegetables your blender can work. Harder, denser items like carrots may not break down fully in your blender. Some items, like bananas, don't release much juice no matter how much you blend them (though they will break down and become drinkable).

After blending the ingredients, pour the juice through a strainer to remove unblended pieces as needed.

Juice purists will debate the efficacy of juicing in a blender. Unlike a juicer, a blender merely chops the ingredients finer and finer until they're liquified. The end result will be thicker than if it were produced in a juicer.

Advantages of a Juicer

A juicer takes things one step further than a blender. Rather than just breaking down the produce, a juicer separates the juice from the fiber. This is what juicing purists believe speeds up the absorption of nutrients.

What's more, a juicer minimizes the amount of work. There's no need for prepping items and removing seeds or peels. A juicer does the work.