I bought a Lexen Healthy Juicer, Manual model fruit and wheatgrass juicer.
(Picture from Lexen's website)I assume most everyone's seen the infomercials for Jack Lalane's electric juice machines, among others, and I know that there's all these hyperbolic claims about the health benefits of juicing. I can't say that I don't have some expectations of getting some health benefits from juicing, but I will say up front here that I don't expect my health to suddenly improve incredibly because I began adding fresh juice from various fruits and veggies to my diet. What I am hoping for at least is to start getting my young sons to start getting some more varied dietary intake of the aforementioned produce.
How did I come to the idea of getting a juicer, and why did I pick this one?
Well, to begin with, I don't believe that my oldest son, Wally, in particular, is getting enough fruit and vegetables. He eats bananas, and the occasional apple, but that's about the extent of the fresh stuff, with juice boxes being where a majority of his fruit intake is taking place. With Wally's dietary restrictions from his gluten allergy, it's hard enough trying to find the kinds of foods that most kids want to eat for him. At one time, when Wally was under 2 he would enjoy about anything we put in front of him, but as his tastebuds got more picky, and we found out what foods he was allergic to, we suddenly found that we not only had a kid with a very limited diet, he also narrowed it down further himself with his own tastes. I don't own a cat, but from what I've been told it's only slightly easier giving a cat a pill than getting a 4 year old to eat something new.
One of Wally's doctors has said that we need to get him to start eating asparagus. Right. Ain't going to happen. So I'm thinking that perhaps we can juice the asparagus...and slip it into the boys' fruit juice. The problem here is that Wally knows what color apple juice is, so I'm not going to be able to truly pull one over on him. He's going to have to know that I'm adding stuff to his drink, but I'm hoping that if I let him help make the juice he'll be a bit more acceptable to the idea. Which brings us to one of the reasons I chose this particular juicer...
The Lexen manual juicer is an auger type macerating juicer. I didn't know exactly what that meant a few weeks ago, but basically there's two kinds of juicers available to home consumers (Ok, there's a third one, but I'm talking about the kinds that most people have heard of), masticating and centrifugal. The masticating ones crush and press the produce through a slow speed process. The centrifugal ones operate at high speed, shredding the produce into bits with a cutting action and then spinning the liquid out of the bits. I read many positive things about the high speed centrifugal machines, but a couple of the things I didn't care for included the size, noise, and cleanup. I also read that many of the Juiceman and Breville units that people can find easily online at Amazon, or even in Wal Mart, at a reasonable price, don't handle leafy greens and fibrous veggies as well as the masticating juicers. I'm not saying that these centrifugal units aren't good, but they don't excel at what I wanted to do with juicing in my home. So the type of juicer I wanted was established, but then there was the choice of electric or manual. Based on my budget, plus the fact that I wanted my kids to be involved, I went with a manual unit that was very inexpensive, and didn't have a big horsepower electric motor turning it that wouldn't know the difference between a carrot stick and a toddler's finger. I got the Lexen Healthy Juicer for well under $50 from Amazon . I will say that the Z-star manual juicer looks to be a very nice similar type product to the Lexen, but it's over twice the price. I don't know how much I'm going to be using this juicer, so I figured it might not be to good an idea to invest too dearly in it to begin with.
So, what do I think of my new juicer?
I'm really enjoying it so far! The day it arrived I was working late, but being the impatient type that I am, I unboxed that juicer right when I got home, tore through the veggie cooler in the fridge and, after a quick wash of the juicer, got to juicing. The ingredients for that first batch were carrots, pear and parsley. The end product wasn't exactly very enticing in appearance, and the parsley tended to be a bit more aromatic than the other ingredients, but it tasted wonderful just the same! I was also a bit surprised how much juice I had rendered from my produce, based on some of the less positive reviews I read on Amazon. This juicer works great, particularly on harder root veggies and the leafy greens, exactly as advertised. The pear really just got mushed up into pulp and I didn't get very good juice extraction from it until I followed it up with the parsley, but once those greens went down the auger and squeezed that pear pulp the juice really flowed. Last night I made juice from carrots, Gala apples, kale and parsley. I have to say that I like the parsley, and if any of the health benefits are to be believed, it's some pretty good stuff for you too. The kids really had a good time turning the handle, and we're talking a 3 year old and a 4 year old, so the turning effort isn't too bad at all. I also let them feed some of the ingredients into the hopper, making sure to only let them do this with the handle stopped. No fingers were lost, and all had a good time. Sadly neither of my boys would try the dark green juice I ended up with, which was a real shame because it was wonderful and I'm looking forward to making more when I get home tonight.
Finally, I think clean up on the Lexen Healthy Juicer couldn't be easier. While the short instruction manual that came with the unit doesn't go into great detail, there are a few really well done videos on YouTube that show assembly and operation of the Lexen unit. The pieces go together very easily, and when you're done they come apart just as easily. I toss all the washable pieces in a sink filled with warm soapy water, give it all a light scrubbing with a brush, and towel dry everything before placing it all in the box to be used again soon. There are no fine straining screens or blades that I have to watch out for, and I honestly feel all the parts would probably be fine on the top rack in the dishwasher, but cleaning it by hand really only takes about 5 minutes or less and isn't hard at all, so I do it that way.
This is my first foray into juicing at home, so I don't really have any idea how it compares to all the real expensive units out there, but I'm quite happy with this juicer. I don't recommend this unit for doing really high volume juicing, because it's just going to take forever. If' you're wanting something to make that incredibly tasty unfiltered apple juice you'd be better served using a purpose built press, one that allows you to make a bunch of juice really quickly from fruit like apples or grapes. Where I think this is going to be great is using a base juice like apple or grape juice from the store, and supplementing it with some really healthy veggie juice that my family doesn't normally eat.
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