Juicing Or Blending: Which One Is Better?

People often confuse terms blending and juicing. Some call everything a smoothie, and others call all the machines juicers. Essentially, what's important to know is that juice is made in a machine called juicer, that extracts the juice and discards the pulp. Blenders repeatedly chop plants many times into small pieces and the final product is not a clear juice, but something like a mush. Things are never fully black and white, so it can't be said which option is better. It all depends on your needs at the moment.

Best juicers are those working on slower speeds. One of the benefits of having a juicer is that you can fit more plants, or get more produce in you. For instance, some juicers can fit 1 pound of spinach or arugula inside. This way you can get a lot more nutrients, except the fiber. Another benefit of juicers is that they're almost quiet. The cons are lack of fibers, time required to do all the work before getting the juice, and a lot of cleaning after.

First and the most obvious con of a blender is noise. Another one is that the plants have to be diluted, so we get less nutrition. One of the pros is that blenders are very fast and we can have product mush sooner than we would have in the juicer. Blenders are easier to clean, and of course — we get the fiber. If you don't dilute your smoothie with water, it's extremely healthy, perhaps even healthier that juices.

Because juicing removes fiber, it is great if your goal is fast digestion and feeding your cells extremely fast. Let's say that you want to workout, but you feel a little hungry, and your energy levels are low. This is where juicing machine comes handy, and in this situation it's better to juice than to blend. When blended, even though they're in the liquid form, plants still need an hour to digest because of all the fiber. One more example when juicing is better than blending: let's say you did a hard workout and you need to repair your muscles fast, but you are not hungry to eat a real meal yet. Drink your no-pulp juice and all the goodies coming from fruit and veggies will be in your blood cells in not more than 15 minutes.

READ Fruit Juices and Smoothies Doing More Harm than Good

When you blend, you have to add water or some other liquid, so you're basically diluting the nutrients. When you juice, you have high level of macro-nutrients, but you also voluntarily discard some of them. Regarding the quality of the final product, it is probably similar. The best thing to do is to juice, blend and eat the whole plants interchangeably.

It really doesn't matter which option you'll pick, just get those nutrients in. Any way where you can include more fresh fruit and vegetables in you diet, whether they're juiced or blended, or chewed in you mouth is far better than eating processed food, and that's the most important message to spread about this topic.