To Juice or Not to Juice

Cold, fruity drinks have become a necessity since my move to Texas and for the first few months, I was subsisting on Slurpees, Slushes, and sno cones, which are ridiculously tasty, but not exactly the ideal health drink and certainly not on the The Evolution Diet: All-Natural and Allergy Free. Juice bar drinks are great for health, but dropping $5-7 a pop would add up, especially on a writer’s salary. That’s why I was excited to receive the Big Boss Juicer, which was going to let me fulfill my cold fruit drink fix while keeping it healthy and without spending an arm and a leg.

Right off the bat, I was impressed. The machine was easy to assemble and looked good. The ingredients were inexpensive ($10 for the fresh fruit that made 1.7 gallons of juice in the tasty watermelon cocktail) and the juicer worked flawlessly, separating the juice from the pulp (you can put the whole orange or lemon in the tube and the juicer and only juice comes out).

The process was a mess, however. It could be because I was a complete novice at juicing, but I was getting juice and fruit bits all over the place. The oranges created some serious vibration which the suction cups on the bottom of the machine could prevent from launching the juicer in the air. And the location of the spout from which the juice poured was not convenient for large amounts of juice (I put mine in an empty water gallon and had to collect the juice holding the gallon in one hand and putting the fruit in the juicer with the other).

Juicers also get rid of healthy, fibrous pulp intentionally. This is good because you can put an entire apple or orange into the juicer and extract just the juice from the peel and seeds, but it’s also bad for carrots and watermelon, the pulp of which is perfectly fine to eat. You can get around this by juicing the fruits with edible pulp first, then combine the extracted pulp back with the juice. I did this on the watermelon cocktail and it worked beautifully.

Despite the drawbacks, the concept of juicing is great for an inexpensive, healthy and tasty beverage.