Better than Juiceman by Far

We recently upgraded from our trusty Juiceman II to this Omega juicer, and we've been delighted by the switch. We've used Juiceman juicers for at least seven years, and were attracted to them via the Jay Kordich TV infomercials. (We've written a review on Juiceman as well).

In this review we'll discuss the merits of juicing, describe how we do juicing in our home, and lastly compare juicers on several key features.


Why Juice?

These machines essentially strip away all the fiber and other indigestible matter from a piece of fruit or vegetable, leaving only the juice for consumption. This remaining juice contains all the vital nutrients of that plant. As that hyper-salesman of Juicers, TV pitchman Jay Kordich says, "It's the juice of the fiber that feeds you." Juicing not only gives you the pure nutrients of the plant, but it also delivers them in amounts much greater than you'd normally consume. You'd have to eat a lot of carrots, for example, to get the equivalent nutrients to one glass of juice. If you chose to eat all those carrots raw you'd be overwhelming your digestive tract with excessive fiber.

The astute reader might respond, "Well, wait a minute. Isn't fiber something essential to your diet? So isn't it crazy to throw away all that dietary fiber? And furthermore, isn't it better to eat whole foods rather than turning them into yet another form of processed food?"

These are all good questions, and here's one Juicer's response. Fiber is indeed essential, and the average American diet contains too little of it. We make sure that we exceed the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of daily fiber, and we do this through servings of whole veggies and fruit with our meals as well as high fiber cereal. However, it's also true that the average American diet contains far too few of the vitamins and minerals essential to good health. An excellent feature article in the January 03 issue of Scientific American, on re-thinking the Food Pyramid (available online), provides yet more evidence for food supplementation.

Yet how does one increase one's levels of nutrients to RDA-level dosages without getting over-stuffed with vegetable and fruit fiber? There are two ways to do this: taking vitamins and juicing. The down side of vitamins is that they are very much "dead" food, manufactured from substances long since passed away and having spent long shelf lives. Vitamin C, for example, is in many instances made from coal tar (yuck). To make matters worse, the gelatin coatings on many vitamin capsules are made from animal cartilage, a substance vegetarians would like to avoid.

We aren't vegetarians, and we take lots of vitamins as well as use our juicer every day, so our belief is that there's no such thing as too much of this good stuff. Yes, one can over-dose on vitamin A, but when you juice you're getting it's precursor, beta-carotene, and you would have to guzzle gallons of carrot juice or other carotene-rich juices to get an overdose. (there's only one such case that I can find in the literature)

Juicing in our Home

Our daily morning ritual is to juice an apple, an orange and a grapefruit. We peel the latter two and cut each into approximately six pieces, then similarly cut up the apple after coring it (avoid juicing seeds as some may contain toxic substances such as cyanide). Each piece of fruit is then fed separately into the juicer, and then gently forced down the chute using the pestle that comes with the appliance. The juice is forced out into a waiting glass.

We then take this juice and put it in a large blender, and then add the following: a banana, two scoops of protein powder, two (ice cream size) scoops of nonfat plain organic yogurt; one glass of crushed ice; two handfuls of one's favorite nuts (we like pistachios and cashews); one handful of raisins; one handful of dried cranberries or some other dried fruit; one handful frozen blueberries; and three or more handfuls of selected other frozen fruits, such as mango chunks, pineapple bits, blackberries, cherries, peaches, etc. Then thoroughly blend this concoction, gradually increasing the blender speed, until you get a deep vortex in the blend. This "smoothie" will be enough for three people, and will meet or exceed each person's RDA nutrient needs in one meal.

Comparison of Omega and Juiceman II

Price:

Juiceman wins in this category, and you can usually find it on sale as well. In addition, it's more readily available in stores and on the internet. Far fewer stores carry the Omega, and it's seldom on sale.

Power:

The Omega is much quieter than Juiceman, both when turned on and when juicing. Omega effortlessly grinds through the fruit that we juice every morning, while the Juiceman would strain and make increasingly loud noises, especially with the harder material. We'd regularly see un-juiced slivers of apple in the collection basket.

Juice produced:

We've noticed a higher juice yield with Omega, and the pulp is more finely ground and more dry.

Build quality:

The plastic on the Omega is thicker and appears to be of a higher quality. We've noticed that the plastic doesn't get stained as easily. The metal filter basket is wider and has a much greater surface area for filtration than does Juiceman. The pulp basket is also larger and will collect more pulp. The spout in Omega is more sophisticated, with a juice path that results in fewer spills.

A nice feature in the Omega is that the grinder on the juice filter basket is removable, allowing for better cleaning as well as replacement after it wears down. On Juiceman you have to replace the entire basket. This grinder has much better teeth and weighs much more than Juiceman's.

Juiceman's only advantage is that it has a larger chute, which allows for insertion of larger pieces of material. However, this really isn't an advantage as it allows the user to add pieces that are too large for the machine to handle. The result is too much work on the machine and less efficient juicing.

Parts:

The Omega has two more parts than Juiceman: the grinder basket plate referred to above, and the screw cap needed to hold the basket plate and basket onto the motor mount. This requires a little extra work for cleaning and assembly, but this is hardly a big deal.

Other models:

Omega also makes a unit which doesn't use a fine mesh filter basket, but instead uses a courser mesh basket in combination with filter papers. We were told by the salesman that this model is better for juicing fruit, without the paper, and then the paper filter is used for veggies. We can't comment on this unit but can confirm that our unit has worked very well for both fruits and vegetables.

In conclusion:

As avid daily Juicers, we've treated ourselves to the best unit that we could find for our money. Juiceman is a great unit for first-time users, especially those people who aren't sure that they're going to stick with the concept. However, for the serious folks out there who want the best value, Omega is the best choice.