Do Juicers Heat the Juice and Destroy Important Enzymes?

Does a juicer heat the juice? Why does it matter?

Many people state that heating the juice will kill important enzymes that you want in your juice.

For this reason, many champion (ha, ha) a masticating juicer because it might not create as much heat.

What is a masticating juicer?

It’s a juicer that “chews” rather than whips the juice out of the vegetables or fruits. A masticating juicer generally works much slower than a centrifugal juicer.

What is a centrifugal juicer?

A centrifugal juicer has a spinning blade or basket inside the juicer that rotates usually much, much faster than a masticating juicer. The faster action allows for super fast processing of the vegetables or fruit through the juicer. Some say that a centrifugal produces more juice than a masticating juicer, but that is open for debate and many depend on the fruit or vegetable being juiced.

Does a centrifugal juicer really create heat? If it does, is the heat enough to matter?

Below is a YouTube comparison of a centrifugal juicer and a juicer that uses a slow auger.

The juicers highlighted in the comparison are the Omega VRT330 Dual-Stage Vertical Single-Auger Low-Speed Juicer (the slower one) and the centrifugal Omega BMJ330 350-Watt Stainless-Steel Pulp-Ejection Juicer.

As this video explains, a few degrees difference isn’t going to make much of a difference as far as the important enzymes you want out of your juice (probably the best way to know is to see it under a microscope, and his thermometer could have been better so you could dip it inside the juice).

But with little to no temperature difference, there’s little to worry about. The type of temperatures you want to watch out for are temperatures high enough to cook your fruits and vegetables. Juicing doesn’t get near to cooking in my book.

I’ve also seen other comparisons that show that a centrifugal produced juice that was three degrees warmer than a masticating juicer. With that little of a variance. If you have a warm/cold glass, you could probably influence the temperature of the juice by that much!

Below is a video comparing the masticating juicer (the Champion brand) with the Omega auger juicer. Sorry, it’s kind of long, but you can see that the masticating juicer leaked a little, but the Omega juicer isn’t all that fantastic either. Lots of health gurus use a centrifugal juicer (which was shown in the first video) and do just fine.

As is pointed out in the first video, you should be more concerned about the oxygen getting into the juice. But just as it takes a while for an apple to turn brown, it takes time for the oxygen to affect your juice, so you don’t have to worry about a little bit of oxygen getting into the juice. Almost all juicers pour the juice into a cup or container outside of the juicer and that action churns oxygen into the mix anyway.

So don’t get worked up too much about the oxygen content, you just need to drink it soon after making it just like you would want to eat a sliced apple before it turns brown.

Are there better juicers than the ones in the videos?

Our favorite juicer is the Breville 800jexl because of its capacity and speed. When having friends over or family that you want to share the juice with, you need a juicer that can make a pitcher of juice not just a cup of juice.

The Breville has much more power than the 350 Watt Omega shown above, the Breville juicer has 1,000 watts! Now that’s a lot of power which means it can easily handle an entire apple or pineapple strips with the rind still on them. It’s great and fast.

You can read our full review here: Breville 800jexl review.

Author: likesgoodeats

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