Extreme Cuisine: The sensible eater needs to know how to drink, argues Haydn Shaughnessy
There are three types of people in the world. Winners, losers and juicers. Yes, I know there's good and bad, there are miscreants and there are saints. There are crooks and cheats. There was Joker as well as Batman.
But when it comes down to it, juicer, yes or no, is the latest category into which homosapiens can be shoehorned. When the history of 21st century Ireland is written, the academics will start at J. Juicing is healthy.
But let's not get carried away.
Did you ever see waste like you get from a juicer? In juice bars up and down Ireland we're proudly declaring: I don't waste my time eating carrots, apples or berries. Chew? Take the damn juice out for me. Now throw the rest to the pigs or sling it in the bin. Juicing ought to play on our consciences, if only briefly.
I am a juicing agnostic. I'm told it's good. I've enjoyed some juices but I remain convinced that we need to take a rational and intelligent approach.
Juicing as practised today is a fad. Juice bars are popping up all over and, sceptic though I might be, the best that can be said of them is "if kids are guzzling a carrot and apple smoothie, then they can't be drinking a coke or a sports drink".
But that is saying a lot.
So to the positive side of this juicing life. What have juices ever done for us?
Juicing really does seem to impart the glow of health. They give us phytochemicals and the consensus is that phytochemicals are highly protective of our health. That and enzymes. Juices are swimming in enzymes and enzymes aid digestion.
Phytochemicals, enzymes and vitamins. And minerals. That's plenty to chew on, except we don't chew.
Those in favour of juicing point out that many of the nutrients in fruit and vegetables reside in hard-to-break-down fibres and that juice delivers those nutrients in a more easily digested form.
I question this, to a degree. Do we really know that? I mean don't you have to have your digestive system active, by chewing, in order to extract maximum benefit?
Juicing as with every aspect of diet should be personal, considered and conscious. You are drinking juice for its health benefits. Best to maximise those, but do you really know how?
The most common, and cheaper, juicers on the market may not deliver the benefits we expect. They work with a centrifuge that spins at high speed, shreds the fruit or vegetable then extracts juice from this in the same way that a spin drier extracts water from clothes.
Centrifuges are known to extract the minimal amount of nutrients compared with high-end juicing machines like Champion or Green Star juicers. These more expensive machines (compare around €90 for a centrifugal juicer to €600 for a Green Star) masticate fruit and vegetables and then sieve them through the finest holes, minimising pulp (waste) and maximising nutrients.
A Green Star turns at 110 revs per minute and there's hardly a review that doesn't recommend its juices.
The slower speed and masticating action of the high-end machines mean more goodness and more taste come through.
An Equip centrifugal juicer, by contrast, spins at 10,000 revs per minute. These machines are clearly performing different tasks, and experts argue that the speed, heat and shredding actions of a centrifuge creates a lower nutritional value.
Few juice bars use the slow masticating juicers. It would be uneconomic. Commercial juicers are built for speed. The Friul Mega, for example, will get through 150kilos an hour of fruit and vegetables. Nutrifaster's N450 turns at 3,450 revs a minute.
A more serious objection is that juice bars are an excuse some people have to avoid eating fruit and vegetables. They are the convenience form of the five-a-day. Better than nothing but nobody yet did an analysis of how much nutrient and phytochemical goes into the bin. We are not meant to treat too much of our fruit and vegetables as trash.
My own preference when drinking juice is to make it fresh, using a high-end juicer, and to eat a apple or piece of raw vegetable with it. Eating raw is a lost part of the culinary knowledge-base given how much time, creativity and energy we now lavish on the endless permutations of taste, texture and aroma in cooked food.
But that's a whole different story.
Every kitchen should have a good juicer. Or people should buddy up and buy them to share. If you're making a commitment to your health, why make a weak one?
Juicer reviews:
[ www.happyjuicer.com/green-star-juicer-review.asp ]
www.consumersearchcom/www/kitchen/juicers/fullstory.
[ www.bizrate.couk/juicers/index__prerd--1.html ]
Next week - cooking without salt.
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