The Eat to Live concept makes more sense to me – dietary fiber can’t be a bad thing, can it? I was recently scanning through Eat to Live and wanted to share what Dr. Fuhrman has to say about fruit and vegetable juice vs. whole fruits and vegetables.

“Oranges make the most nutritious juice, but even orange juice can’t compare with the original orange. In citrus fruits, most of the anti-cancer compounds are present in the membranes and pulp, which are removed in processing juice.”

“Fresh-squeezed orange juice and other fresh fruit and vegetable juices are relatively healthy foods that contain the majority of the original vitamins and minerals. But the sweet fruit juices and even carrot juice should still be used only moderately, as they still contain a high concentration of sugar calories and no fiber. . . I often use these juices as part of salad dressings and other dishes rather than alone as a drink.”

The marketers for the Jack Lalanne Power Juicer seem to have anticipated this argument against juicing. The recipe book that comes with the Power Juicer contains many recipes that use the pulp of the fruits and vegetables. There are also several recipes for salad dressings that I’m looking forward to trying. I’m hoping that the fruit juice will provide so much flavor that I won’t miss the fat that is not allowed at all during the first six weeks of the Eat to Live diet.

When I juiced this morning, I did check to see how wet the pulp is.  If the juicer extracts all of the juice from the pulp, then there doesn’t seem to be much sense in adding the pulp to other foods, except to increase the fiber content. The pulp was indeed wet, so I imagine that it will impart some extra flavor to baked goods, without adding to much liquid which would affect the consistenty of the recipe.  However, the wetness of the pulp did surprise me. The pulp from our first juicer was as dry as sawdust! But then again, that juicer quit working after a month.

First I juiced six oranges. If you’ve never juiced an orange then you must try it. The juice is so fresh and creamy, ten times more delicious than freshly-squeezed orange juice.  You do have to peel the orange before juicing, but that takes no time if you just peel the skin off with your fingers. The six oranges produced around 16 oz of juice. That would have been enough to accompany our breakfast, but then I noticed two apples in the fruit bowl.

As I’ve mentioned before, small apples will fit into the Power Juicer without any prep work. It’s so easy to just pop them into the machine, so I added the two apples to my orange juice.

Around that time, our 3 year old wandered into the kitchen and discovered a mango in the refrigerator. I took it from him as he was about to eat it skin and all and noticed that it needed to be used quickly. Into the juicer it went. Now for the mango, you do have to removed the central pit, which requires some slicing, but I did not peel it. I was surprised to find that only about 2 Tbsp. of thick juice came out when I put it in the juicer.

I thought that the juice might be a little two sweet, so I pulled a couple of stalks of celery out of the fridge and added them. If you’ve never juiced celery, then you probably don’t realize (we didn’t) that it’s very spicy – much like black pepper. It also contains a good bit of sodium which helps balance the sweetness of all of the fruit juices.

While in the fridge, I noticed that we also had some romaine lettuce that needed to be used, and a lot of carrots. I cut the core of the lettuce and added it all to the juicer at once. The deep green juice is so pretty!  When I ran the carrots through the juicer, I noticed that more mango juice was finally coming out of the machine. I had read that it’s best to alternate hard and soft produce in the juicer as the hard produce helps the soft produce work through the centrifuge. It seemed like a small point, but it was impressive to see in action. I even juiced a few more carrots just to get the remaining mango out of the machine.

The final produce was delicious. My first experiment with the Jack Lalanne Power Juicer was a success! I drank around 16 oz. and my husband and son each had about 8.  I never got around to eating any other breakfast and the juice kept me satisfied until noon. Here’s the recipe if you would like to try it.

Mary’s Morning Juice
6 oranges (peeled)
2 small apples
3 c. Romaine lettuce
2 celery stalks
1 mango, pitted
4 carrots