Now that we have our juicer and have used it several times, I sat down to watch the Jack Lalanne Power Juicer infomercial when I found it on tv last night.  Here are a few of the claims that are made in the infomercial and my take on them.

1.  Apples can be juiced whole. During the infomercial, Jack and his wife Elaine, use apples in several of the juice that they make. Every time, they insert an entire green apple into the juicer at once. They are able to juice it without any problem.

The first fruit that we tried to juice was a Gala apple. We had heard that you could put an entire apple into the juicer chute, so we were eager to try it. But no luck! Our gala apples were way too big to fit in whole, though we could fit them when they were sliced in halves or thirds. We later bought a bag of small apples and they fit the juicer perfectly. The strange this is that the apples in the infomercial do not appear to be small. They probably are, but it’s not something that you notice.

2. The Power Juicer is easy to clean in your dishwasher. The infomercial also says that the power juicer is very quick to clean, and that it can even go in your dishwasher. I cleaned our Power Juicer today (that and the juicing is usually my husband’s job) and while it is relatively easy to clean, it’s not as easy as the infomercial makes it seem.

During the infomercial there is a small snippet that shows an unattached arm putting the Power Juicer into the dishwasher. What I didn’t realize until this morning is that the arm only put the pulp bucket and the produce pusher into the dishwasher. There are 3 other parts of the Power Juicer that weren’t shown, and let me tell you that they do indeed need to be washed by hand! The Power Juicer even comes with a scrub brush for just that purpose!

That being said, the juicer was not difficult to clean. However, it did take several minutes. (I did wash all of the pieces by hand since I didn’t want to waste a lot of space in my dishwasher with parts that are easy to clean.) You can save on clean up time by lining the pulp bucket with a plastic grocery shopping bag.

3. You can juice straight into a tall glass or pitcher. When we first tried our juicer we were disappointed to find that the juice spout is so low that only our juice glasses will fit under it.  I love juice, and I want to drink a large glassful!  When I watched the infomercial I noticed that they were juicing into tall glasses and pitchers. How can this be?!?

After careful observation, I noticed that all of the Power Juicers in the commercial were sitting on top of a thick cutting board or some other surface that elevated the juice spout. I think this is slightly misleading. Since I’m not about to give up my butcher block, we’ll just have to use small glasses to collect our juice.

4. Kids will eat juiced vegetables more readily than whole vegetables. The infomercial contains a testimonial from a kindergarten teacher that has been making juice for her students. The kids are so excited about the juice, and the teacher loves that they are getting their fruit and vegetable servings.

Now, our son is 3 years old and while he’s not a picky eater I sometimes wonder if he’s getting all of the vegetables and fruit that he needs. He’s been on a bread and soymilk kick lately and tries his best to fill up on those at mealtimes. But he loves the juicer! He begs us to make juice for him in the mornings and drinks it right down, even though we usually add greens to the mix.  I don’t know many kids that would drink green or brown juice, so this is pretty impressive.

Luckily we had some apples on hand, so we started juicing immediately. The first thing that we noticed was how quiet the machine is. Our previous juicer was so loud that you couldn’t hold a conversation while it was on. The Power Juicer, however, can barely be heard. This is a definite plus since our 3 year old loves juice, but hates loud noices!

The next thing that we noticed is how low the juice spout is. The only glasses that would fit underneath it were our juice glasses. I guess that’s fitting, but the juice is so good that I really do want a tall glass of it. We ended us putting the small juice glass under the spout, and then emptying that into a pitcher when it got full.

Speaking of juice spouts, I should point out that the spout on the Pro Juicer has a neat on/off feature.  When the spout is in the down position, juice comes of the spout while you juice. However, if your cup is almost full and you need to stop the flow, simply flip the juice spout up.  The juice is then held inside the machine until you are ready for it to go into the glass again.

John had done some research on the Power Juicer before our purchase and new that Jack Lalanne claims that you can put entire apples into the juicer without any prep work. We were eager to try this, and found to our disappointment that only the very small apples would fit. Nevertheless, we only had to halve our larger apples to get them to go in.

And the apple juice that day? Well, it was incredible! If you’ve never had freshly made apple juice, you won’t believe it until you try it. It tastes nothing like what you buy in the stores!  I can’t even describe it – it’s something that you have to experience yourself.  The next day we bought an entire bag of small apples and juiced the whole bag in one session. It was magnificent!