Blending vs Juicing — Can a Blender Be Used for Juice Extraction?

Blend­ing vs Juic­ing: Juic­ing is a much more rec­og­niz­able term to the gen­er­al pub­lic than smooth­ing, which is a rel­a­tive­ly new one. The ben­e­fits of juic­ing have been pro­mot­ed for many years by famous health prac­ti­tion­ers and enthu­si­asts, while smooth­ies and blend­ing became famil­iar only recent­ly, with the wide pop­u­lar­i­ty of blenders and healthy lifestyles. Per­haps due to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of juic­ing, mar­ket­ing cam­paigns for blenders some­times pro­mote their prod­ucts like juice and nutri­ent extrac­tors con­fus­ing ingen­u­ous cus­tomers. As a result, more and more peo­ple are won­der­ing if they can use a blender for juice extrac­tion. This arti­cle aims to clar­i­fy the terms of blend­ing and juice extrac­tion, answer the ques­tion of whether a blender can extract juice, and com­pare the ben­e­fits of blend­ing and juicing.

Definitions of Blending and Juice Extraction

Juice extrac­tion is a process in which the liq­uid is tak­en out of the pulp of fruits, veg­eta­bles, and leafy greens. After­ward, the juice is ready for con­sump­tion, while pulp goes in the garbage or can be used in var­i­ous healthy recipes such as veg­an burg­ers or crackers.
Blend­ing is the process of pul­ver­iz­ing food into a homoge­nous sub­stance such as a smooth­ie or puree with­out remov­ing the pulp. This process nor­mal­ly requires extra liq­uid to be added for blend­ing purposes.

How to Extract Juice With a Blender

As you can under­stand from the above def­i­n­i­tions, the process­es of juice extrac­tion and blend­ing are quite dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to kind of extract juice using a blender. For this pur­pose, you blend the food with water added to puree or smooth­ie con­sis­ten­cy and then pass it through a strain­er, col­lect­ing the juice below and leav­ing the pulp in the strainer.
But is it bet­ter to extract juice, or can blend­ed smooth­ies have their own ben­e­fits with­out extra manipulations?

Blending Pros and Cons

Pros: Smooth­ies con­tain not only vit­a­mins and nutri­ents from pul­ver­ized fruits, veg­gies, and leafy greens but also fiber to pro­mote a healthy diges­tive sys­tem. The human body does not only quick­ly and eas­i­ly absorb blend­ed food, but due to fiber con­tent, smooth­ies make peo­ple feel full more quick­ly than tra­di­tion­al food does. For this rea­son, smooth­ies are a quick and easy replace­ment for a full break­fast or pow­er snack. You can also add some seeds, nuts, or pro­tein pow­der to the smooth­ie for pro­tein con­tent. For improved taste and pre­sen­ta­tion, gar­nish your smooth­ies with berries, tofu, yogurt, oats, and oth­er ingre­di­ents. You can use your imag­i­na­tion to cre­ate end­less combinations!

Blenders also can pul­ver­ize non-juice­able ingre­di­ents like leafy greens, bananas, or avo­ca­dos. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, juicers are use­less with these kinds of fruits, and only mas­ti­cat­ing juicers can han­dle leafy ingredients.

Cons: It must be men­tioned that some veg­eta­bles such as car­rots and beet­root are not quite palat­able when blend­ed but very tasty when juiced. When com­bined with oth­er ingre­di­ents for blend­ing, they can make an excel­lent smooth­ie or soup.

Also, note that peo­ple with dif­fi­cul­ties digest­ing fiber will prob­a­bly ben­e­fit more from juic­ing than blending.

Juicing Pros and Cons

Pros: A blender is a very use­ful gad­get for every­day eat­ing, but juic­ing is usu­al­ly used only for spe­cial diets. Many body cleans­ing diets use fresh­ly squeezed juices because con­sum­ing liq­uid and nutri­ents with­out hav­ing to digest fiber uses less ener­gy, and all your body’s resources can go toward self-nour­ish­ment. The ener­gy your body saves can be used instead of cleans­ing with juicing.

Cons: Juice is not rec­om­mend­ed for replac­ing a meal, as it prob­a­bly won’t fill you up, but you can drink a lot more of it than you can a smooth­ie. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Juic­ing removes a high pro­por­tion of the antiox­i­dant con­tent and is not rec­om­mend­ed for peo­ple with dia­betes because of the sug­ar content.

Conclusion

Blend­ing and juic­ing are both good for your health and sup­port the easy diges­tion of nutri­ents and vit­a­mins. Blenders are bet­ter suit­ed to peo­ple who seek to improve their health by con­sum­ing a lot of fruits and veg­eta­bles with­out extra effort. On the oth­er hand, Juic­ing is good for body cleans­ing or oth­er spe­cial diets, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple with fiber diges­tion issues who need an easy way to take in fruits and veg­eta­bles. Smooth­ies are also per­fect for endurance ath­letes and sports enthu­si­asts to refu­el their body with energy.

Relat­ed Articles:

Best Blender for Smooth­ies and More — Buy­ing Guide 2021

Best Cel­ery Juicer- Buy­ing Guide 2020

6 Best Juicers for Leafy Greens Juic­ing – 2021 Guide

5 Best Juicers for Car­rots, Beets, Gin­ger, and Oth­er Roots

5 Best Juicer for Oranges, Grape­fruits, and oth­er Cit­rus Fruits – 2021 Guide