The easiest way to boost your fruit and veggie intake

Vowing to treat your body as a temple rather than a funfair this year? If recent indulgences have put ‘detox’ at the top of your to-do list for 2023, then adding more fresh veggies and fruit to your diet is a great place to start.

Not thrilled by that prospect? A fresh juice, smoothie or even sorbet is one of the easiest ways to pack more fruit and vegetables into your day if you usually struggle to include enough of them in your meals.

In Australia, that’s most of us: Nutrition Australia reports that 91% of Aussies don’t eat enough veggies. What’s ‘enough’? It’s the 5 portions a day, along with 2 of fruit, recommended in the government’s Australian Dietary Guidelines.

So, should you get a blender or a juicer? Or both? And what’s the difference anyway? In this article we will look at both of these small kitchen appliances and compare their pros and cons.

Cold press juicers (sometimes called masticating juicers) use an auger (essentially a big corkscrew) to firmly compress the fruits and veggies, squeezing the juice from the pulp. This process doesn’t generate heat, and therefore doesn’t damage the enzymes in the fruit and veggies, keeping more nutrients and antioxidants in the final product. It’s the best method for extracting the most juice from ingredients like wheatgrass and leafy greens., which other types of juicer can struggle with.

Cold press juicing is a slower method of extracting juice, but it has a higher juice yield and less food waste than centrifugal juicers, and produces a veggie and fruit juice with less oxidation and froth. If you have the time for a leisurely start to the day, then a cold press slow juicer is probably the best juicer for you, because it produces the highest quality juice. Good things, as they say, come to those who wait.

The large capacity of this centrifugal juicer, combined with its ability to juice five times faster than a cold press machine, makes it extremely family-friendly - as does its extra-wide chute that allows you to put whole fruits and veggies in, without pre-chopping. Its clever tech minimises the heat transfer from machine to juice that can happen with centrifugal juicers, and it even has a quiet setting to keep the mornings a little more chilled (if only the same could be said for the kids).

See price and full details of Breville BJE830BTR the Juice Fountain Cold XL Juicer

Essentially a semi-automated version of manual citrus squeezers, the rotating reamer of the citrus juicer squeezes the juice from the orange or grapefruit when you gently push the fruit onto it. The juice is then collected or dispensed directly into a glass. As the name suggests, citrus juicers have a more limited application than other types of juicer, and as such they cost less. They have a high juice yield for citrus fruits, however, and don’t require you to peel the fruit, making them a good choice if you’re happy to stick with your freshly squeezed orange juice every morning.

Blenders come in a range of styles, from jug to stick blender, but all use stainless steel blades to quickly liquefy fruit, vegetables and other ingredients. You will usually need to add a little additional liquid to bring the ingredients together, ensuring they come into contact with the blade. Unlike juicers, blenders don’t separate the juice from the pulp, instead combining the two to produce thicker drinks and smoothies, as well as purees and baby foods. High powered blenders, like food processors, can also be used to make nut butters - such as macadamia, almond and peanut butter - and nut milks.

Coming in at the higher end of the price range, this model from Vitamix makes a first rate smoothie - and then some. Considered by many to be the Rolls Royce of blenders, the newest generation of Vitamix models are so smart they might be better equated with Teslas. In addition to this unit’s smoothie function, you can also achieve the right consistency for whatever it is you’re making by selecting from either hot soup or frozen dessert programs. The clever tech detects the container you’re using and uses only the power needed for the particular ingredients and recipe. You don’t even need to gauge when it looks ready, because the blender knows, switching itself off when it’s happy with the results.

See price and full details of Vitamix 063209 Ascent Series A2500i High Performance Blender (Black)

Blenders use the whole fruit and vegetable, so you get a lot more fibre - which is filling, and helps maintain a healthy digestive system. If summer socialising has wreaked havoc with your gut health (maybe your bathroom visits are a little less - or more - frequent than usual), increasing the fibre in your diet can help you get back on track.

Blenders also make it easy to hide the vegetables from the kids by sneaking a few baby spinach leaves or other veggies in with the fruit. While you can do this to a degree with juicers too, some vegetables don’t lend themselves to juicing as well as they do to blending, think avocado for example.

Blenders allow you to add non-fruit and veggie ingredients to bulk out smoothies or make them more palatable to fussy eaters. Some yogurt or milk (dairy, coconut, almond or other), as well as oats and softer nuts like walnuts and macadamias, added to certain fruit and veggies can make the whole affair much more appealing.

TOP TIP: If you’ve made a lighter coloured white, yellow or pale green smoothie, a couple of berries added at the end for a quick burst can add a child-friendly pink or purple swirl to your concoction.

Juicers can be an easy way to get a burst of good energy for those who find smoothies too filling or unpalatable.

If your objective is specifically to increase your vegetable intake, as opposed to fruit, a glass of veggie juice will probably be easier to drink than a thick veggie smoothie. You can find countless juice recipes online that cleverly combine more ‘challenging’ but nutrient-rich vegetables with fruits that both mask and compliment their veggie counterpart’s flavour profiles.

Juicers can also extract juice from certain veggies that don’t blend well, such as beetroot and celery. This means you get all of the flavour and goodness, but without the grainy texture they can give to a smoothie.

Juicers also come out slightly ahead of blenders for vitamins and minerals - in terms of volume anyway. If you filled a 300ml glass with a smoothie, and another glass of the same size with a juice made from the same ingredients, the juice would contain more nutrients. This is for a couple of reasons: firstly, without the fibrous elements of the fruit and veggies, there’s room for more of the nutrient-dense liquid, and secondly, if the juice is cold pressed, it may have higher nutrient content due to the absence of heat. If you’re the type of person that will get the same amount of fruit and veggies out of the fridge to juice or blend, a blender would see you consuming all the nutrients and the fibre, therefore making it the healthier option.

Blenders tend to be a little easier to clean than juicers because they usually have fewer removable parts, i.e. the jug and the blade, which can be easily rinsed (these are sometimes, but not always, dishwasher safe, so you should always check the instructions).

Because they separate and collect the pulp, cold press juicers and centrifugal juicers have more removable elements, such as pulp containers and strainers, and therefore require more effort in terms of clean up, though cold press slow juicers are often the easier of the two to clean.

Some appliances come with special cleaning brushes for cleaning the strainer component of the machine. It may seem like a minor consideration, but if you’re aiming to make a daily ritual of juicing or blending, you should make sure the appliance you buy isn’t too much hassle to clean. The prospect of five minutes of fiddly juicer deconstruction and cleaning could soon derail your best intentions, so any easy or self-cleaning features are a bonus. 

If you’re weighing up the pros and cons of getting a juicer machine versus getting a blender, then you could do well to take inspiration from the little girl in the Old El Paso ad ‘Why not have both?’ That’s exactly what this highly rated 2-in-1 model from Aussie brand Breville lets you do. With both blending and juicing functions, it offers the best of both worlds and even allows you to create hybrid drinks that combine juice from some ingredients with the blended puree from others.

See price and full details of The Breville BJB615SHY The 3X Bluicer Juicer