Blending Vs. Juicing

Almost every time I tell someone I'm juicing for nutrition I'm told I am losing 40% or more of the nutrition and fiber. They don't know what juicer I use nor do they know what it is I'm juicing. Then they tell me to use a blender to save all the nutrition and keep the fiber. "YOU NEED THE FIBER," they keep professing to me. Well, I don't have a great blender so I tried an experiment. An experiment I would soon regret.

Step 1. Gather all my juicing ingredients  (yes, the usual suspects)
    Carrots, Kale, Spinach, Cucumber and 1 granny smith apple.

Step 2. Break out the Juiceman II Juicer and my Magic Bullet blender

Step 3. Prep veggies: Cut giant carrots and cucumber to smaller pieces that can fit in the juicer.
     I split the veggies 50/50 so we had the same exact ingredients in the blend group and juice only group.

Step 4. Juice half the ingredients remove the pulp and combine juice and pulp into magic bullet and blend.

Step 5. Juice remaining ingredients

Step 6. Try to enjoy both beverages.

So how'd it turn out? Well, The combined blend group turned out tasting almost the same, a little more bitter from the kale pulp. I'm sure I got more fiber and nutrients, but I also got the bitterness of kale more than ever.  The taste wasn't bad enough to make me stop but the texture was. I'm now fighting my way through it. It cost about 3 dollars for all the ingredients, so it's less than fast food, or other "quick" solutions.

Blended Version

Juiced Version

 Just by the looks of them, you can see that the Kale and Spinach didn't break down as much for the blended version as it did for the juiced version. So the fiber really shines through.

Here's a snapshot of the nutrition:

Disclaimer: I'm not sure what the actual nutrition loss was from juicing, so this shows the raw nutrition

All in all, I learned I like juicing way better. I also learned to not try this again until I get my blendtec  blender that I want. Maybe then I'll become a blend-maniac. For now I'm a Juicer for sure.  This plus my Visalus shakes is giving me a grip of nutrition. Much better than I had over the last 20 some years.  Having my stroke was probably the best thing imaginable at this phase in my life. Had I kept going on the path I was on, I probably would have enjoyed another 20 years of living maybe 30, but the quality couldn't be very good. Now I'm hoping to get another 50 years of quality living before this body goes to the grave. Nutrition is the key to longevity. My short term goals are to burn off enough fat and build up enough muscle to churn my body into a level of fitness I've never experienced before. But more importantly its the overall health and nutrition that will raise my quality of life.  I'm loving the Vi-Life.