Juicing vs smoothies is an issue I’ve sought a clear distinction on which one is better for years. Through experience, I now know.
The first one to lead in popularity was juicing. It was popularized through cleverly designed and casted infomercials. In them, you’d be told that juicing is the best thing you could do for your health. “You can lose weight, lower your blood pressure, clear up your complexion, and improvement and cure diseases.” they would say.
The theory was that fresh juice, from a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, were more readily able to provide nutrients to your body in the most efficient way. I agree with this.
I juiced for many years and burned through several different machines. By drinking the juice I felt like I was doing the very best thing for my health. I got an emotional lift afterward as well.
I started juicing somewhere after the turn of the century (2000+). I made this diet change at the same time I was making the transition to becoming a vegetarian. I made the ultimate diet/health lifestyle decision to become a vegan in circa 2009 after watching several documentaries on this page.
The smoothie craze seemed to follow the release of these documentaries that detailed why a plant-based diet was really good for your health and why an animal-based diet was responsible for your health problems. I’ve watched countless documentaries on this topic.
Several experts in these documentaries did infomercials about the amazing benefits of superfood smoothies. Others did related presentations on PBS about the transformative characteristics of a plant-based diet. I watched all of these too. 😀
Around 2012 I began making smoothies. With a break between juicing and smoothies, I’d estimate that I’ve done both for five years each at this point. Here’s my comparative conclusion.
Juicing vs Smoothies
Juicing pluses
- Slightly greater ability to transfer nutrients to your bloodstream and body.
- Liquid form makes it a bit easier for your body to digest it. (And infinitely easier than an animal-based diet. We are talking minutes vs hours and days to digest meat – dead animal flesh.)
- Liquid form makes it a bit easier to drink.
Juicing minuses
- Mountains of wasted plant material.
- Zero to low amounts of fiber left in juice.
- Clean up time is extensive due to the number of parts you “must” clean, especially the filter. It gets old fast and the overall process seems inefficient to me.
- Inability to add key items to your juicing machine like bananas, flax seed, hemp heart seeds, chia seeds, and psyllium husk.
- Extremely low or near zero juice production from important items like kale and spinach.
Smoothie pluses
- Ability to add almost any vegetable, fruit, seed, or nut. Thus able to create the ultimate superfood smoothie.
- Clean up is a snap.
- Nearly as liquefied if you have a good blender.
- Requires minimal effort by your digestive system.
- Zero waste.
- Huge amounts of valuable fiber.
Smoothie minuses
- Louder machine due to much higher wattage. This is required to pulverize and liquefy the contents.
As you can see, smoothies came out on top.
Best Smoothie Machine
When I started looking for a smoothie machine the first one I ran across was the Vitamix. But I thought it was way too expensive.
Then I came across the Blentec. Fancy name but too expensive as well.
I strongly considered the NutriBullet because the infomercial presenter, David Wolfe, was in an outstanding documentary that impressed me greatly, “Food Matters.” His enthusiasm for the topic of health is the same in the documentary as it is in the infomercial, which showed sincerity to me. What I did not like about it was its limited smoothie creating capacity.
Later copycats arrived like the Ninja Shark line, of course. These were a little less expensive and looked better but the product line name and hype infomercials were too cheesy for me.
I also noticed that most of the expensive ones were butt ugly.
Finally, I came across one of the original innovators in the blending world. I remember this brand from when I was a kid. We had one. Not only does this product have an equal or greater amount of wattage as the expensive ones, its design is beautiful! And the cost is low in comparison.
I bought a new O Pro Blender at Amazon (best price) with free shipping and I love it. I particularly like the pre-programmed smoothie button. The program runs the blender blade in opposite directions 8 times and then full power for an extended period at the end.
Tip: To prevent spitting, leave about 2” empty at the top of the jar. If you use frozen ingredients like I do, put them in the jar and let them defrost for 20 minutes or more.
Juicing is good. Smoothies are better.