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What if you could ingest all of these nutrients in seconds?  Yes..it does make you feel better.

About a year ago, I was watching some Netflix documentaries.  I got sucked in.  The first one was “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”.  The message was:

  • I’m fat
  • I’m unhealthy from years of food abuse
  • I need to make a change
  • I’m going to drink nothing but juices for months and lose 100 pounds.

The movie was extreme.  I think it does a great job of introducing you to juicing, as I got hooked.  It doesn’t do a good enough job in the disclaimer portion of it.  It tries to sell you on the concept of nothing but juices to cleanse your body.  Well, there are some problems with this, namely that this type of diet eliminates B12, which is essential to well….living.  Yes, you can fortify B12 in your diet, but they really don’t hammer this concept in much.  Same thing with Vitamin D.

Another problem is it can get really expensive, really quickly.  Let’s start off with the gear.  The book Joe sells you on discusses a lot of the reboot concept…so be it, and then I also got the exact juicer in the movie, which was like $200.

 

Juicers come in essentially two varieties, the centrifugal type (above) or the masticating (like a chewing motion).  The centrifugal type motors through things like celery and cucumbers in no time.  The down side is things like kale are not juiced as effectively with the centrifugal type.  That being said, making the juice takes all of 1 minute.  The time suck is:

  • Getting the juicer out and assembled after your wife put it away for the 300th time
  • shopping for your fresh veggies…ALL the time
  • cleaning/prepping veggies for juicer.  You have to wash stuff, a lot…and cut the apples into smaller pieces, peel the ginger, etc.
  • cleaning the device afterwards.

The main picture is the juice I love the best, and Joe’s juice of choice in the move.  I can see why, it’s amazing.  It’s fresh, refreshing, sweet, peppery (ginger) all at the same time.  You get an instant energy boost and clarity of mind.  Yes, it does what it says.

The downside is then how much time you juice.  How much of it you can do ahead of time.  The picture at the top of the screen is essentially 2 servings of roughly 15 ounces each.  I bought some glass bottles to store extra in, but this becomes a pain in the ass after 30 days or so, and you end up making up a batch for 2 days or so at a time…

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Yes, the above is roughly 4 15 ounce servings.  However, everyone is right – as time goes on, the flavors dissipate.  What’s also interesting is that they separate quickly too, so you have to shake it up before drinking.

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Overall, the “reboot” concept is a bit of a far fetched fantasy.  I could see doing a reboot for a weekend or the like to perhaps take your taste buds and gut flora back to factory settings….but to do anything more than a weekend is just torturing yourself for no good reason.  Additionally, I see no reason to make more than one juice in the morning and maybe have the leftovers as a mid morning snack at maybe 10AM to give you some energy boost.  My guess is also that if you are a heavy coffee drinker, this might be an ok substitute to wake the f up in the morning, as it does have rocket fuel properties to it.  The biggest downside for me is total time of 30 minutes to juice in the morning coupled with the expense of the ingredients and the time suck shopping for them every two days or so.

Now, if I happened to have a private chef on staff?  I’d have this every morning and replace my coffee with one 15 ounce serving of this for roughly 180 calories but continue to have my oatmeal as well.

Fun with experimentation…

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Above you see the following juices: pineapple, mean green, apple (oxidizes quickly ad turns brown), white grape, and orange.

I’d have to say that fresh orange juice with this thing is a good time.  Try and take off as much of the white rind as possible when you peel it.  Additionally, you know how some oranges are more bitter than others?  Yeah – when you get a good batch of sweet oranges in season, fire them in your juicer.  When they are off season and a little more bitter, juicing doesn’t help that much.  Fresh apple juice is also amazing, as I must say for the mean green the green apples are nice to keep color consistency, but if I’m just making apple juice, I’m getting my favorite Pink Lady apples and firing them in.  Pineapple and white grape juice is just ridiculously expensive to make yourself.

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