Hi I've been taking my time researching blenders and juicers. In the past I would just blend up fruit with a food prep attachment. I loved it, but even so it was somewhat tedious and took a lot of time to prepare and clean up.

I started looking at high end blenders, and since I like to be through in investigating options and even alternatives I started reading up on juicers.

Thus far I like the idea of a cheaper alternative to the norwalk. The path walked seems to be using a Champion 2000 + peoples press. Since the people's press is hydraulic and hand operated, I was thinking it would be cool to replace the Champion juicer with a hand operated grinder. I looked around for a fruit & vegetable manual grinder but have not really seen anything other than for specialty things like wheatgrass, apples, citrus fruits etc.

Does anyone know how well a meat grinder might work for this purpose? What other hand powered products might be more appropriate?

adamlogan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi I've been taking my time researching blenders
> and juicers.....
> .....Thus far I like the idea of a cheaper alternative
> to the norwalk. The path walked seems to be using
> a Champion 2000 + peoples press.
You're setting yourself up for Failure. Anyone who has to
use a Champion (or meat-grinder) and a hydraulic Press Juicer everyday, is eventually
going to say 'THWI' and give it up....make it easy on yourself....real easy
(if you're serious about juicing).
Plus, I feel we should be Blending more and Juicing less....much less, if at all.....WY

THWI= to hell with it

The Omega Vert HD was the other option I was looking at for it's combination of ease of use and intact nutrition juice output.

Your suggestion of using a blender is based purely on ease of use? Is the nutrition "damage" from blending that irrelevant? So your thinking can be compared to cameras, that it's the lighter compact camera that is more likely to taken everywhere thus being used whereas a DSLR is is less desirable to carry around on a daily basis and thus not used. A picture taken at the expense of quality is better than none at all.

Wondering if there actually are benefits outside of the obvious convenience of cleaning and less prep time. I was thinking I might want both, a blender and a juicer. A nearby Costco is having a demo for Vitamix blenders, am sure they will be discounted then. Is that the way to go?

I was looking at Blendtec's products. Blendtec won that patent infringement against Vitamix recently, and obviously their sensationalist marketing is far more successful to my generation. I read elsewhere on this very forum that quite a few of these blenders are overkill in both power and size, that bigger is not always better and that quite a few of the things that the Blenders advertise of being able to do are not actually appropriate/ will shorten the lifespan of the blender,

Apologies, I guess this has been done to death and I should just look at other people's posts.

I have a centrifical force juicer, a single gear juicer (early model omega) and a high end blender and the blender is the thing we use most by far. By FAR! Like every single day at least once. And I'm fairly certain any loss of nutrients is hardly that much of a consideration when you think of what we could be having for breakfast every day instead of a green smoothie. To use your analogy, what's the difference between a good picture and a really good picture? Hardly anyone can even tell...
Perhaps we'll use the juicer more in the summer months when produce is plentiful and everything seems just a bit easier but until then it's the blender for me .

So now that I have a Vitamix 5200, how would it compare if I blended ingredients then pressed it with the Welles/People's Press , to say buying a brand new Norwalk 275 which has a triturator and electronic press?

My perception is I would be losing a substantial amount of nutrition, say 50%?

Hmm I don't know that a press at $400 would be justified if I can buy the Greenstar Elite for $560