Over the past couple of years juicing and blending have become increasingly popular in supermarkets and in some cities, you can find juicing/smoothie bars. Juicing and blending is a great way to get your 5 a day, in just one drink but a smoothie will give you different benefits to a juice. So, lets clear a few myths up about blending over juicing.
You probably already know the difference between blending and juicing, but we are briefly going to explain the science between each.
What's the Difference Between Blending and Juicing?
Juicing
Juicing extracts water and nutrients from your produce but discards the insoluble fibre via the pulp. This gives your digestive system a break as it doesn’t have to work as hard to break down liquids. There is a great misunderstanding that juice doesn’t offer you ANY fibre, whilst juicing discards the insoluble fibre which is mainly the skin of the produce, the juice will still contain soluble fibre. This type of fibre absorbs water in the intestines, forming a gel which will help your food pass through your digestive system and help support healthy bacteria in the gut. Juicing is great for hydrating your body because you are supplying your body with a good supply of liquid that is filled with nutrients.
Juicing makes the nutrients from the produce easily available and in larger quantities than if you were to just eat the fruit and veg. This means if you are only juicing fruit you need to be careful as you can get a spike in blood sugar, which is why we like to use the 80/20 rule. This is where you only get 20% of your juice from fruit and 80% from vegetables.
Blending
Blending, on the other hand, retains soluble and insoluble fibre as the entire fruit or vegetable is blended. The insoluble fibre will make you fuller as there is a slower release of nutrients. But your digestive system can still easily break down smoothies as the fibre has been blended, which means your stomach will work harder than it would with juice, but it will still work less than it would with whole foods. Blending is useful for liquefying low water content fruits like banana, avocado, papaya.
Smoothies are great for breakfast as they keep you fuller for longer, but if you are looking to increase your intake of fruits and vegetables then you can pack more servings into a single serving of juice than you can into a smoothie.
TIP: When juicing and blending, it’s always best to use organic produce as these tend to be free from nasty pesticides that you don’t want lurking around in your drink.
The main difference between the two kitchen appliances are, a juicer will squeeze the juice out of the produce with an auger whereas, as a blender will use a rotating blade to pulverise the produce.
It really depends on what you are looking for, if you are interested in gaining nutrients we would suggest juice, but if you are wanting to just improve your diet then we would suggest smoothies. Please do remember you don’t have to stick to a smoothie or juice, you can always combine which will give you the best of both worlds.