Juicing vs. Juice Plus+®ing

 

Liza Pepple, Manager of Product Quality at NSA, talks with us about the Juice Plus+®ing process in this month’s Q and A.

Question

Dear Liza:

Can you talk about how Juice Plus+® is different than Juicing? Also, in what ways is Juice Plus+® different than other whole food based supplements out there? Thanks, Dr. Mitra Ray

Answer

Dear Mitra:

In traditional juicing processes, especially for industrial (or large scale) practices, fruit and vegetable juice is formed by squeezing the produce until the liquid is removed. That liquid is often times a clear fluid because most processors cannot “juice” the solids. This leaves an almost clarified liquid that has a relatively high sugar content and relatively low fiber content, and contains none of the micronutrients that would be found in the skin or peels of the fruit, or the leaves and stems of the vegetables.

The Juice Plus+®ing process is a bit more rigorous, but results in what we feel is a much better finished product. We start with the whole fruits and vegetables. We leave the skin and seeds intact (unless the seeds are toxic, as is the case with peaches) and process the whole produce. We have a very large grinder that breaks the majority of the pieces up into small bits and then those small bits are further broken down into a fine slurry. It is this slurry containing the micronutrients from the skin and seeds or leaves and stems along with the flesh that is dried. This picture of the beginning of our process is the rough grinding of the fruits.

 

This is a picture of our cranberries on the drier. If you look closely you can see fibrous strings. What you can’t see in this picture, but I have seen consistently, are pieces of seeds that are still relatively whole.

When we test our product against other “juiced” powders, we consistently see higher values for things like vitamin e and c, as well as polyphenols and anthocyanins.  Additionally, we consistently see deeper, more vibrant colors in our products than in competitive products.

 

Here is a picture of our cranberry compared to standard juiced cranberry powder.  You can see that our powder (on the right) is darker and has more natural variation than the one on the left.