Many of our readers have asked; is juicing expensive? It’s a regular and legitimate concern. Here we will address the expense of juicing
and some hints and suggestions for making economical and flavorful juices.
If you are on day two of your juice fast, and you are
contemplating sneaking over to your neighbor’s garden to save some money on the
massive amount of produce that you have packed your refrigerator with… You are
not alone. We live in DC, and came close
to sneaking over the gates of the White house and raiding First Lady MichelleObama’s private garden. Well, not just close… we just couldn’t get over the
gates before secret service attempted to turn us IN TO vegetables. Desperate times call for desperate measures!! But wait, we learned how to be smart about
our produce shopping, and there is light at the end of the tunnel, I know
because I was close to going into the
light before I took charge of my own health.
After watching “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead,” My wife and I
went out to find a juicer, and bought 3 days’
worth of produce. We quickly retitled
the documentary “Skinny, Hungry, and almost broke!” The juicer was $150.00, and the first batch
of groceries set us back over $200.00 that was to last us only 3 days. We were following recipes for juices online.
Many of them called for vegetables we’d never heard of. We were also amazed at how much food we were
supposed to inhale in one sitting, it’s really more than you can imagine. Truthfully, the whole thing was overwhelming,
but we stepped back, sipped our blood red, terrible beet juice and asked
ourselves…. WTH?
Cheaper Shopping Options:
And they do exist! Our first gem
was called Global Food Market, in Woodbridge, Virginia. Produce was one half the cost of the regular
grocery store. If you have a Global food
market, or equivalent you are in for a treat. These markets have huge amounts
of produce, and big bundles of fresh herbs.
If not, we recommend Costco, Sam’s Club, or BJ’s etc. You can buy in bulk and the prices are often
much lower.
Fancy Produce = Fancy Poor House: Many recipes call for large amounts of rare
or hard to find produce. We were new to
the scene, and decided to just take it
slow. We were just figuring out if juicing
was right for us, and then it takes a bit of time to get used to the whole
thing. So we decided to slow down, and
use familiar, high juice yielding vegetables.
Our favorites are Apples, celery, cucumbers, pears, and carrots. For
extra nutrients we add in kale or spinach.
It doesn’t produce much juice, but it’s an easy way to up the value of
the juice. We recommend that you use
your imagination, and stick to some of your favorites early on. However, today a friend told me that they
weren’t pleased with the broccoli they had just juiced. Come on people! Juice responsibly… not broccoli!
Rejuice Pulp: We’ve tried
rejuicing our pulp. This has
occasionally worked, but often is not worth the extra time. I read on one website that a juicer had the
same difficulty. They lined their pulp
catcher with a muslin bag, and then squeezed the extra juice out. According to them it did produce a few more
ounces of juice. It may be worth the try.
Bottom Line: Juicing
is an added expense, but if you are like us you dine out regularly, pick up
convenience food whenever the urge hits, and spend mindlessly, it will likely
balance out in the end. To us, the
biggest expense is the tax on your
time. Early to rise and juice, and late
to prep the next day’s juice day in and day out. It is not easy to make, or
easy to clean. Then there’s packing the juice in a leak proof bottle, and
finding enough ice to get you through the work day. But we’ve learned first
hand that the Gain clearly outweighs the Cost in juicing. These are all just
tidbits of information that we did not find when we started one month ago; we
hope that you will find something here that will make your start even easier
than ours.
1 Day and a Lifetime to Go!
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