The utility of single-use kitchen products sometimes just comes down to the habits of individual people. Maybe you use so much garlic that a cheap garlic press is worth it, but there are a few appliances that manage to combine expense and hassle without actually being that useful. In talking to Suraiya Fardous, a food appliance reviewer, about 14 kitchen appliances most people don’t need, we touched on some of the more obvious options, like ice cream makers and egg cookers, along with some things like large food processors that might be useful but just too much for an individual’s needs. Yet one kitchen appliance really stood out as something nobody will ever really need: a juicer.
A juicer manages to tick almost every box that makes a kitchen appliance a dubious proposition — they are big, difficult to clean, expensive, and worst of all, their primary function can be done by other appliances that you probably already have in your kitchen. Even if you are someone who genuinely drinks a lot of juice, it’s not going to save you much money over time because buying enough fresh fruit to produce a decent amount of juice is expensive and may even end up costing you more than buying juice from the store. And if you think that at least the fresh juice you are getting is more healthy than something premade, that may be true, but juice just isn’t that healthy, period.
Juicers are big and hard to clean while removing a lot of what is healthy from produce
It’s true that some juices will have added sugar or preservatives that you may not want to consume, but even freshly made juices lose many of the nutrients that make fruits and vegetables healthy to begin with. Juicing filters out most of the solid parts of produce (which contains almost all of the fiber) and can lead to the loss of vitamins and antioxidants as well. Juicing also releases the sugar that is found naturally in fruits, which leads your body to absorb it more quickly and can cause blood sugar spikes. And finally it’s not very convenient, because fresh juices will lose even more nutrition the longer they sit, so they should be consumed right away. That means you need to make and clean your juicer every time you want a glass of juice that retains its health properties.
The reality is that a blender can do this job, and it has far more uses than a juicer. From a health perspective it’s much better to make refreshing smoothie recipes anyway, but you can also use a strainer after grinding produce to make juice as well. And blenders are so much easier to clean than juicers while also being cheaper, so you can even spring for the best blenders that can really liquify things and save money versus a juicer. As appealing as fresh juice can be, a juicer is something you can always do without.
