DeRusha Eats: JuicePresso
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Daniel Winer drinks a glass of home-pressed vegetables every day. He has a vested interest, after all, as the CEO of JuicePresso.
"I'm not a huge believer in skipping all your meals like some people say," Winer said. "I like to think of it as an addition, or if you do one meal."
I had an idea of juice as being all about fruits, almost like a smoothie. And orange is a great source of vitamin C. Strawberries and blueberries are packed with nutrients, but too much of a good thing just ends up being too much.
"They think they're doing something great by jamming, you know, a whole apple, a whole orange, watermelon, all the berries," he said. "And you are getting all the vitamins, but you're getting so many calories."
Winer suggests building up to a more hard-core juice. We started with carrots, orange and lemon.
"Lemon is a great antioxidant. It's great also to kick start the metabolism," Winer said. "I don't throw too many berries in there because they are high in sugar."
There's fresh ginger juice pressed in here, too. It's sweet, but not too sweet.
A level-two juice might take the same stuff and add more vegetables like tomato, cucumber and kale. The more green the better. It's surprisingly sweet and delicious.
And then the level three -- the expert juice -- with romaine lettuce, kale, celery, cucumber and carrot.
"This one has no sweetness to it," Winer said. "This one's going to be a little more hardcore."
Almost all greens, it's like a salad in a glass. I thought I would have a more visceral reaction to it, but I didn't mind it at all.
The government recommends five servings of vegetables a day, and most of us never come close.
"I'm into it and it's hard for me," Winer said. "In a glass of juice, in about a 12-ounce glass of juice, you can get up to 10 servings of fruit and vegetables."
Juicers are all over the place in pricing. You can find cheap models for a little more than $100. The higher-end models, like the JuicePresso, are closer to $400.
Winer says look at the juice content from the machine. If it only squeezes out 20-percent juice, you're wasting a lot of money in produce.