Good Fruits For Juicing is a great way to get more fruits and vegetables into your diet. Many people are using juicing as a jumpstart for weight loss, or to help detoxify their body. However, some people don’t know which fruits will produce the most juice and which will produce less, since most won’t list this information on the label. I’ve compiled and tested the top ten best fruits for juicing from my experiences of making fruit juices over the last few years.
WHICH FRUITS ARE BEST FOR JUICING?
There’s no such thing as a “bad” fruit for juicing. Fruits are loaded with essential vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and fibers that your body needs, which means any fruit you toss in your juicer will be good. But if you’re new to juicing, it’s a good idea to get used to the basics and understand how much juice you can expect to get from certain fruits, and which are most nutrient-dense. Which fruits are best for juicing? Apples, oranges, grapes, the list goes on. Below is our complete list of our favorite juicing fruits to help you decide where to start.
The 10 Best Fruits for Juicing:
1.Apples
Apples are one of the world’s favorite fruits to juice. They’re packed with fiber and potassium, and known for their anti-inflammatory and allergy-fighting properties. Be careful chugging too much apple juice, though. The sugar and simple carbohydrate content are both high. Use apple juice for cooking warm cider, brewing hard cider, or for a refreshing, cold drink. Check out our article on What Kinds of Apples are Best for Juicing for more information.
2.Oranges
Oranges are another popular juicing fruit, famous for their high vitamin C content. They’re a natural immune system booster. Drink orange juice fresh for best results, as some orange varieties have a high limonin content, which can turn your juice bitter. For the best juicing oranges, read our article on What Kinds of Oranges are Best for Juicing.
3.Grapes
Grape juice may be too sweet for some, but its power to lower LDL cholesterol (the bad kind), reduce the risk of blood clots, and decrease blood sugar levels makes it a top contender. Pop seedless grapes, such as red or green table grapes, right in the juicer. For bolder flavor, try Concord, Muscato, and cotton candy grapes. If your grapes have seeds, chuck them in a pot and cook them on medium heat until the grapes split and the juice releases, then press them through a sieve to remove the seeds. You can throw them in your juicing machine, too, but the seeds will get chopped, releasing a spicy flavor you may find unfavorable.
4.Pomegranates
Pomegranates are a superfood recommended by doctors and nutritionists alike. They’re loaded with antioxidants and are known to fight cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, and heart disease. They’re sweet, they have a mild flavor, and their color is stunning. Pomegranates can be a pain to peel, though, so expect to spend some extra time on preparation.
5.Blueberries
Blueberries are another antioxidant powerhouse, known for being chock-full of essential B vitamins. They can help with depression, protect against aging, and fight cancer. But blueberries are tiny, and you’ll need a large quantity of them to produce enough juice to fill a glass. If you’re not up to buying in surplus, you can always use blueberry juice as an adjunct to other flavors, like apple, cranberry, or other berry juices.
6.Pineapples
Piña colada, anyone? Tropical pineapple juice is high on the sweetness factor, but it makes a nice companion to creamy, mild coconut milk (and rum, if that’s your thing). Pineapples are high in vitamin C and manganese, and are the only dietary source of bromelain, an anti-inflammatory enzyme that’s been shown to help heal muscle injuries.
7.Peaches
Buy peaches in late summer for the largest, juiciest fruit. Place them out at room temperature for a few days and let them soften, and their flavors will intensify and make a delicious cup of juice. Peaches are antioxidant-rich, great for the skin, and may help to reduce allergies.
8.Cranberries
If you’ve ever eaten raw cranberries, you know they’re extremely tart. Cranberry juice should be watered down or mixed with other fruits for the best palatability. But it’s well worth the effort to find a tasty balance. When it comes to nutrition, these sour little berries are packing heat. They’re antioxidant-rich, they lower LDL cholesterol, and they can fight the bacteria that causes urinary tract infections (UTIs). Because of the cranberry’s potent properties, if you take any medications, consult a doctor before drinking cranberry juice regularly.
9.Lemons
Fresh-squeezed lemon juice isn’t drinkable by itself, but it’s great added to iced tea and fruit smoothies, poured over fish before cooking, and for flavoring desserts. For a treat on a hot summer day, try throwing some lemon juice and agave nectar in a blender with fresh strawberries for a stunning strawberry lemonade. You can make lemon juice in large batches and store it in the fridge or freeze it for later (see our article How Long Does Fresh Juice Last for more information). It’s sure to come in handy.
10.Mangoes
Mango juice is delicious, rich, and sweet. It’s great mixed into lemonade, blended with strawberries, made into smoothies, or even as a sweetener in desserts. Be careful with mangoes, though. Peel them thoroughly before throwing them in the juicer, or you could be exposed to urushiol, a toxin found in the skin that is also found in poison ivy. Once the skin is off, you’re in the clear. The antioxidants in mangoes are known to boost eye health and can fight asthma and diabetes.
Healthy How-To: Juicing Fruits & Veggies
Juice bars have popped up everywhere, but it’s fairly simple — and often less expensive — to try juicing at home. Knowing which fruit and veggie combination’s make life easier, but a little experimentation is never bad.
Juice bars have popped up everywhere, but it’s fairly simple — and often less expensive — to try juicing at home. Knowing which fruit and veggie combination’s make life easier, but a little experimentation never hurts.Benefits of Juicing
Lots of healthy pros tout juicing as a way to naturally detox, lose weight and keep a healthy colon — unfortunately, there is no significant scientific evidence that juicing necessarily does these things. What we do know, however, is that fruits and veggies have tons of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber.
Making your own juice using fresh ingredients is definitely better than the processed versions you might find at the store. Yours will be free of chemicals or additives (there’s no high-fructose corn syrup when you do it yourself!). Fresh juice blends also contain more fiber from the pulp — the processed versions typically have the pulp extracted.
A homemade juice is also a quick way to get your daily dose of fruits and veggies. The National Cancer Institute encourages 9 servings of fresh fruits and veggies a day to help decrease the risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Creating a cucumber, carrots and celery juice can knock off your veggie requirements in a few gulps.
In some cases, juicing is easier than eating foods whole. Guava has tons of seeds, pomegranates are tough and messy to prep and eat, and wheatgrass is hard on digestion in its whole form. Juicing can get you the B-vitamins from pomegranate, potassium and folate from guava and iron from wheatgrass without a problem.What To Juice
You can juice almost any fruit or vegetables! Some simple fruits to start with are apples, melons, citrus and berries. Citrus fruit and strawberries have tons of vitamin C and melons are good for both vitamins A and C. Carrots, celery, cucumber, tomatoes, beets and lettuce are common veggies to try, too. Carrots have tons of the antioxidant beta-carotene and tomatoes contain potassium and vitamin C.When and How Much
Juicing is a healthy option sometimes, but you shouldn’t juice everything or do it all the time. A couple months ago, we talked about how fruit juice can be a high-calorie treat. Minding your portions is a must. Each fruit has 60 calories — add too many and your calories (not to mention sugar intake) will skyrocket. Stick to juicing only once a day. Eating whole, fresh fruits and veggies are also an important part of a healthy diet.
Also, know this: food prep techniques (including juicing) easily destroy vitamins when they’re exposed to air. To get the most out of your juice, drink up right away.Flavor Combos
There are endless combinations of flavors. Here are some ideas of what goes together:
- Cucumber: carrots and celery
- Spinach: tomatoes, celery and carrots
- Lettuce: parsnips, carrots, spinach, sprouts
- Papaya: pineapple, orange and cucumbers
- Various melons: strawberries
- Grapes: apples, melon, peach and cranberries
Juicers
Before electricity, reamers were the most common way to juice. Nowadays there are endless juicers available — from higher-end, more expensive power juicers to medium-sized citrus juicers to retro-looking juice pressers. Buy a juicer that fits your needs and budget — forgo the $250 juicer if you don’t plan on using it often.
Make sure you take apart and clean your juicer after each use and follow the manufacturer’s directions. A dirty juicer can harbor bacteria — something you don’t want to drink!
Best Fruits and Vegetables to Juice
If you’re interested in natural beverages, you’re probably wondering what the best fruits and vegetables to juice are.
After all, there are so many options that picking the right ones can prove to be a significant challenge.
To help you, we’ve put together this post where we explore the best juicing options, what makes them so great, and why you should get started. Let’s get started.
The Best Vegetables to Juice
Here are the six best veggies to juice:
- Cucumbers – these veggies offer lots of juice, making them the perfect addition to any juicing program. They are healthy, and are “high output” much like carrots and celery. This means they provide lots of juice when run through the juicer. See the paragraph below on “high output” fruits and veggies to learn why this matters.
- Carrots – thanks to their naturally sweet flavor and rich nutritional profile, carrots are a fantastic veggie to use for juicing. Just make sure to cut the stem off. They also create a lot of juice from each carrot, so they are also “high output” veggies.
- Beets – naturally rich in nitrates, beets offer many great health benefits. Remove the root before juicing.
- Celery – it has an amazing nutritional profile and releases plenty of juice as you process through juicer. Just make sure to cut off one inch above the root, as it often times has embedded dirt. So it’s just easier to cut off that 1 to 2 inches.
- Ginger – commonly known for its immunity-boosting properties, ginger is excellent because it improves our health and adds an interesting flavor to veggie juice. But keep in mind, this is a low output veggie – it will produce very little juice when run through your juicer.
- Kale – it has a rich nutritional profile, and its taste complements that of many fruits and veggies. This is a powerhouse veggie, but also a low output veggie.
The Best Fruits to Juice
- Blueberries – thanks to their rich nutritional and antioxidant profile, blueberries are the sweet delight your fruit juice needs.
- Strawberries – these are among the most delicious berries, and adding some can add a fresh and delightful feel to any fruit juice you make.
- Oranges – full of vitamin C and other nutrients, oranges taste great and work great with many other fruits.
- Lemons – these offer numerous health benefits related to the digestive tract, immune system, and blood glucose levels. You can juice the skin also, just cut off the two ends (at the very tip and bottom).
- Apples – packed with fiber and potassium, apples are low in calories, nutritious, and easy to juice.
Why Are The Above The Best Fruits And Vegetables to Juice?
The fruits and veggies are fantastic because they work great from a juicing standpoint. In other words, you get a lot of juice from each. With that said, you should be careful of what choices you make because some veggies work great in combination with others.
For example, juicing only veggies like ginger and beets produces small amounts of juice. If you want to produce enough juice to last you more than a day, it can quickly turn into a full-day project.
The good news is, you can easily avoid this problem by also adding veggies like celery, cucumber, and carrots, all of which yield a lot of juice.
Before moving on, it’s worth mentioning that you should only buy fruits and veggies for a single juicing session. Fruits and veggies tend to go bad, even if you store them in the fridge, so it doesn’t make sense to buy too much in advance.
High Output Fruits and Veggies
When juicing, you might be only juicing (creating juice) for one glass of juice.
However, many people like to create enough juice for several days. When looking to create enough juice for several days, it’s key to have some “high output” fruits and veggies in the mix.
And “high output” simply means the fruit or veggie, when run through the juicer, creates a good amount of juice. Here are some examples of high output veggies and fruits:
- Carrots
- Celery
- Cucumber
- Oranges
- Lemons
This is a huge benefit, as some veggies (like ginger) create a very tiny amount of juice. So it’s good to have some “high output” veggies like carrots as it speeds up the process (when making juice), and you don’t spend a fortune at the grocery store.
Otherwise, it might take six hours running fruits and veggie through your juicer to create enough juice for a few days. And you’ll need to buy the entire produce section at your local grocery store to create a quart of juice!
The Benefits of Juicing
The most notable benefit of juicing is that it’s an excellent primer for a weight loss journey. Doing it for a short while is great because it makes you feel better, gives your body a break from all that food digestion, and kickstart weight loss.
You can then use that initial traction to jump into a weight loss plan, and you’ll be much more engaged because you’d have already made some progress.
Best Juicer for Fruits and Veggies
As important as selecting the correct fruits and veggies, is selecting the best juicer for fruits and veggies! Some veggies are stubborn and tough to juice. A weak juicer can be a major headache, and you won’t enjoy the process. So whether it’s leafy greens, oranges, or a smooth-juicing veggie like celery, you’ll want to invest in a quality juicer like Breville.
Over time, the blades will dull slightly. As this starts to happen, if your juicer is weak it will become increasingly hard on the throughput. So what once took an hour to create all your juice, now takes two to three hours. Your juicer is working itself to death to process the tough veggies, and the whole process becomes messy.
So invest in a quality juicer, and it’s very well worth the extra money.
Juicing is Not a Long-Term Weight Loss Strategy – It’s a Primer
With that said, juicing is not a good long-term weight loss strategy because it is too rigid and can have adverse effects if you do it over several months. Instead, a three, five, or even ten-day juice is a great start. In many cases, people can expect to lose up to a pound per day.
But you then have to follow the juicing with a clean and healthy diet because you’ll otherwise gain the weight back. So when you complete your juice, it’s so critical to maintain momentum by transitioning a a lean and healthy diet.
This is key, as your body will undoubtedly want to binge after a juice, and if you lose your discipline you’ll give back the benefits that you earned from juicing. So know the best fruits and vegetables to juice, and then maintain your plan for long-term weight control. You’ll be so glad that you did.