History of Juicing

If you want to enter a healthier lifestyle, juicing (along with a balanced diet and exercise) is a good way to kick-start it. If you’re recovering from an illness or an accident, a juicing therapy will help in nursing you back to health. Before you start browsing for the best juicer discounts or juicer deals, you may want to learn how juicing started and evolved.

You might say, “It looks like the juicing trend will not go anytime soon!” As a matter of fact, juicing has been practiced and favored by health buffs since thousands and thousands of years ago. And the Dead Sea Scrolls will prove you that! It mentioned an ancient Jewish desert tribe known as the Essenes who would mash pomegranate and figs for “profound strength and subtle form,” around 150 B.C.

There are many other ancient texts that make mention of the juicing, but the Dead Sea Scrolls are believed to be the first documented evidence of juicing for health benefits.

Ayurvedic medicineAncient Indian practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine would make juices from lime and orange and add them with salt — they believed this concoction would fight off fatigue. They also prepared juices made of beet and grape to help increase red blood cells.

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Before the advent of machines, herbalists and other practitioners would mostly ground, grate, pound crush, and press fruits and vegetables to extract juice for the purposes of healing.

Jewish-American physician Max Gerson proposed and developed the alternative treatment for cancer, called Gerson Therapy, a diet based of purely organic plant-based matter such as fruits and vegetables. He was the first to introduce the concept that such diet could be used to cure serious diseases, particularly cancer.

PressoirAlso in the early 20th century, raw foods advocate Dr. Norman Walker published several books on healthy living and nutrition, including Raw Vegetable Juices. He also introduced the world’s first mechanical juicer, a hydraulic press jucer called the Norwalk. Even though the machine was cumbersome to work with, nevertheless it was effective in grating produce and squeezing the juice out of it. The pulp was placed into a linen bag and pressed using a hydraulic press. With the introduction of the Norwalk, anyone could make their own fresh juice straight from fruits and vegetables. The Norwalk juicers still exist and are still commercially available on the market today.

In 1985 Dr. Norwalk died at the age of 99, contrary to the legendary claims that he died at the age of 109. Still, 99 is a ripe old age, a suggestion that juicing could even extend one’s life.

In the mid-1950s the world’s first masticating was introduced, called the Champion juicer. It might have worked fast to give a freshly-made juice, but high speed of the turning rod — at 4,000 rpm — generated heat, which destroyed the juice’s live enzymes and nutrients.

In 1993, the world’s first twin-gear juicer was invented by a Korean man known only as Mr. Kim, whose goal was to introduce a “living juicer” to the world. The juicer was called the Green Power, whose method of extracting juice was based on the mortar-and-pestle principle of pressing out the maximum amount of living nutrients because it did not use heat or friction.

Jamba JuiceIn the 1990s Jamba Juice was founded in San Luis Obispo, California. It began offering a wide range of smoothies, but now they also offer freshly squeezed juice and health bowls. It now has 800 locations in 26 states, as well as international branches mostly in North America and Asia.

Today, people enjoy a lot of options when it comes to juices and juicing. You may want to go to a health bar to get your juice fix, but it would be even better if you buy your own juicer and make your own freshly-squeezed fruit and vegetable juice at home. There are several top rated juicers on the market today that come in several brands, models and price tags. Manufacturers have been putting on their best efforts to promote their own juicers as the best juicers you will ever buy.

However, it is still best to read juicer reviews from the customers themselves because they’re the ones who offer the most genuine (and most convincing) opinions about the certain types of juicers that they use themselves. They may (or may not) recommend you to buy this or that juicer depending on the overall performance of the machine.