Juiced up or Pulp fiction? (Jack LaLanne Power Juicer)

Member Name: dididave

Product:	Jack LaLanne Power Juicer
Date:	05/02/06 (8147 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quiet motor, easy operation, assembly.

Disadvantages: Bulky, time consuming to clean.

Hands up if you don’t know who Jack La Lanne is. No, me neither but apparently he is a legend in fitness circles across America since 1936. I have been watching the advert for the Jack La Lanne Power juice on various home shopping channels for years now and was always amazed by how easy to use and effective it looked. Jack La Lanne’s heady claims that regular juicing makes you look and feel younger may be a little far-fetched but the product itself looks impressive and he is in his 90‘s! After trying a cheap Cookworks Juicer that disintegrated in a week, despite much chopping I was finally convinced to spend the admittedly expensive fifty-five pound this cost me on eBay.

The first thing I noticed on delivery is that it comes in a huge box! Thankfully this is because it arrives disassembled However, after clipping the five parts together it is still a bulky machine with dimensions of 15" L x 12.13" W x 7.25" H this takes up most of the work surface in our already small kitchen. It is a hefty so and so to at fifteen pounds, that’s seven bags of sugar people! As such this will be unlikely to fit safely on even the sturdiest shelf. Fortunately assembly is simple enough with the motor, filter, blade, chute and pulp container clipping neatly together with mere glances at the step by step illustrations required.

The Jack La Lanne boasts an accessory kit worth twenty-pounds but this is a laughable marketing ploy. All you get is a plastic wired brush, base, measuring jug and overflow platform. The brush is nothing you cannot get from a discount store for twenty pence, the base is a superfluous, functionless addition, the jug is a nice size but hardly essential when a decent sized glass would work too and the overflow platform is made obsolete by the fact there is no overflowing! All in all the accessory kit is worth at most a couple of quid and merely makes your already large juicer bigger.

So, after discarding the various accessories I can get down to some serious juicing. The joy of the Jack La Lanne compared to its cheaper brethren is that it accepts a large amount of whole fruits and vegetables with little or no chopping. After the peeling and dissecting required in the Cookworks version this is bliss and indeed simplicity itself. After locking the juicer down with the steel safety bar (always the sign of a powerful machine) I can switch it on. Jack La Lanne claims the juicer has a “whisper quiet” motor this is certainly seems to be the case compared to the hammer drill noise of my previous model. The instructions state that I should leave the motor running for at least thirty seconds before juicing to let the motor get up to speed. This allows me time to check the instructions for what fruits I should and should not use. The Jack La Lanne comes with a handy quantity and recipe guide telling you what fruits and vegetables work best in the juicer with recipes for a “Vitamin C Boost” and “Tropical Punch”. There does however, seem to be some discrepancies as to what fruit and veg I should use with celery being fine but leek not. I would have thought they had a similar consistency, not that I fancy a leek juice! Bananas are also a no-no as they clog the filter and have very little juice. As this is an American product I also found the recipes a little obscure with some fruits I had never even heard of.

Never one to follow a recipe I decide to go for my own choices. After all you can only make what you have in your fruit bowl or veg rack. Using two carrots, an orange (peeled, you can drop them in unpeeled but it is very bitter) and two apples I drop them whole into the feed chute and push the plunger in after them. One thing I would say about this juicer is be quick with your plunger! On our first attempt I was peppered with bits of projectiled pulp. A good sign that the 3200rpm motor is up to speed but makes for a messy kitchen. The juice goes through with little effort on my part and the motor makes very little noise compared to its cheaper counterpart. Two glasses of pulp free, smooth juice deposited neatly into the jug . However, perhaps the only problem when making the juice is in the nozzle the juice comes out of. Being almost flat it does not flow as directly as I would like into my glass/jug. As such there can be a fair amount of juice left balanced on the lip. Despite the instructions claims that powering down for a minute allows the rest of the juice to filter through I still have to tilt the juicer slightly to drain the excess. A minor irritation but still an irritation.

Of course the most important thing is how the juice tastes and in this respect the Jack La Lanne excels. Juice is smooth and pulp free very much like the expensive juices you buy in the supermarket. Juicing individual fruits such as oranges and apples is perhaps the ultimate example of the difference between this juice and that on the supermarket shelves. That “juice from concentrate” you buy is nothing like what the truly “pure” Jack La Lanne juice looks, smells or tastes like. Orange juice has none of the luminescence of the carton variety and apple juice is light green rather than brown. As for La Lanne’s claims of youth and energy I do feel more awake of a day after drinking fresh juice but it is not going to roll back the years. It is after all juice, not botox or eight hours in the gym!

Of course, after using the juice the worst part is the cleaning. Jack La Lanne claims this is easy to clean and dishwasher safe. Unfortunately, I have no dishwasher so cleaning in the good old sink is a little more arduous. Disassembly is very simple with it all clipping apart very easily. The first thing that you will want to tackle is the massive pulp container. What is good about the pulp is that so much juice is extracted it is merely damp rather than wet. La Lanne claims the pulp can be used in fruit pies or vegetable casseroles and can be frozen but I prefer my orange and carrot peel to go in the bin thank you. Cleaning all the parts is relatively simple although a little time consuming. I have found the best way is to soak them in hot, soapy water for ten minutes and then rinse them under the hot tap using a wire brush to clean filter and blade. In total it takes about fifteen minutes to clean the juicer so I try to make a good litre of juice per use so it only needs cleaning once. La Lanne recommends drinking the juice within a few hours as the vitamins disperse but I have found the taste remains fine in the fridge for a few days.

So, am I impressed with my juicer? Indeed I am. As a juicer it is efficient, quiet and effective although it is disappointingly more messy, bulky and more time consuming to clean than I imagined. The lack of waste makes this a cheap alternative to other juicers and it certainly tastes better than shop bought juice. Expensive at it’s RRP of ninety-nine pound I do however, think fifty-five on eBay is a reasonable price and would recommend it.

Summary: A great juicer but a bit big for the average kitchen!

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