WSJournal. Juicers Invade Kitchen Counters

More Consumers Buy Pricey Appliances to Turn Vegetables Into a Palatable Drink

Kimberly Egan's morning brew features kale, parsley, spinach, lime, apples, grapes and pineapple.

The 55-year-old, of Oakland, Calif., created the concoction after splurging on a $500 juicer last summer. "I needed balance," says Ms. Egan, chief executive of a product-development consulting firm. "I know that I should have five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and there was no way that was happening in my life." Now, she says she has more energy, her skin looks great and she doesn't get colds. "I feel like the juice is super-nourishing my body," she says

Rachel Johnson, of Billings, Mont., sometimes juices spinach along with apples and pears as a way to get her daughters, Presley, age 7, at left, and Carsyn, age 4, at right, to get more vegetables in their diet.

Hoping to slim down, detoxify or just be healthier, more Americans are buying juicers. Some want to boost their fresh-produce consumption in a time-efficient, taste bud-friendly way. Others are going on a multiday juice cleanse, a diet composed of solely fruit and vegetable juice, to jump-start weight loss or a lifestyle change.

Juicing up a big pile of fruits and vegetables is certainly easier than peeling, chopping and preparing them in a soup or a stew. But nutritionists caution it may be healthier to simply add a few more servings to your daily diet.

Some nutrients actually get lost in juicing, says Jennifer Nelson, director of clinical nutrition for the Mayo Clinic. "You're getting a higher quota of some nutrients, but not necessarily all of them."

71%: Increase in U.S. sales of juice extractors for the year ended November 2012.

On the other hand, adding a serving of juice to a regular diet can be beneficial. Vegetable-averse people may find a strong vegetal taste, let's say of kale, is offset in a juice that also contains apple or other sweet fruit. Recipes tend to promote deep orange and leafy green vegetables often lacking in many diets, Ms. Nelson says.

A high-quality juicer is an investment. Breville's latest model, the Juice Fountain Crush, runs about $400, while its top seller, the Juice Fountain Plus, costs about $150. The Vitamix Professional Series 750, a juicer and multitasking small appliance that runs about $689, promises to be "the ultimate sous chef for your home kitchen." Hurom's Slow Juicer, at $359, claims to be smaller and quieter and deliver more juice than other brands. Cuisinart offers a $149 fast juicer and recently launched a compact juicer for $99.

Juicer extractors remain a niche appliance, but U.S. sales are surging. They hit $215 million for the year ended in November, up 71% over the year before, according to market-research firm NPD Group.

Retailers credit a 2010 documentary, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead," which chronicles the 60-day juice fast of an Australian filmmaker, Joe Cross, who traveled around the U.S. consuming mountains of produce that he put through a juicer in the back of his car. The film shows how he lost 82 pounds and put his autoimmune disease into remission. "People are sick and tired of being sick and tired," he says. (Mr. Cross says he received a financing stake of less than 10% for his film from members of the family of Rupert Murdoch, who is chairman of News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal.)

The movie had limited distribution in U.S. theaters, but appliance retailers say it has been hard to keep up with demand for juicers since it hit Netflix, in July 2011. "After the film there was a groundswell," says Jack Schwefel, chief executive of retailer Sur La Table, which expects 2013 juicer sales to rise 60%.

"We were chasing juicers for all of 2012," says Neil Lick, vice president of merchandising at Williams-Sonoma Inc., WSM -0.72% which is highlighting juicers and juice recipes on its catalog and website this month.

Juicers generally fall into one of three categories: "fast," "slow" and "whole food." The fast kind, also known as traditional or centrifugal juicers, are loud machines that grind produce to a liquid in a few earsplitting seconds. Fans like the thin-textured juice these machines produce, leaving the solid "pulp" behind.

But some fast juicers don't process leafy greens well, and they don't handle fine-textured wheat grass, a popular ingredient in the juicing world. They also lose points with some users because they generate heat, which experts say can deplete important nutrients.

Breville, maker of the Juice Fountain Plus featured in the juicing documentary, says its machines generate insignificant heat (about two degrees Fahrenheit), which doesn't diminish nutrients in the juice. The absence of pulp appeals to people on a juice cleanse, says Adéle Schober, a Breville spokeswoman. "A true juice cleanse is just the juice," she says.

Slow juicers are gaining more attention. They crush or press juice out of produce in a few minutes, leaving less waste behind than a fast juicer does, and they typically do a better job with tricky ingredients like wheat grass, nuts and leafy greens. Consumers looking for fiber in their juice appreciate the pulp content in juice from a slow juicer.

From left: Presley, Rachel, Scott and Carsyn Johnson, enjoy some home-brewed juice.

"After you juice carrots with our slow juicer, they are so dry they crumble," says Chris Wert, marketing manager for Roland Products Inc., which distributes Hurom slow juicers in the U.S. Sales rose about 45% in the U.S. in 2012 compared with the year before, he says. Hurom plans a new model for $399 this spring.

A third method, known as whole-food juicing, uses high-speed blades to shred produce into a high-fiber drink that some purists think should be called a "smoothie." Vita-Mix Corp., which makes whole-food juicers, says the texture is a nutritional advantage. "You enable the whole fruit or vegetable, including the pith, pulp, seeds and skin," says Anthony Ciepiel, Vita-Mix's chief operating officer. He says 2012 sales rose 52%.