Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)My wife and I have had this for four months of intense juicing of cabbage and occasionally broccoli. My wife had multiple stomach and duodenal ulcers from medications due to a spinal injury and we combed the internet looking for studies on the best home remedies, as prescription antacids were not healing her. We chanced across two studies on raw cabbage juice healing ulcers in a matter of weeks, so that led me to research juicers.
There are four basic types of juicers. In order of general effectiveness (least effective to most effective) on greens, they are as follows:
1. Spinning blade/centrifugal ($50-$200)
2. Single-gear masticating (like this one) ($200-$350)
3. Double-gear masticating ($425-$550)
4. Hydraulic press w/shredder ($1,000-$2,500)
We were hoping the ulcers would heal quickly and I didn't plan to invest much. In reading the reviews on the spinning blade-type extractors, they seemed a poor choice for leafy greens, but quite good for fruits and other types of vegetables. One additional caveat I found was that juice from such juicers didn't keep that long, apparently due to oxidation and heat friction. My wife grew up with such a juicer and she had always enjoyed it, but she agreed it wouldn't work well for wringing juice from a cabbage.
Next came the single-gear juicers, and these varied from steel to melamine construction to a new high-tech super-hard GE plastic. Steel can oxidize fruit juice and melamine is a soft plastic that is most known for appearing in contaminated animal food from China, which in tests artificially appears as protein. Neither of these sounded good, but in reviewing the latest versions of the J8006/J8004 (they are identical except for the color and $40 difference), I found Omega was using GE Ultem, a plastic at least six times harder than melamine for the augur. This was a huge plus to me.
The double-gear juicers appear to get about 15% more juice out of the same amount of produce, but take quite a bit more time to clean. They are also twice the cost of single-gear juicers. This wasn't worth it to me.
Finally, the hydraulic press juicers get the most juice out, but can cost thousands of dollars. I couldn't find one under $800.
Our Experience:
I decided to get the J8004 and we went to town using it. It's been used probably 40 times so far for about 45 - 60 minutes each time. I make two quarts of cabbage juice at a time and it's refrigerated, with my wife drinking all of it within two days. At the end of the second day, if it's been kept sealed in the refrigerator, the juice tastes virtually identical to when it was juiced (just shake it up a bit because the juice settles).
Directions for the juicer say it shouldn't be used more than 30 minutes at a time. This isn't a problem, as I prepare two plates of cabbage leaves, juice them, turn off the machine, then prepare two more plates of leaves at a time.
The Omega leaves some juice in the pulp, which I now recapture by feeding the mash back through the machine. Strangely, the extra passes go very fast compared with the first one with the leaves, basically because the mash goes in the tube with absolutely no friction, and is much less volume to handle. In general, if you are juicing cabbage leaves, this is how each pass juices out if you got 600 milliliters with the first two platefuls:
1st time - 600 milliliters
2nd time - 150 ml more
3rd time - 50 ml more
4&5th time - 50 ml more total
Yes, the double-gear machines might get more each pass, but I figure that putting cabbage through three times is more than equal to putting the it through twice on a double-gear, and I save $250 for that net of one extra pass.
The unit has held up well and has never stained from all the greens touching it, so save forty dollars and get this over the silver J8006 twin (both units are superior to the J8005 because that unit, strangely numbered higher than this, uses a melamine auger and has only a 10 year warranty). The parts all rinse clean in no time, save for the two filtering portions on the cone the augur presses against. These require a brushing motion (one is included) to clean, and even then the part with the fine mesh retains some cabbage fiber. Fortunately, we put the parts in the dishwasher where anything remaining can be blasted off.
We've used it to mass-grind coffee with an included grinding option. It grinds a pound of coffee in about three minutes.
You can't go wrong with an Omega J8004 if you are juicing greens. We would definitely buy this again, but due to the incredibly long warranty, we don't expect to buy anything for over 15 years!
UPDATE: We've now used it more than 60 days on cabbage and broccoli and used it to make wonderful blueberry sorbet (using the second cone unit for grinding). Putting frozen wild blueberries into it makes a sorbet come out the end that if allowed to thaw, is a perfect cold blueberry juice. This summer we have been using it in this capacity far more than for cabbage. WONDERFUL! (NOTE: My wife's ulcers completely healed by the two month point, so we've moved on to other juicing other items.)
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Omega J8004 Nutrition Center Commercial Masticating Juicer, White
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