Review and Giveaway: Lexen Healthy Juicer
November 7, 2008 by Deb
Filed under Giveaways, Recent Reviews, household product
Although my kids love juice, we tend to stick to the traditional juices like orange juice, apple juice, grape juice… We do branch out and have tried options like cherry or peach juices as well, and my girls all love mixed fruit juices like berry or fruit punches. But we’ve never really tried any kinds of juices from vegetables or leafy greens. I know that there’s a lot of health benefits from juices – and my brother has been a big proponent of juicing wheat grass for some time now.
So when I was contacted about trying out and reviewing the Lexen Healthy Juicer, I was immensely curious as to how well it would work – and loved the thought of being able to turn any fruit or vegetable we could get our hands on into yummy, healthy juice for our family.
What it is:
The Lexen Healthy Juicer is a manual, hand-powered wheatgrass juicer, specifically designed to handle leafy greens of all kinds, including spinach, parsley or cabbage (and can juice other fruits and vegetables too). It’s small, light (only 3 pounds) and easy to assemble for use and take apart for cleaning. The parts are all made either of Lexan (a tough polycarbonate) or stainless steel for strength, and the specially designed auger easily accepts pieces of fruits and vegetables and has tremendous crushing power.
From the website:
There are two types of juicers on the market today. Centrifugal and masticating (meaning to crush and squeeze). The main benefit of a masticating juicer is that it crushes the fruits and vegetables as opposed to shredding them as your average centrifugal juicer does.
This process of crushing and squeezing extracts more juice and also has less heat build up than from the high speed at which centrifugal juicers work, which destroys the enzymes and other vital nutrients. The Healthy Juicer produces a healthier juice!
The juicer attaches to a table or countertop with a suction base that’s patented at over 100 pounds of force, and also includes an optional sturdy chrome-plated, corrosion-free metal clamp that can be used by itself or along with the suction base as well.
The juicer comes with a juice cup, optional strainer that you can use if you want to strain out pulp, the above-mentioned table clamp and attached suction clamp, and several extras of spare parts such as washers. It also comes with a handy plunger tool for pushing vegetables into the wide mouthed opening of the juicer (which also doubles as a handy lever to assist in attaching and removing the suction base).
Here’s my take on it:
My review sample of the Lexen Healthy Juicer arrived right before my girls and I headed out to spend the weekend with friends. So I simply packed it and took it with us, figuring that it might be fun to all try it out together. My friend had run to the grocery store that morning, and she picked up a variety of fruits and vegetables to try juicing:
We started off with lemons, thinking that we could use the lemon juice to make a pitcher of lemonade for all of us to share. Then we moved on to the carrots, spinach leaves and apples.
The juicer was extremely easy to set up – the instructions clearly showed how to assemble it. There wasn’t as much information listed about how to actually use it though – and we thought that maybe some kind of recipe book for various different kinds of juices might be helpful as well.
For example, the instruction manual did mention that it’s helpful to cut fruits and non-leafy vegetables into strips before inserting them into the juicer. What we discovered when we ignored this advice, is that you basically have to cut everything into strips. Which makes perfect sense when you watch how the juicer works – the auger turns and draws the end of the strip or leaf down into the juicing chamber where it winds around until hitting the stainless steel tip and being crushed. Our first experience with lemons resulted in a lot of pulp but little juice, until we used the plunger tool to squash more juice out of the pulp caught in the strainer. I think that the lemon seeds also plugged up some areas of the juicer too.
When we tried the carrots (cut into strips as suggested) and the spinach, the juicer performed more as expected and our results were much, much better. We ran several strips of apples through as well to add some flavor, and my friend sampled our carrot/spinach/apple juice. She pronounced it pretty good, actually – although none of the kids would try it. 
Things were a bit hectic that day, with spilled cups of lemonade to contend with and kids wanting to all see what was going on at once. So, I tried the juicer again on another day after we got home – just me, the juicer and a single apple. I wanted to see how well it would do if I cut the apple into strips to begin with and used the juicer exactly as recommended.
This process went so much smoother. For one thing, it was just me – and I already knew how to easily assemble and use the juicer. Plus, by cutting the apple into thin strips, it mimicked the way the juicer works on wheatgrass and other leafy vegetables, making it much more efficient. Especially since there were no lemon seeds or anything else in the way.
This juicer is almost too easy to use. It hand cranks effortlessly, even when juicing something as dense as an apple. There are three products that are produced – the juice (obviously), dry waste exuded through the end of the juicer with every bit of juice extracted, and the pulp – which in this case appeared like a juicy applesauce. I can see there being use for all three of these products in cooking or baking various apple-flavored recipes.
The juicer produced about half of a standard juice-sized glass of apple cider. Really pretty good from a single apple from what I can tell. And it tasted exactly like the apple cider that I look forward to every fall at the cider mill. I’m so thrilled to be able to have it any time I want, in my own kitchen.
Clean-up was absolutely no trouble at all. The entire juicer disassembles down into base pieces than can be hand-washed easily and left to dry. There was no scrubbing or extra effort needed, and within minutes everything was clean and drying:
The bottom line:
Obviously, this is specifically a wheatgrass juicer – and I’m sure that it does an amazing job at juicing wheatgrass, even though I didn’t test it on that. I am extremely impressed with how well it does with other vegetables and fruits though (although I don’t know that I’d try citrus again, except very carefully). Of the things that we did try, I think it was most efficient with the spinach leaves (again, this would make sense since it’s main use is for leafy vegetables) – and I’m already planning where and how I can sneak spinach juice into my family’s diet. Along with trying every other kind of juice I can think of. And maybe even wheatgrass as well. 
Why wheatgrass?
I’ve heard about the health benefits of drinking wheatgrass juice from my brother for years, but specifically pulled this information from Lexen’s website (thanks!):
Growing and juicing your own wheat sprouts is not only decorative and fun, but also highly nutritional. Wheatgrass is full of vitamins, minerals and amino acids. The juice is reported to have many health benefits due to the high concentration of chlorophyll, Vitamins B-12, B-6, K & C, and beta-carotene.
Wheatgrass has the following properties:
•Detoxifies the liver
•Cleanses the colon
•Leads to a tangible energy boost
•Boosts the immune system
•Purifies blood as Chlorophyll has similar molecular structure to hemoglobin – a component of blood
•Very rich in chlorophyll
•Contains 97 enzymes, vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals made famous in the US by Dr. Ann Wigmore in treatment of cancer
•Experience less colds as your resistance to infection increases •
•Contains more protein per once than beef
Where can you find it?:
You can purchase the Lexen Healthy Juicer at 877MyJuicer.com, or other various retailers or online stores, including Amazon
Would you like to try it?:
Thanks to 877MyJuicer.com, I have the opportunity to give away a Lexen Healthy Juicer to a lucky reader! If you are interested in juicing wheatgrass, or any other fruit or vegetable and want to do so in your own kitchen with this awesome juicer, here are the rules:
- Enter by telling leaving a comment on this post to tell me if you’ve ever tried drinking wheatgrass (and what you thought of it), or if not, what other fruits or vegetables you’d love to try juicing if you win this. Please don’t just say ‘choose me’, or your entry will be discarded.
- The contest will run until Saturday, November 22nd at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected through random drawing, contacted by e-mail, listed on this post and also submitted to PRIZEY.Fetch. US entries only, please.
- Please leave a valid e-mail address or other way to contact you! If you don’t wish to leave your e-mail address, please make sure that you leave a unique name and check back with PRIZEYWinners to see if you won. If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen by random drawing.
- If you’d like an extra entry or three, you can either:
- Subscribe to my RSS feed (click on the orange icon in the upper right sidebar) or subscribe via e-mail – leave me a separate comment to let me know.
- Mention this contest on your blog with a link back to this post, and leave a separate comment with the link to your post so I can find it.
- Either Twitter about, ‘Stumble’, ‘Digg’ or ‘Kirtsy’ this post – leave me a separate comment with your username at whichever site you chose (one extra entry).
So that’s a total of 4 comments/entries if you do all of the extra entry options.
Good luck!
PS – want another chance to win one of these? I’m giving away a second juicer over at Mom of 3 Girls – come and check it out! Click here to see who won over at Mom of 3 Girls!
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – the random number generator has chosen comment #36 as the winner:
Congratulations to judy brittle, whose extra subscription entry has won for her! I will be e-mailing you shortly to work out the details.
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I have never tried wheatgrass before, but I would love to have a juicer. My daughter loves fruits, so we would do alot of fruit, probably apples. I like vegetable juices so I might try that a lot. Thanks for such a health concious giveaway!
I have never tried wheatgrass juice before, but would certainly be willing to give it a try, based on all the health benefits.
I would probably mostly juice fruits, such as oranges, grapefruit and apples.
Deidre
deidre_durance at hotmail dot com
I’m a subscriber.
Deidre
deidre_durance at hotmail dot com
I have tried wheatgrass =- once and don’t plan to again. I’d juice the usual, apples, carrots. Healthy!
Love the wheatgrass with a slice of orange to chase the taste. As far as, juicing I am a beginner and would love to broaden my horizons. I would like to mix a combo of apples, ginger, parsley, and possibly beets- if this juicer could handle.
This juicer would give me and my family an opportunity to better our health on a daily basis.
This is something I would use all the time. I love to grow my own veggies, fruits and herbs. This would be so nice to have. My family and I would really enjoy it!
I have tried wheatgrass juice before and it is something you have to get used to drinking with your eyes closed. I love carrot juice with a little bit of lemon juice, it is so good for you with tons of vitamins.
Please delete the first post, I typed my email addy wrong
I have tried wheatgrass juice before and it is something you have to get used to drinking with your eyes closed. I love carrot juice with a little bit of lemon juice, it is so good for you with tons of vitamins.
I am a subscriber.
i used to work at Jamba juice when i was a teen and tried wheatgrass. It wasnt the best nor the worst think i’ve ever tasted. But it was pretty bad.
Thanks for the opportunity to win!
Michelle
Shellydelight@gmail.com
Http://shellydelight.etsy.com
I’ve tried wheatgrass at Jamba juice. It wasn’t my favorite but, drinkable and would go with other juices. I think making a carrot/fruit mix would be on my list to make
I’ve never tried wheatgrass.
I’m pretty sure I’ve had wheat grass added to my smoothy at jamba juice. noo 100%. I would probably try some apples… some blueberries things like that.
Thanks for the entry
tonyamcrain [at] aol [dot] com
I have had wheat grass juice added to other fruit smoothies, but I am definitely interested in juicing things like spinach and other veggies I can’t get my kids to eat yet!
I’ve never tried Wheat Grass. I would definetly juice oranges in this juicer though. I love fresh squeezed orange juice. Carrot juice too. If you put carrots in with another fruit, you can’t really tell they are there… even my fiance doesn’t notice!
I’ve never tried wheatgrass. I’d love to use the juicer to experiment new flavors of fruit/vegetable smoothies. Thanks for the giveaway!
I’m already a subscriber.
We love green juice! I would love to be able to create my own version at home
I would probably end up juicing apples, and grapes!
I am a subscriber!
mommyhoodisthankless{AT}gmail.com
legacyofbrutalitysa{AT}gmail.com
I stumbled your giveaway
Username: wastebasketsa
mommyhoodisthankless{AT}gmail.com
I blogged about this giveaway: Here
mommyhoodisthankless{AT}gmail.com
I really like wheatgrass juice. I’m one of the people who thinks the aftertaste is yummy.
My husband has been bugging me for weeks to get a juicer. We did a fruit and vegetable only diet for a little while… the juicer would have really helped out! haha
Wheatgrass – I have tried it and i do like it. I know it’s healthy, so I drink it. But not often, because we do not have our own. My husband is allergic to grass, so he won’t try it! haha
I want to try juicing pears! Yum yum! Sugary79@aol.com
Fresh-squeezed juice is my favorite beverage (aside from water) so I’d love to give this a try. I think I’d probably stick to traditional favorites like lemons, apples, and oranges…but I might try some leafy veggies too since that appears to be its forte.
I also posted about this contest as part of my Tuesday Tours column: http://metropolitanmama.net/2008/11/tuesday-tours-whats-happening-on-the-web-43/.
i’ve never tried juicing wheatgrass before, or anything else! i’m a juicing newbie, but i’m a high raw vegan. i buy my juices from juice bars, but i really really want to get my own juicer
We love the Naked Juices, so I’d like to try to duplicate some of those flavors. I’ve never home juiced before!
I have had wheat grass befre and quite frankly I find it to “green ‘ tasting for me. I live in florida and we have a wide variety f fruit available yr round. I have guavas and mangos that I think would make a rockin juice. I would love to have a juicer. I care for my 4 and 5 yr old graddaughters everyday . they would really think it was a treat to make juice daily. thank you for a great contest
Happy Holidays
i’ve never tried wheat grass, i’d like to try juicing pears
also a subscriber!
I haven’t tried wheatgrass but I would if I had a juicer. I would also juice bananas, apples, and strawberries!!
I’ve not tried wheatgrass, I was thinking of using it for fresh squeezed orange juice!
I have never tried wheat grass juice but I would. I love apple cider, I do make pear and carrot.
I have never had wheat grass but I would try it. I love apple cider. I also drink carrot and pear juice.
Never tried wheatgrass, but have wanted to. Would love to put some parsley in with it and fresh mint.
[...] Lexen Healthy Juicer (enter by 11:59 pm EST on November 22nd). And I’m also giving another one away at Mom of 3 Girls as [...]
[...] Lexen Healthy Juicer (enter by 11:59 pm EST on November 22nd). And Iâ??m also giving another one away here at Mom of 3 Girls [...]
i have never tried wheat grass but i would love to try making pomegranate juice
I have tried wheatgrass before. My friend bought it for me in an attempt to get me interested in obscure health foods. I admit I was not impressed. I do, however, enjoy juicing vegetables and fruits, particularly pears and carrotts.
I have not tried wheatgrass but would love to try oranges, pineapples and carrots.
I’ve never tried it, but probably should, since my daughter wants to. Strange.
I’d probably juice some grapes or cherries. Yum!
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