The reason the 8003 is $70 or so cheaper is because the 8006 comes with a new auger (8 times stronger) which you don’t get with the older models and a better body design.

The warranty on the 8003 is 10 years. The 8006 has a 15 year warranty.

-Amy
http://dealusional.blogspot.com

The veggie brews sound awful good though.

xox!

Even though the guy on the video puts whole carrots, if you wind up buying this juicer, take the extra few minutes and chop the veggies and fruit into one inch pieces. You’ll get the most juice that way (I tried both ways) and it’s gentler on the machine.

You’ve got to alternate soft and hard, also.

Roll up leafy veggies as he says. With the mesclun we’ve been rolling it, a messy roll, but it works.

Oh, and with this juicer, if you use cold produce, you get cold juice, not warm-ish like with regular juicers.

I hope you’ll feel better tomorrow.

Gotta go to bed.

XO

The Omega masticating juicer will cost you only $50 less than the VitaMix (based on Amazon.com prices) so for the difference, it may make more sense to you to buy the VitaMix.

However, this juicer has multiple functions: leafy veggie juicing (which none of the centrifugal juicer can do well), nut butters, frozen ice cream-like sorbets, pasta extrusion, meat grinder.

It is a very quiet juicer and very safe to operate (safer than your current juicer) and a breeze to assemble/clean.

A very important nutritional fact to consider: masticating juicers extract the juice at only 80 rpm, this slow speed eliminates oxidation which kills enzymes. The VitaMix, unfortunately, due to the high speed, kills the enzymes.

I really had no idea about this until I started researching these machines but, now that we’ve been juicing with it for a few days, I can tell you that there’s a huge difference in the taste, texture and even the way the juice looks.

This fall a friend made tons of juice from apples, tomatoes and carrots using a VitaMix which took no time at all (though the machine is very noisy) and was very easy to clean but the juices didn’t look or taste anything like what we are having now. Most notably: the juices she made had a slight brownish tint and looked somehow clear with a lot of foam on top. The juice from our masticating juicer has a deep color, almost no foam and the taste is far superior.

I’ve also learned that it is better for us (humans) to juice vegetables and just eat fruits whole -I won’t go into details here but you’ll find a lot of info on this online- and this type of juicer extracts the most out of leafy veggies.

I bought a big tub of organic mesclun from Costco (not local, I know, but I wanted to test this machine) and have been putting handfuls of it in the feeding tube alternating with carrots and other veggies and a couple of fruits. It’s simply amazing how much juice this thing gets out of those tender leaves and even more amazing is the taste of the resulting juice which isn’t bitter at all.

The juicer extracts pulp that’s very dry but you can even re-process the pulp to get even more juice which we haven’t done because this thing extracts a lot more juice than a centrifugal juicer.

I haven’t yet ground meat because I don’t have any meat I can use for that right now but I have made peanut butter and it’s the best we’ve ever had. I’ve also made banana-blueberry-peach “ice cream” using frozen fruit and we loved it. So easy, so creamy, so good.

You can make pasta with this thing, which I’ll try next week.

The videos below will give you a very good idea of how this machine works. I ordered mine from Amazon with free-shipping and was, quite unexpectedly, delivered in three days .

Anyway, the guy in the videos does a very good and honest demo. The machine works exactly as shown.

Tomorrow I will let you know exactly how long it takes for our machine to produce two 10 oz glasses of juice – I think it’s about five minutes but I’m not sure. Cleaning -rinsing, actually- takes about 40 seconds.

This machine comes with a 15 year warranty (all parts covered). Sam’s Club sells a similar machine (http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?&dest=5&item=441166&cid=SearchResult%7C919852%7CKuvings%C2%AE+Multi-Purpose+Masticating+Juicer+%E2%80%93+Green) for about $100 less but it only has a 1 year warranty that’s why I decided to order the Omega.

Here’s the Omega 8006 demo:

http://www.youtube.com/rawfoods#p/u/74/_r437hboI_U

And here’s a different type of masticating juicer, also by Omega, but this one is not a multi-function so no nut butters, pasta, meat grinding, etc. Also, many reviewers complain about parts breaking rather often and it’s just as messy to clean as a centrifugal juicer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ8OckabN0w&feature=related

XOX