If you have wandered the kitchen part of a department store in late years, you may have noticed there’s a type of arms race going on among grinder makers to make the fastest turning blades. Technically, these high-powered, industrial-grade machines aren’t blenders at all, however emulsifiers–basically, that is any blender using a horsepower of 2 or greater.
Generally speaking, emulsifiers are supposed to be capable of shearing food into particles so small that a silky smooth mixture can even result even from components that don’t often play nice together–like water and oil. They can also be handy for amateur chefs, who may need to make thick concoctions, such as nut butters, which could require a little extra oomph on the blender’s part.
But the companies that promote these machines like to say high-speed blenders can do more than conquer infamously difficult substances, like mayonnaise and peanut butter. Frequently, they make asserts that the blenders can”break open” better nutrient benefits in your food. (More on this in a moment.) And with entry-level versions such as the BlendTec Classic 575 and Vitamix 5200 costing $420 and $450, respectively, you’d better hope that you are getting more than just a couple additional RPM’s.
These nutritional claims are frequently used as a sales tactic: In 2008, Vitamix’s then-president (now executive chairman) John Barnard praised a scientific study that pitted an emulsifying blender against a household blender along with a human mouth. He said Vitamix’s”2 peak HP engine and new-generation container…function together to break open the cell walls of whole foods. That, according to some 2008 study conducted in the University of Toronto, enables the Vita-Mix machine to provide maximum nutrition from vegetables and fruits.”
Unfortunately, that University of Toronto study remains improved –and the link was scrubbed from Vitamix’s website, despite it being regularly mentioned on various wellness sites. “High-speed mixing should make foods faster to digest, at best, but that’s all.”
Her cohorts agree: High-speed blenders expose”the issue of food arrangement…and how people really know little about it,” says Bruce German, director of the Foods for Health Institute in the University of California, Davis. Beyond the convenience factor, he adds, they’re likely not doing anything more beneficial than the average $20 version from Wal-Mart–along with your own mouth.
Reached for comment, a Vitamix representative, Jamie Dalton, confirmed the existence of the 2008 study–as well as the precision of Barnard’s quote–but added that the organization’s thinking on the subject has developed in the years since. The focus today, she states, is”with Vitamix as a tool to really achieve the lifestyle you’re looking for, instead of a more granular focus. It makes it easier to eat whole foods. It makes it a lot easier for you to do entire food juicing, which is another process in which you get more nourishment versus classic juicing, since you’re keeping the pulp and the seeds and the skin and all of those things that really are beneficial to you.”