Cantaloupe Juice

Did you know that cantaloupe is the most nutrient dense of all fruits?  It is very low in calories, yet contains huge amounts of vitamins A and C and is a good source of potassium and folate as well as many other nutrients*.  That's why many people like to juice it instead of eating it.  To get the maximum benefit, juicing gurus suggest drinking cantaloupe juice straight without mixing in other ingredients.

Juicing in its strictest sense means to extract the liquid juice from the fruit or vegetable and leave all of the fiber behind.  The theory is that the juice contains 90% of a fruit or vegetable's nutrition.  Because you could not eat 10 oranges in one sitting, but you could easily consume the juice of 10 oranges in one sitting (about 2 1/2 cups) you are getting a super dose of nutrients when you extract juice from a large quantity of fruit/vegetables.   In terms of nutrients, it is nearly the equivalent of eating 10 oranges!  Juice extraction can only be done in a "juicer", not in a blender. That is, a machine designed to separate the juice from the pulp.  A blender would liquefy the fruit but you would be left with all the fiber and because fiber quickly fills us up, it would be difficult to consume more than a typical serving of the fruit or vegetable.
  
I was asked recently by Zeb, one of the managers at Clarion River Organics, if people who are into juicing would be interested in frozen cantaloupe in the winter for juicing purposes.  I believe they would be (I would be), but my only reservation was how the juice would come out once the fruit had been frozen.  To find out, I conducted a little experiment.  The answer: surprisingly well!  

This week I juiced about 2 cups of fresh cantaloupe and 2 cups of frozen cantaloupe that I had reserved from our week 10 delivery.  I allowed the frozen cantaloupe to thaw before juicing it.  As you can see from the photo below, the juices looked identical and they tasted identical as well.  So should you find yourself unable to eat all the cantaloupe this week, just cut the fruit from the rind (*see note below), dice into chunks, place in serving size plastic bags (about 1 1/2 - 2 cups per bag) and throw in your freezer.  Now in the fall and winter you can drink some fresh cantaloupe juice and you will think it is summer again!  

Left: Juice extracted from FRESH cantaloupe
Right: Juice extracted from FROZEN cantaloupe
The glasses look identical!

The Juicer I used for this experiment: the Breville 820XL

*For more information on the health benefits of cantaloupes and information on juicing them see this entry from The Juice Nut's website.
*Note: Some say you can juice the rind as well, but since cantaloupe has one of those bumpy skins where bacteria may hide even after washing, I am a bit reluctant to do that.  According to The Juice Nut website, to get the maximum nutritional benefit you should peel off the outermost layer of skin leaving as much of the green as possible, though they say that even this step is not necessary if the fruit is organic.