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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is that the cold-pressed juice fad is not really rational to begin with. Somehow customers are convinced that the method of juice extraction is extremely important to the juice's health benefits, to the point that it's worth spending 3x comparable juices. It's great marketing on the verge of fraud. In order to capitalize on the fad the startup probably thought they needed a really fancy, distinctive press since the press has become of mythical importance in the customers' mind. And since cold-pressed customers have already proven to be cost insensitive they figured price is no object, so let engineering go wild!

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Gramophone records. Audiophile speaker cables. Many (if not most) branded luxury goods ($2145 IKEA shopping bag, anyone?) [1][2].

These products are not made to be functional, any functionality they have is secondary to their prime purpose: to be used as props in a ritual. What ritual they serve varies, from the mundane 'I can afford to spend a lot of money on non-essential goods' affluence signalling (most branded luxury goods fit in this category) to something resembling the Japanese tea ceremony in the sense that they turn a common event into a highly ritualised happening (I'd fit gramophone records in here). Some are just ways for unscrupulous actors to extract the maximum amount of money from an easily duped audience ($21.000 for a 3m short speaker cable [3], anyone? Don't forget to buy that $11.000 mains cable [4] while you're at it, you would not want your $144,481.80 turntable [5] to be without it).

Cold pressed juice itself is probably partly ceremonial, partly affluence signalling. Where overpriced, waste-generating Rube Goldberg juice delivery devices with vendor lock-in fit in I'll leave for you to decide.

[1] http://www.barneys.com/product/balenciaga-arena-extra-large-... [2] http://www.ikea.com/se/sv/catalog/products/17228340/ [3] http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/11/most-expensive-speaker-c... [4] http://www.analogueseduction.net/nordost-mains-cables/ndvali... [5] http://www.analogueseduction.net/clearaudio-turntables/clear...

I'm sooo not in the market, and even at 1/10th the price I'd find it expensive, but still: it's not fair to call that Balenciaga bag an "IKEA shopping bag".

It's made in Italy, from actual leather, with fabric lining, a zip pocket and keyring lanyard.

That's a lot of features that are all way nicer than what FRAKTA brings, of course. It's obviously still a luxury product, but leather isn't cheap like polypropylene.

Nothing to do with the leather - everyone has nice leather now, even Chinese no-brand brands you get for $80 on Amazon. "Balenciaga" means almost all the price is in the name - not only is it designer, but there's a hierarchy of designers in which it's far from the bottom; to pick another name off the top, this'll make anyone with a Coach bag turn green, even if it's a lot closer to the top of that line than this is to this. Also, blue leather's tough to pull off in general, and you have to be both confident and daring to even try it. So it makes you the one to beat stylewise, and makes that hard to do, both at the same time.

Ever feel like maybe you're in the wrong line of work? The market's tiny, but at eleven grand a throw, the profit margin's got to be nosebleed-worthy.

I wonder if I can make something like this work as a sideline? I mean it's snake oil, it just has to look fancy and have a story around it, and hell, that can't be too hard.

To me, cold pressed orange juice I buy tastes 3X better than any other orange juice I've tried at the store. To me, that's worth 3X more. Some people value taste more than others, to each his own.

I believe the parent was describing the unsubstantiated belief that press-type juicers are somehow superior to the centrifugal-type juicers you can buy for tens of dollars at big box stores.

I agree with you about fresh squeezed OJ, but I don't believe for a second that it matters if the orange is squeezed in a press or twisted in a rotary. (different kind of juicer, but you get the point).

Fresh-squeezed juice tastes better because you don't have to do all the things that need to be done to make juice safe to ship long distances. The idea that this super-expensive way of getting juice "damages the nutrients less" is a bunch of ridiculous hokum, and I'm betting if you got fresh orange juice that wasn't cold-pressed you wouldn't notice a 3X difference between it and cold-pressed.

Fresh-squeezed juice is not actually fresh. It's still made from a concentrate.

H-how? How are the oranges I squeeze by hand concentrate..?

I mean the premium ones you are seeing in supermarket (Tropicana, Minute Maid, et al), especially orange ones.

Unless you actually saw it being squeezed, I wouldn't consider it "freshly squeezed". This is also the first time I've seen anybody, outside of advertisement, describe Minute Maid as "premium" orange juice.

Over here some supermarkets have juicers pre-filled with oranges in their produce sections, you just put an empty bottle into it, push a button and you can watch live as it squeezes the oranges into your bottle.

Don't know if they exist in the US, but I specifically look for juice bottles that say "NOT FROM CONCENTRATE". I can usually find a few even in smaller grocery stores.

I think what was meant by "fresh-squeezed" is the not from concentrate kind.

I certainly wouldn't describe juice from concentrate as "fresh-squeezed", because it's been squeezed, boiled to reduce its water content, frozen, packed, shipped, defrosted, rehydrated and packed again before I get to drink it.

Have you done a double-blind test with some top-brand non-frozen orange juices?

It tastes better, but is juice (of any kind) actually good for you? I'm not convinced.

Here's your article, good sir. "As Juicero gets publicly shamed, let us not forget that juice itself is a lie" https://qz.com/965505/juicero-turns-out-to-be-pointless-so-i...

The article does not say it is a lie. the article says some over exaggerate the benefits. It says the actual fruit is better. But also says juice (reasonable amounts) is good for you.

Of course it is good for you. Vegetable more so (I would imagine) but fruit juice as well. Would it be better to eat the fruit and veg, sure. But is having juice better than nothing. Yes. Is it better than some other liquid refreshments. Yes.

Is it as good for you as some would have you believe, no. Do some over market it as a cure all. Sure. That doesn't mean, it is bad for you*

* to an extent amount and fruit depending.

No: all that fructose can definitely be bad for you.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fresh-juice-drinks-health...

"good" and "bad" are comparisons, not quantifications. The correct question is something like: all else being equal, what is the difference in expected lifespan between a juice drinker and a juice abstainer?

I'm pretty sure that HN has consumed more of my lifespan than any diet could compensate for.

It's probably better to avoid the fruit entirely. Modern fruit has been bred to increase sugar content far above what was natural. If you can fine real wild berries those are probably OK but they will taste sour if you're used to supermarket fruit.

Have a source for that? Or even an example of a fruit where it's the case? It certainly isn't true for apples - heirloom varieties often have higher sugar content than modern apples. Modern apples taste sweeter than many heirloom varieties due to lower acidity, not higher sugar content.

Many modern cultivated fruits don't contain nearly as much sugar as they could because they're picked early, before their prime.

In the Northwest, Rubus armeniacus is an invasive species which has never been heavily bred, and is one of the sweetest fruits you can find - especially in late summer.

Grapes are one of the only fruits which have enough sugar to make wine with unless you use chaptalization. (Though some berries like Blackberries get close.)

My big reason for eating fruit is more the micronutrients, since I treat multivitamins (and pills in general) with suspicion. That trite adage of "stuff your grandmother would recognise" has been enormously beneficial to me.

Would you say that modern fruits lack these micronutrients as well? Anecdotally, I cannot report any excessive shortages in my nutrition.

> Would it be better to eat the fruit and veg, sure. But is having juice better than nothing.

But in this system you already have the fruit and vegetables whole - because you put them into the juicer. Why spend the extra time, expense and fuss on juicing them, when you could just eat them in less time, less fuss, and without buying anything?

You've said it's better to eat them, and it's quicker, less fuss and cheaper, so why not?

For me the main benefit is tasty consumption of vegetables that I would otherwise probably not eat in their raw state, or in the quantity I'd like e.g. a fave is carrot, apple, ginger, spinach and broccoli.

If you believe the numerous health claims that vegetables in their raw state are good for you, this is a much easier way to consume them. If you don't believe it, then yeah, you could spend the time to cook it up - you're not in the target demo...

Criticisms such at TFA linked to above, speak of sweetened smoothies, mostly fruit drinks (who would buy a cold press to squeeze oranges? what a strawman). While the arguments are valid, they typically miss the main use-cases of core cold-press-juicer demo.

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