For $6.50, Portland Juice Co. will sell you a 16-ounce bottle of the Guru, which contains a beet, four carrots, and an apple. It’s convenient, but it’s if pricey, and finds buyers mostly because most at-home juicers are a bit of a pain to clean and often require hand-washing.
DesJardin wants its Nutralux to be the Keurig of juicers by providing one-time-use pods full of produce that you recycle after the machine extracts your vitamin-rich liquid. The food-grade plastic Nutrapods would either come empty, so you could fill them with your own mix of fruit and vegetables, or prepacked with greens, apples and carrots, or lemons.
The machine would have a compartment for the Nutrapod, similar to a Keurig. You would slide in the plastic container, close the compartment, select your level of pulp (minimum, medium, or maximum), and hit the juice button. Because it’s a “cold-pressed” juice, the blade crushes and then presses the contents of the pod, which would take between 30 and 90 seconds, depending on the pulp level. Once you’ve got a glass full of juice, you toss out the pod and rinse the blade.
The empty, recyclable pods would cost around fifty cents each. “Prepackaged Nutrapods will range from $2.50-$5.00,” co-founder Anna Mallepalle tells Digital Trends. “Price is largely dependent on the produce used.” How exactly you’d get these produce-filled pods, whether through online orders or at a local store, remains to be seen.
One of the prevailing criticisms about Keurig is the wastefulness of the pods that the firm’s machines utilize. Nutralux hopes to stay ahead of this criticism by creating a compostable version of its pods and offering a permanent stainless steel option.
The Nutralux is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with an early-bird special of $249 for the juicer, one reusable pod, and six recyclable ones. While the company hopes to deliver by November 2016, its Kickstarter page didn’t provide a clear timeline and the usual backer beware caveats apply.
