Like any home appliance, your juicer will last much longer if you respect its size, limitations, and quirks, and keep it clean and in good working order after each use. If you're buying a used model, you may want to have a veteran juicer look it over before you use it for the first time. The last thing you want to do is butcher fruits and vegetables and render them useless for your juices. Plus, it's always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to dealing with appliances that have motors and sharp blades.

Juicing Do's and Don'ts

Here are a few tips and trade secrets to ensure smooth juicing:

• Wash all produce before juicing. Remove bruises, mold, blemishes, and dings.

• Go organic. The price is more than worth the health benefits. Otherwise, you'll have to peel everything before placing it in the juicer and lose out on lots of nutrients. Non-organic produce is sprayed with pesticides that penetrate the peels and skins of produce — the largest source of nutrients in produce.

• Always peel oranges, tangerines, bananas, avocados, kiwifruits, pineapples, and grapefruit, even if they're organic.

• Don't remove the stems and leaves of most produce, including beet stems and leaves, strawberry caps, and small grape stems. They contain a high concentration of nutrients and won't hurt you or your juicer.

• Cut most fruits and vegetables into strips or sections that fit easily into your juicer's tube without forcing or jamming. With experience, you'll learn what size works best for your particular machine.

• Insert a grocery store-sized plastic bag in the pulp receptacle of your juicer to catch the pulp during juicing. When you've finished making your juice, you can either throw away the pulp, or save it for cooking or composting, and there's no need to wash the pulp receptacle after each use.