I keep buying romaine for sandwiches and then watching half a head go limp in the fridge. Juicing it was the sensible fix, and the surprise was how drinkable it turns out. Romaine does not taste of much on its own, which sounds like a criticism and is really the point: it gives you a big, light glass for almost no calories, the cucumber keeps it in that direction, and the apple stops the whole thing tasting like a lawn. I would not claim it does the work for you. It is a low-calorie glass that fills you up, which is a useful thing to have in the fridge on a day when you are trying not to eat everything in sight.
Why these ingredients work
Romaine lettuce is about 95 percent water, which is why a whole head gives you most of a glass for around 40 calories. It is not empty, though. A head this size carries a decent amount of folate and vitamin K and more than 20,000 IU of vitamin A as beta carotene, which is where that pale green colour comes from. Cucumber does the same job of bulking the glass out with water, and adds a little potassium. The two green apples are what make it worth drinking, and the lemon sharpens the finish so it does not taste flat.
What this juice will not do is stand in for a meal. Juicing strips out most of the fibre you would get from eating the same lettuce and cucumber as a salad, so the glass does not keep you full the way the vegetables would. It works as a low-calorie drink to have alongside proper food rather than instead of it. Worth knowing too that romaine is genuinely high in vitamin K, roughly 150 micrograms a glass, so if you take warfarin or another vitamin K antagonist, keep your intake steady from week to week and tell your clinic you are drinking it.
FAQ
Do I need a juicer to make lettuce juice?
No. Lettuce is soft and watery, so it is the one green that a cheap blender handles easily. Blend it with the cucumber and the apple and a splash of water, then strain it through a nut milk bag or a fine sieve and squeeze the pulp hard. Kale and spinach are where a cheap blender struggles, not romaine. If you do have a juicer, feed the leaves in rolled-up bundles rather than loose, because loose leaves shred and cling to the drum.
How many calories are in a glass of lettuce juice?
About 104 calories for a glass of this one, with 16 grams of sugar, almost all of it from the apples. The lettuce and cucumber barely register on their own. If you want to bring it down further, use one apple instead of two and keep the lemon, though the glass gets noticeably sharper and less of a treat.
Is there much nutrition in lettuce juice, or is it mostly water?
Honestly, it is both, and the water is doing real work because hydrated and low in calories is exactly what makes it useful. The vitamin side is not a gimmick either: romaine is a proper source of vitamin K, folate and beta carotene, and cucumber adds potassium. What you are losing is fibre, which stays behind in the pulp. So it is a good way to drink your greens if salad bores you, not a replacement for eating vegetables.
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Lettuce, Cucumber and Apple Juice
Equipment
- Nut milk bag
Ingredients
Vegetables and fruit
- 1 romaine lettuce heart about 250g, or 8 to 10 outer leaves, washed
- 1 cucumber about 200g, ends trimmed, cut to fit your chute
- 2 crisp green apples about 250g, cored and quartered
- 1/2 lemon peeled, or just the juice of half a lemon
Instructions
Juicer method
- Wash the romaine and give it a shake, then cut the base off. Roll the leaves up tight into a bundle so they go through the chute together instead of shredding and sticking to the drum. Cut the cucumber and the apples down to size before you switch anything on, because stopping halfway through to chop is what makes juicing feel like a chore.
- Feed the lettuce through first, one bundle at a time, and let the cucumber follow it. Both are watery and they run through fast, and the cucumber will push out whatever lettuce is left sitting in the machine.
- Add the apples next and the peeled lemon last. The apple carries the sweetness, and running it after the greens means it also rinses the last of the green out of the drum.
- Stir the jug, pour it over ice if you want it cold, and drink it the same day. It separates as it stands, so give it a stir before you pour the second glass.
Blender method
- Chop everything small. Put the cucumber and the apple into the blender first with 100ml of cold water and blend for 30 seconds until it is loose, then add the romaine in two handfuls and blend again until there are no big pieces of leaf left.
- Tip the lot through a nut milk bag or a fine sieve over a jug, then squeeze the pulp properly by hand. Lettuce holds more liquid than you would think, and if you simply let it drip you leave a good third of the glass behind in the bag.
- Stir the lemon juice into the strained liquid and chill it. Blender juice is cloudier than juicer juice and it settles faster, so stir it again before you pour.