A popular blender brand, Vitamix, claims that The 5200’s powerful blades pulverize the cell walls of whole fruits and vegetables, releasing the full nutrients found in the seeds and skin
They stop short of saying that the food is healthier, but they are clearly implying that nutrients are released that might not otherwise be. Many health oriented blogs do suggest that breaking down cell walls is important to extract the full nutrition from foods to release the nutrition and help your body to digest and absorb nutrients:
http://blenderdude.com/articles/vitamix-blendtec-blenders/
The more powerful the blender, the greater its ability to aid the body in releasing properties otherwise locked inside these particular cell walls should be. A blender delivering over 1 actual horsepower of mechanical energy should be strong enough to rupture an exponentially greater number of cells in our whole foods than a traditional household blender, releasing a greater percentage of phytonutrients ... A strong blender’s ability to rupture cell structure potentially yields a substantially greater increase in the percentage of phytonutrients into the bloodstream that would otherwise go unutilized.
http://www.rawfoodlife.com/blendtecvsvitamix.html
the blades in these powerful machines hit your spinach, kale, bananas, almonds and everything else with a powerful force that literally explodes the cell walls of your ingredients, instantly releasing all the dense nutrients and flavors trapped inside. That would be hard for your stomach to do even if it wasn't already compromised by a lifetime of cooked, processed foods
The NutriBullet helps your system bypasses the “breaking down phase” in the stomach because the machine breaks apart the cell walls of the food you blend, so when you consume what you make, the phytonutrients, micronutrients, and other key nutrients and vitamins get into the blood stream in the fastest most efficient way possible.
Is there any truth to these claims? I assume that the digestive system is designed to break down these cell walls to absorb nutrients, so is there any value in doing it in a blender? (note that I'm not questioning the value of pulverizing hard to digest foods with a hard shell like Flax seeds, but "normal" fruits and vegetables).