Green Smoothie Nutrients

Green smoothies pack a wallop of nutrients into a simple to make and delicious raw food drink.

Blending the greens with fruit in your blender or food processor breaks up the cell membranes, releasing the nutrients for you to easily digest and assimilate. You would have to chew your greens very thoroughly to adequately break up those cell membranes. Let’s face it, the majority of us simply are too impatient to chew a couple of hands full of raw greens that thoroughly every day. So blending greens with fruits makes life a lot simpler and us a lot healthier.

Let’s review the nutrients released in a green smoothie and add some others we haven’t talked about in prior articles.

Because you make these from all raw food you preserve the vital enzyme power that gives you that spark of life to keep the chemical processes in your cells proceeding fast enough to keep you alive!

Also in the previous post of Green Smoothies we discovered that green smoothies work to replenish our low magnesium levels. Magnesium resides mainly inside the cells. Most health care practitioners only check blood levels of magnesium. The body will rob magnesium from the cells to keep blood levels normal. That means we can be extremely depleted of magnesium but still have normal blood levels.

Magnesium acts as the gatekeeper of the cell, allowing good nutrients to enter and wastes to leave. But if the cell loses its magnesium the gate malfunctions allowing toxic substances into the cell. These toxins contribute to the development of disease, disability and death.

But hooray for green smoothies with their abundance of health regenerating magnesium and other companion minerals. Green leafy vegetables and fruit also contain an abundance of potassium which also functions primarily inside the cell. With potassium and magnesium replenished, your cells will pump out the energy and kick out the toxins.

The more fibrous greens like dandelion greens, kale or collard greens contain rich levels of calcium needed for strong bones and teeth.

Magnesium, potassium and calcium help alkalinize our tissues to restore the normal pH levels. Optimal pH levels create an environment that allows the enzyme and chemical processes of our cells to function at a much higher and more efficient level. On the other hand the Standard American Diet (SAD) low in vegetables and high in protein and junk food creates tissue acidity and undermines health. So enjoy those greens that make your tissues happier.

In addition to minerals greens contain a variety of vitamins, phytonutrients and fiber.

That’s another great advantage of smoothies over fresh fruit or vegetable juice, you drink the fiber instead of throwing it away. Between the fiber and the magnesium you may find that sluggish bowels perk up and behave normally with 2-3 soft bowel movements per day. Also the fiber slows the absorption of the natural sugars in the fruit and vegetables preventing blood sugar spikes.

And phytonutrients are even more amazing since they neutralize free radicals that damage cells and DNA, preventing a whole host of debilitating illnesses including cancer. Remember, even the American Cancer Society recommends eating at least 5 servings of vegetables and fruit per day to prevent cancer.

Green smoothies contain a nice variety of amino acids used to make protein in your body. If you grow your greens organically yourself, you may want to use them without rinsing them to retain the friendly organisms that help make vitamin B12 in your body.

So there you have it, an abundance of nutrients (and others we probably haven’t even discovered) in your green smoothies.

Although this is a hard concept for me to accept, in my research on green smoothies, I have seen testimonials that eating an all raw food diet high in fruit has actually reversed and healed the Candida overgrowth in some folks. With the high sugar content of fruit, that’s hard for me to accept. I don’t know if certain metabolic types will respond favorably to this high fruit raw food diet and some will not. I suspect that is the case.

Tell us your experience with a high fruit raw food diet. How did it work for you? Or how did it not work for you. If you know your blood type, you might include that in your comments as blood type is one factor considered in determining your metabolic type that makes you uniquely-you.

Watch for a list of green smoothie combinations that some folks enjoy in the next post.

For more information and green smoothie recipes you may enjoy Victoria Boutenko’s book, The Green Revolution.

Take a peek at these green smoothie recipes. I suspect even your kids will like them.

http://www.squidoo.com/greensmoothies

Have fun with your green smoothies.

Blessings,

Dr. Jo