Green Smoothies

If incorporating more raw food in your diet challenges you, consider adding green smoothies. They are fast, fun and highly nutritious.

What’s in a green smoothie?

Most recipes include whole raw fruit and leafy greens blended together in a blender or food processor. So experimenting with flavors you like becomes an enjoyable adventure. You will most likely be surprised that you like some of those greens that you thought you would never eat when you mix them with other taste tantalizing flavors.

A favorite recipe of many green smoothie fans includes this one from a faithful Be Wise-Health Wise reader who piqued my interest in green smoothies:

“Using the food processor, not the blender, put in two handfuls of fresh organic baby spinach, a handful of fresh organic pineapple chunks, a small piece of peeled fresh ginger, the size of your littlest fingernail, and about 1/4 cup of water.   Blend until you get a smooth consistency that you can drink.  They keep in the frig until the next day, and I like the fresh taste.”

But a Precaution: Although the benefits of green smoothies abound, some of us just cannot tolerate that much fruit in our diets.

Ingesting too much sugar over the years (causing rapid swings from high blood sugar levels to low levels)  wreaks havoc with our endocrine glands. The natural sugar in fruit will keep this upset metabolism from settling down and healing. For further enlightenment read more about sugar.

Also, the natural sugars in fruit feeds unfriendly organisms like the yeast Candida that have overgrown in our guts from the upsetting life styles that we lead. For awhile we have to avoid feeding those little beasties if we ever hope to restore the balance of friendly organisms in our bodily systems.

Lastly, some of us have so abused our digestive tracts by overeating refined carbohydrates (sugar and white flour products) that we simple do not digest and assimilate carbohydrates well. Since fruit contains mostly carbohydrates, we must keep serving sizes small.

So if you have problems with blood sugar and/or diabetes, Candida or weak digestion, experiment with making green smoothies out of greens and other vegetables for at least 3 months. Then see if you can gradually add some fruit to your smoothies.

Green smoothies help us feel better.

For so many of us eating the Standard American Diet (SAD – very descriptive acronym) we simply have dropped the nutritious green food out of our diets. Consequently our stores of magnesium have dropped dangerously low.

Magnesium resides and functions mainly inside the cell. Consequently, blood levels of magnesium can be perfectly normal and we can be extremely depleted of magnesium inside our cells where the action is. As just one of magnesium’s duties inside the cell, it acts as a gatekeeper to allow nutrients into the cell and keep toxic substances out.

But when magnesium disappears, toxic substances gain access to the internal workings of the cell and gradually poison it leading to low energy and degenerative diseases like diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.

So adding lots of fresh organic raw greens to our menus helps replenish that severely needed mineral magnesium in a perfectly delicious and delightful way via green smoothies. Of course greens contain the life force of plant cells, chlorophyll. Right at the center of the chlorophyll, stimulating its activity sits that hard working, life restoring mineral magnesium. Plants capture the sun’s energy which transmits to our bodies when we eat fresh raw and preferably organic greens regularly.

You may find your abnormal cravings for sweets, alcohol or cigarettes will vanish as you replace that vital nutrient magnesium in your magnesium starved cells.

Because we probably wouldn’t sit and chew a couple of cups of greens regularly, green smoothies simply make it easier to nourish ourselves with a healthy amount of greens.

But green smoothies contribute a lot more nutrients to our bodies also. Find out more in the following articles.

Enzyme power in Green Smoothies

Green Smoothie Precautions

Green Smoothie Nutrients

Green Smoothie Combinations

Green Smoothie websites with good information and ideas:

http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/

Good writer, practical information. Advocates trying to eat 60% raw in diet.

http://www.greensmoothie.com/

This website has a lot of good information and resources.

Also you can sign up for newsletter which will refer you to another raw food site to sign up for their newsletter and then download free ebook with recipes. Be cautious though – recipes include a lot of fruit.

For a great book on green smoothies order Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko.

Blessings,

Dr. Jo