How Green Smoothies have Benefited Me

In my last post I wrote an extensive treatise on why green smoothies are, scientifically, a must-have food, regardless of whether one is living the raw food lifestyle. Before we move on to the many more exciting posts planned for this blog, I want to write a quick journal entry on the benefits I have personally reaped by incorporating green smoothies in my daily diet.

I first began making green smoothies for breakfast in late May/early June in 2012. Like many people, I was replacing ready-to-eat (and in my case, also freely and readily available at work) cereal and milk with something that I had to make at home. In the beginning this was not simple - I had to spend time on the weekend to plan, additionally, my breakfast for the week ahead, spend money to shop accordingly, and then store the ingredients carefully so the produce didn't perish half way through the week. Then, every morning, I had to wash/cut/blend, bring the smoothie in a jar to work, wash the blender, knife, cutting board, and lastly, wash my jar at work. It seemed to be a lot of additional effort.

So, 10 months down the line, why/how did I keep doing it?! In fact, the more regularly I drank green smoothies on a daily basis, not only did the whole 'chore' of making them become easier, a green smoothie a day became a vital need of my body! Today, I almost have a 'physical dependency' on green smoothies --- in a good way... For many months now, there are days on which I drink more than one green smoothie. In my stumble in the raw food world, I talked very briefly about what green smoothies have done for me; it's time to elaborate on that in this article.

First off, in only a week or two of getting started on this breakfast, I began feeling refreshed and energized. Even though my stomach was full in the same way as it used to be with cereal and milk, I felt lighter than usual. It's almost like I was using a better quality oil to run my machinery. As I felt lighter after breakfast, I could focus better on my work and my productivity increased. I knew I was getting more done than before, and at a faster pace. Days on which I missed a green smoothie, the heavy, clunky feeling that came with going back to drier, processed foods weighed me down. That, in itself, was reason enough to continue with my daily chore...

A couple of more weeks down the line, I realized green smoothies had actually begun affecting my food choices for the rest of the day! Days that I started with a green smoothie were days on which I naturally preferred salads for lunch (I hadn't quite been a salad eater before =)), fruits for snack, and a lighter supper. Anything that was deep fried, or just fried, creamy/cheesy/oily, or sodium- or sugar-laden did not appeal me on those days. Those were 'good' days - I got more work done, I had more spare energy, I was mentally more alert, I ate better, I felt better. On the other days, I was okay eating my usual lunch and snacking on roasted cashews, peanut butter pretzels, wheat thins, etc. Those were the days on which my exhaustion and general dissatisfaction with my routine came back.  

Heather did mention that green smoothies had the potential to impact our food choices for the rest of the day in her Introduction to Raw Food Cuisine class. Her statement made me quite cynical; it appeared that she was trying too hard to sell her food philosophy to have people sign up for more of her upcoming classes! But seeing this happen to me for real, amused and struck me and I had a new-found respect for her (she is a great teacher; I have taken many of her classes by now). A detailed account of her class is in an older post of mine. More about her is on her website - http://www.rawbayarea.com.

Soon after, I could predictably play around with my food choices every single day by having a green smoothie in the morning - or not. As I chose to continue with this regimen, with more passing weeks, it dawned upon me that I ate better even on days on which I occasionally missed a green smoothie. In other words, there was a shift in what was tasty to me and what wasn't; my taste buds had begun changing! What can be a more promising passport to healthier eating and, thereby, better health than all of us actually finding apples, oranges, romaine, and kale more delicious than burgers, pizza, nachos, soda, sundae? Would the processed food advertisements around us continue to be as effective as they are today? Would the Olympics have approved sponsors like McDonald's and Coke? Would we continue to be a nation victimized by obesity and a myriad of health problems that plague us today? Would our children have a shorter life span than us?

Beginning in July '12, I was taste bud-wise (and mentally) prepared to experiment with a 20-day raw food detox. Since I grew up vegetarian and had generally been a conscious eater (just not a salad eater, though =)), my body did not have much to detox. But that detox triggered my metabolism such that I began losing weight - something I had been aspiring for since my teenage years! What had never happened before happened now - I have lost ~22 pounds since, my BMI has dropped from 24.9 to 21.5!! Post detox, since August, I have been eating ~70% raw vegan and have never had this kind of energy and vitality before. I resumed swimming after 14 years in September and started this blog in November. Life has changed in many more profoundly positive ways...

What other benefits could I have reaped by making one single change - drinking one green smoothie a day? What else should I have to say to stress enough the importance of green smoothies and raw foods?

First Step towards Eating Raw: Green Smoothies

Okay, now I do understand that food, when eaten raw, claims to work unparalleled miracles for my mind and body(!) and is also lighter on our planet. I am also aware that there is a lot more to the raw food world for variety and nutrition than just the regular produce I see at my local grocery store. But what is the simplest thing I can do to start reaping the benefits of this regimen with minimal effort and time?

Fortunately, there does exist a "5-minute breakfast" in the raw food world. It is called a Green Smoothie. Whether or not this is a new menu item for you, this article discusses, in great details, why it is a key ingredient in our daily food palette. By the end of it, I truly hope to convince you to start your own one-green-smoothie-a-day routine for real.

To allure you into reading further, here is a picture of my VitaMix jar from one of these mornings.


In the jar: apple, purple kale, lemon, and alfa-alfa sprouts.

A "Complete" Meal

What would the nutritional chart of our ideal meal look like? It'd have to be rich in fiber, contain the recommended doses of vitamins, minerals, and proteins, and be low in fat and carbs. All this while keeping sugar low and, most importantly, still tasting delicious.

We absolutely need to care about getting enough fiber in our diet. Among other things, it helps control blood sugar, keeps bad cholesterol low, regulates bowel movement, keeps us full for a longer time (so we don't pile on empty? calories every hour), and thereby, helps us maintain an optimal body weight. A fiber rich meal in the morning keeps us full until lunch but does not weigh us down like many oily and greasy commonly preferred processed breakfast foods.

The best sources of fiber are natural, plant-based foods - vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts. (Animal products are not rich in fiber - bad news for hardcore meat eaters.) It is also worth noting that most fruits are not particularly rich in fiber (berries and a few others being an exception). When we juice an orange or apple, we essentially get concentrated sugar (with a small amount of vitamins/minerals). That's why The Holy OJ and AJ are not proving to be good accompaniments to the American breakfast table =).

While consuming fruits in their juiced form alone is not healthy, whole fruits offer a wide array of nutritional value. Additionally, they taste great, often beating vegetables that have an equally good nutritional profile. When grown organically, many fruits can be eaten with their peel on; most peels supplement the nutrition that their fruits offers (and reduce prep time).

Why Add Greens?

If I say "Green is Life" and leave it at that, you'll probably roll your eyes and skip the rest of this article. So here is the elaborated version: greens are nutritionally very dense, calorie for calorie. They are rich in almost all essential minerals and vitamins, including proteins. Pull up the nutritional profile of the most common green leafy vegetables - kale, spinach, collard greens, romaine lettuce - using your favorite search engine and take a look yourself. Here's my favorite one - kale. The darker the green color, the richer the nourishment.

If you're into the evolution theory, you might be curious to know what primitive man ate all these centuries before the Industrial Revolution came and trampled on our food preferences beyond resemblance with our ancestors. It is interesting to know that chimpanzees, our closest kin, consume 40% greens in their diet. Since their food pyramid has been far less modified than ours, there are reasons to believe that that's how many greens we really need in our diet (I'm looking at you, USDA!). Not sure if this also how we got to the 60 to 40 ratio of fruits to greens for smoothies, as a general rule of thumb.

So, after all this ado,

Essential Morning Meal => Fruits + Greens

But where does a smoothie fit into the picture?

Why Make a Smoothie?

All the nutrients that the greens possess are stored inside the cells of the plants, well, of course. These cells are made of cellulose, one of the strongest molecular structures on the planet. (It is this tough material that helps plants to survive outdoors.) For valuable nutrients to be released, these cell walls need to be ruptured. These wall are not ruprured unless we masticate our greens very well. Failing to do so jams our digestive system and makes greens unpalatable for the longer term.

Once again, an evolution-enthusiast reader would agree that our jaw muscles have frailed over past several centuries as we started eating cooked and other heavily processed foods. We biologically evolve to adapt to changes in our environment; we simply no longer need strong enough teeth and jaw muscles to masticate on rough fiber as our next of kin, chimpanzees, do!

So we resort to blending to do the "chewing" for us. Thus, is incarnated, a smoothie.

Another advantage of eating a blended food in the morning is that our digestive system is still waking up and we need to function at full throttle to get through our busy day. A holistic meal like this releases tremendous amounts of nutrients and energy in the body without engaging the digestive system heavily to break it down.

Have you ever juiced a celery and had to clean up the tangled mess of long, strong threads stuck in the juicing auger? That's fiber. It is the pulp left behind by our juicer when we juice fruits and vegetables. We saw the benefits of a fiber-rich diet above. In fact, it is the presence of fiber that makes a smoothie a complete meal.

Finally, in a nutshell,

Fruits + Greens => Blending => Green Smoothie (a holistic meal)

Now let's spend some time on getting started on green smoothies.

Delicious green smoothie recipes

These are some of my most favorite green smoothie recipes. (Yes, I'm very partial to kale.) Blend approximately 60% fruits, 40% greens, and water to the desired consistency to enjoy these combinations.

Apple + lemon + kale
Strawberry + banana + romaine
Pineapple + kale
Pineapple + parsley
Orange + banana + parsley
Kiwi + banana + celery
Banana + kale

orange + banana + parsley green smoothie

A Note on Equipment

Buying a VitaMix is not a precursor to making smoothies at home! A personal blender does just fine, in the beginning at least. I had to run my personal blender for much longer to blend the ingredients well. As I started enjoying these smoothies and they became an essential part of my everyday routine, I was motivated to invest in a VitaMix.

Green smoothie resources

Recipes

• http://www.rawfamily.com/recipes - The app didn't work very well on my Android phone but there are recipes as you scroll down on this page
• http://www.rawbayarea.com/raw-resources/recipes/#greensmoothie
• http://www.oatmealinmybowl.com/the-kitchen/30-delicious-green-smoothie-recipes/
• keep looking online, there are more recipes than one can try in a lifetime =).

Books

• Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko
• Green Smoothie Recolution by Boutenko, again
• Countless books on Amazon.com for {green smoothie recipes}

Next Steps

I will be writing a follow up post to revisit green smoothies to talk about many other ingredients that can be added to them for further enrichment, variety, and taste. In a second post, I'll be talking about all the positive changes these have brought in my life. For now, this extensive treatise should suffice to generate some serious interest in this promising breakfast option. To good health for everyone!

References:

• 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Foods by Victoria Boutenko
• Rigorous online reading...