Green smoothies are a meal idea that is today becoming more and more familiar to many people. What was once an odd or unheard of green drink to the average person, common only to the raw-vegan community, is today becoming a more visible staple in many Western homes.
Green smoothies are gaining in popularity for many reasons, most of which revolve around their incredible nutritional and thus health properties, but also due to their outstanding convenience and taste. In doing so, they are most commonly used as a breakfast meal. In fact, green smoothies are my favorite way to start the day, and have become the breakfast meal of choice.
However, as for most people, it wasn’t always this way for me. Just over 3 years ago, in 2008, I had no idea what a green smoothie was. All I knew was that leafy greens were the way to go and I was finally starting to experiment with various greens, other than lettuce, from the grocery store. I read and learned so many amazing things about kale. For example, it is an amazing source of calcium and other minerals, loaded in vitamin K and other vitamins, as well as antioxidants and phytonutrients. And then came the time to try it in a green smoothie!
In the following article I therefore want to share with you more about the various benefits of green smoothies and leave you with a video, which will provide you with the basics of knowing how to make your own green smoothie.
The Benefits of Green Smoothies
The benefits of green smoothies are many. In the video below I explain a few of them and here is a quick guide to understanding the many benefits more specifically:
- Provide wholesome meals – no processed food
- Provide natural meals – no chemical or synthetic additives
- Provide an alkaline meal – work to benefit body’s acid/alkaline balance
- Provide a raw food meal – living food benefits
- Come with their own live enzymes
- Rich in chlorophyll – numerous health benefits
- Cleansing and detoxifying properties
- Energizing and invigorating properties
- Rich in fiber – enhance optimal digestion and elimination
- Rich in phytonutrients – numerous preventative and healing benefits
- Rich in natural vitamins and minerals
- Highly nutrient dense
- Low in calories and/or full of nutrient rich calories
- Make complete meal choices
- Provide healthy carbohydrates, fats and protein
- Provide an easy way to incorporate greens into a meal
- Can serve as breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks or dessert
- Easily organic (based on your choices of ingredients)
- Easy to prepare – take only a few minutes
- Enjoyable for the whole family
- Easy to customize and diversify
- Can satisfy all personal needs, from athletes to weight loss
- Excellent meal option for vegan and vegetarian diets
- Excellent meal option for gluten-free and other allergy needs
- Can be an economical food choice
- Convenient – can be easily consumed anywhere, transported, etc.
- Offer numerous health benefits – reduce risk of cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
- Optimal meal choice for healing and prevention of disease
But Will It Taste Good?
If you are like most, you may be easily sold on the nutrition and health benefits, but will have many doubts as to the taste. After all, we don’t normally associate leafy greens with delicious or mouth-watering meals. Well, when it comes to the green smoothie, most people are in for a treat.
For starters we have to understand that everyone’s taste buds are different. While some people love the taste of bananas, others dislike them. So the first trick in making an amazing green smoothie is adapting it to suit your taste buds. The second important aspect when it comes to taste buds, is that most people’s taste buds are numbed from the high intensity sugars, salt and artificial flavors that are found commonly in most foods today. When we change over from a mostly processed food, to a mostly natural food diet, our taste buds change. They begin to taste food properly once again, learning to prefer natural food, being heightened to real flavors and not numbed by the unnatural foods. Factors such as these make a big difference in how we experience the green smoothie. Even all these things aside, as long as one generally gets the basic formula for making them, they really do taste nice and can easily be called delicious.
And so in the video, I share with you more about the value of green smoothies. I also explain and demonstrate the making of a green smoothie. While this video shows the basics of making a simple green smoothie, in future videos or articles, I will share with you more detailed recipes and green smoothie combinations to meet various needs, address healthy fats, protein, carbohydrates and other benefits.
Next Steps
For a thorough understanding of green smoothies to understand how they can specifically help with regard to improving your health and aiding with weight loss, as well as what base and optional ingredients to use, how to ensure good nutritional variety and how to combine possible ingredients into delicious green smoothie recipes, I invite you to explore my Essentials of Green Smoothies course.