Green smoothies are one of the tastiest and easiest additions to the diet that can change our health for the better fast!

If you want to become healthier, more energetic, more youthful and heal or prevent disease for yourself and your family but haven’t heard of the green smoothies yet, then you will be pleasantly surprised at how easy and effective these simple preparations are.

Having it instead of Guinness will not make you tipsy but will make you infinitely happier in the long run. :)

Don’t have time or determination to change your diet fully? No time for trying to force salads, fruit and veggies into kids/adults?;) Green smoothies is the answer.

If you make green smoothies daily, or at least 4 times a week, you will notice that you and your family will actually like vegetables and fruits more after a while. It is as if your palates have changed and you have got a new appreciation for the flavours and textures of the plant foods. This is an excellent way to improve the diet without forcing an issue and just biding your time until the taste buds catch up with what’s going on, i.e. the body will start to ask for more greens and vegetables automatically after a while. I find that there is no need to keep telling the kids that “it’ Soo Good for you! Oh, keep drinking, keep going! You will see how much more you will love your veggies tomorrow!” Say nothing, just offer the smoothies, keep back from preaching or pushing these onto others, enjoy them yourself first and offer some to your family without saying that they MUST drink the full glass or else! The less pushing & preaching you do and the more consistently you offer it (daily), the better result you get. The very young children will naturally like smoothies more (unless they have been fed no-live (no raw) foods at all and have been quite unwell, in which case it will take longer and I do recommend you start giving them some freshly squeezed juices too. You can give green smoothies to children from 6 months of age (please see Victoria Boutenko’s book “Green for Life” for more recipes and full information on green smoothies).

Here is a very easy recipe for a quick green smoothie:

Sweet Velvety Spinach and Pear

It is really as simple as 1.2.3. ;)

•  3 small ripe pears (choose sweet, not tangy pears)
  

• 2 cups of spinach (or half a bag of spinach)
  

• 1 cup of water

Wash the pears and spinach. Always rinse your greens in a container filled with water, remove the greens and only then drain the water, as if you drain the water through the leaves, the soil or sand that has been washed off will remain on the greens! It is best to wash your greens twice this way. Cut pears into small pieces and place into the blender, place spinach on top, add water and blend until smooth (homogeneous). Pour and enjoy! :)

*By increasing the amount of fruit and leaves, you will get more smoothie, and the guideline for water is always approximately 1/3 of the overall volume of fruit and leaves once you have them in the jug.
*For a fresher and cooling smoothie: cut pears or other fruit into pieces and freeze /chill them first. Alternatively freeze some of the water and use 1/3 glass as ice, 2/3 as water when blending. This will make a very nice chilled smoothie! :)

The key to these smoothies is leafy greens – the chlorophyl is responsible for the colour of the leaves and its chemical structure resembles human red blood cells (erythrocytes). Thus it’s really nourishing for the blood and increases oxygen and mineral supply to blood cells.

Chlorophyl has been found to be beneficial in many different ways:

• cleanses and detoxes the liver, heavy metals and other toxins
• improves immunity and resistance to disease
• delivers magnesium and iron to cells, where it’s most needed
• anti-inflammatory (helps with intestinal/uterine/ligament inflammation)
• antiseptic, anti-pathogenic: anti-bacterial
• speeds recovery: wounds, cuts, rectal sores, ulcers, etc.
• balances hormone levels
• remineralisation of the whole body: healthier gums and teeth, skin, hair, eyes, venous health.

As it is highly alkalising, reparative and nourishing to all tissues, it helps with conditions such as:

• cancers and any abnormal growths
• heart and arterial/venous health, cholesterol
  
• lung and sinuses inflammatory conditions
• skin problems: eczema, psoriasis, ache rosea, rashes, dermatitis

The Benefits of Green smoothies:

1. Alkalisation: in a healthy body blood PH should be above 7. If you eat a regular Western diet, your blood PH is most likely below 7. This allows pathogenic bacteria, viruses and fungi to live in our bodies. When we correct our PH and get rid of toxins, the environment within our body is not hospitable to pathogens and disease – we become healthy. Greens and raw vegetables are highly alkalising to the body, this is why they are so important. Since we are no longer used to eat raw and many children can barely eat fruit, let alone vegetables, green smoothies is a tasty way to change our body PH towards more alkaline.
2. Remineralisation and vitamins: we often crave wrong foods and get sick because we are deficient in some minerals or vitamins. Green smoothies ensure that you are easily absorbing organically-bound mineals (which is important as cooking converts minerals into non-organic form) and vitamins re-balancing all necessary vitamin and minerals reserves fairly quickly. As the leafy greens and fruit are broken into tiniest pieces by the blender which are much smaller than how most of us would chew, the cell walls of leaves are punctured and the nutrients leak into the water, where they are easily absorbed by us. Depending on the leaves and fruit you are using, you will be getting great amounts of major and trace minerals (especially if using organic), many vitamins, such as C, B-group, A, E and many others in abundance. As the smoothie is raw, many vitamins are preserved in much higher quantities, for instance, vitamin C gets destroyed by high temperatures, but you get good amounts of it in all of the fruit and vegetables and leafy greens while they are raw.
   
3. Instant energy – as soon as you drink the smoothie. As it requires almost no digestive effort and contains a lot of enzymes and vitamins and minerals that are easily absorbed, we feel energised very quickly after consuming a green smoothie!
4. High antioxidant reparative action: reparative, rejuvenating, energising. Many antioxidants get destroyed by heat, and green leaves contain a lot of antioxidants necessary to combat peroxidation in cells and free radicals. Watch not only your health improve, but your skin get more glowy, fresh and rejuvenated over time!
5. Improved bowel motions and detoxification: the green smoothies provide us with perfectly mulched pulp that isn’t too severe, i.e. like processed bran. And the porous fiber that is the pulp of fruit and green leaves is a perfect sponge for many toxins, especially the mucosal residue left on the intestines by rancid, fermented and toxic foods that we;’ve eaten in the past. The longer you drink the green smoothies, the less toxic you are going to get. As you saw above, chlorophyl will also pull many toxins, including heavy metals. Quite often people take substances that can pull toxins out of the cells, however, they do not take enough gentle and porous fiber to absorb the toxins into (or liquids to dilute the toxins with!). So this solves both issues, as fruit are very watery and you are drinking water with the smoothie and getting gentle porous fiber, you are equipping your body with necessary tools for removing many toxins.
6. Amino-acid balance: leafy greens have very high amounts of proteins that are easily absorbed. Leafy greens are in a group of their own and are strikingly different in their chemical composition from the other vegetation: other fruit and vegetables, i.e. root vegetables and fruit that we are used to calling veg (courgettes, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc.). As the majority of us have only a few leafy greens in our diets, we do miss many amino acids and co-factors, such as trace-minerals that are needed for certain protein and vitamin absorption. When we consume meats and dairy and other animal products, we often think that we can easily absorb all the necessary proteins from our meals. However, as many kinesiologists – I am sure – will agree, there are some people with protein deficiencies and these are often (in my practice always) meat-eaters – this may seem strange, if you are not familiar with what goes on when we absorb proteins. The proteins in meat are complex proteins and green leaves actually contain all essential proteins but not all of the 10 in the same plant at the same time. This is why it is important to vary your green leaves, i.e. have spinach today, kale tomorrow, butterhead lettuce the day after. Weight for weight, Boutenko actually discovered that leafy greens have more proteins than meat, but they would contain some of them, i.e asparagine, proline, etc. We absorb these amino acids (proteins) very successfully and with much more ease than from meat (in fact, it is arguable that we are carnivorous at all, do read “The China Study” by Colin Campbell PhD).
7. Improved digestion and balanced hydrochloric acid levels: as raw foods contain many different enzymes, which are destroyed over 43 Degrees Celsius, the raw smoothies provide us with valuable enzymes. Some of these participate in digestion, absorption, whilst others work as reparative agents and some of them even destroy cancerous cells.

The basic principle behind the green smoothies is that you use about 40% fruit and 60% of any leafy greens such as:

• • Spinach,
  • Kale,
  • Parsley,
  • Celery (not on its own, as addition to other leaves),
  • Romaine (Cos) Lettuce,
  • Butterhead lettuce,
  • Gem lettuce,
  • Endives,
  • Curly Pink and green lettuces,
  • Purslane (This is quite a unique vegetable that has quite high levels of Omega 3! You will find this at organic markets and health food stores that stock fresh vegetables.)
  • Carrot tops (If you don’t grow your own, try allotments end-of-summer & autumn – people throw them away and will be glad to give them to you for nothing:), you can also buy carrots with tops in most supermarkets),
  • Beetroot tops,
  • Lamb’s lettuce (use a few with mostly spinach),
  • Radish leaves (mixed with other gentler greens),
  • Sunflower sprouts (from health stores or sprout yourself),
  • Dandelion leaves,
  • Plantain,
  • Fat hen (this is one of the most nutritious “weeds” that has more nutrients than many cultivated greens),
  • Nettles (in spring only, never every day and no longer than 3 weeks),
  • Small amounts of cleavers in spring (used with other greens)

Do not use wheat grass in smoothies, as we cannot digest its fibers: it’s only good for juicing.

If the green colour or taste is too much for you initially, add less “greens”, most people I know are very comfortable with the recipes as above. However, people naturally start to increase the amount of greens as time goes, as our bodies start to crave them as they remember that greens are very nutritious and are necessary for health. And again: the greens MUST BE RAW! (unsteamed/uncooked.)