Green Smoothie Magic - 132+ Delicious Green Smoothie Recipes That Trim And Slim (5 page)

Your mind becomes convinced with the ‘legitimacy’ of the typed ingredients and breakdown of all those wonderful (and possibly chemically derived) nutrients. Then your mind gets busy ‘making the case’ to support you buying the packaged stuff instead of the fresh, unprocessed and frankly comparatively unsexy or unenticing natural unprocessed fare.

Science is great for ‘deconstructing things’. What YOU need to do is to take that information and then assess and integrate things that are WHOLE now that you have that greater understanding.

On the one hand it’s important for you to know that your greens are:

• alkaline (a major focus of raw foods and eating the green stuff!)
  
• full of protein and amino acid building blocks!
  
• low in carbs (carbohydrates)
  
• high in fiber
  
• high in vitamins and minerals
  
• high in those colors such as chlorophyll and carotenoids giving them their green and yellow, orange and red pigments
  
• rich in essential fatty acids essential for energy production (includes your omega 3 and 6 fatty acids)
  
• and high in those antioxidants we’re so keen on including ... because marketing giants use modern nutritionism and science to promote bits of their food.**
  

And on the other hand it’s important to know that the synergy of eating whole fresh foods cannot be equaled by any
processed
food that claims to have all the above ingredients.

Putting It All Back Together

There is no science that explains the magic of wholefoods and the way that even undiscovered or un-researched elements of food nutrients work together to create, maintain or sustain your body in health.

In other words, breaking foods down to understand what’s in them is only part of the picture. The real miracles are in the consuming of the whole unchanged food itself. You have to piece the puzzle back together.

** I discovered the truth about modern nutritionism in Michael Pollan’s book,
In Defense Of Food
. It’s a very interesting read.
Here’s a link to buy your own copy
– or just borrow it from your library!

Have You Heard Not To Do This?

I actually do not count calories. I tried that many years ago when I was overweight. For most people it simply means that you are focusing on the wrong thing. Also, to count calories presumes that every
body
had the same ability to burn energy in the same way from the same food sources or doing the same activities.

This is simply not true. Your rate of metabolism is surely different to mine. The efficiency of your body is going to depend on the way you’ve treated it up until now, not just what you choose to feed it from now.

I have learned that it is not the calories that matters, it is far more important to eat fresh, lots of raw, well-chosen produce, mostly fruit and vegetables, with sources of the nutrients that every human being needs. A vegan is going to have to make different choices to an omnivore.

Remember that
bioavailability
of the nutrients you ingest is what you’re actually looking for. In other words, how much of the good stuff is getting IN to your system to be used to your benefit. That equation will change with your health, your state of stress, your activity levels and wellbeing.

Nutritional tables are only a guide or line in the sand. They are not something you can live by. After all they belong to the world of modern nutritionism which is driven by big business. As I implied just above, the nutritional table on a green smoothie may be similar to a boxed processed food. Does this make them equal? Does this make the nutrients as good out of the box? I think not.

So I have deliberately left out nutritional tables. You have to take responsibility. Eat varied greens, a variety of nuts, seeds, good fats and oils and so on, with a wide variety of colors and nutrients. Make what you do natural and driven by your experience, knowledge and intuition.

You can’t live by the numbers on a table and it’s impossible to calculate the quantities across your meals. So take the sensible route.

You may be wise to get your blood tested and see where you may need to boost some levels. You can do that short term with supplements but now that you’re a green smoothie drinker you will be able to add in more of the right ‘stuff’ into your smoothies because you know that nutrients taken from good sources IN your food makes them more bioavailable.

Stop Doing SAD And Take Control

S.A.D.
is an acronym referring to the
S
tandard
A
merican
D
iet. It’s a great pity that the rest of the world has trends that are similar. In fact with the proliferation of big multinational companies many developing nations are now developing the same disease states and conditions as we have already in the western world, en masse.

They call this an obesity epidemic and other crises to take the focus away from the root cause. It all starts with how we choose to nourish ourselves. What you feed you and your family REALLY MATTERS.

Unfortunately many processed unhealthy fat and sugar-laden foods are seductively inexpensive and become delicious to the eater. Oh, and rather amazingly, many of these seductive and nutritionally void foods are very, very cheap.

Two wonderful expressions come to mind:

• · Garbage in, garbage out
  
• · You are what you eat.
  

Just about every important disease state and condition that inflicts the human race finds its roots in poor nutrition. Even the FDA has published this finding on more than one occasion. Here is one quote from their website: “
There is more evidence than ever that dietary choices have major impacts on population health.
”

http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/LabelClaims/QualifiedHealthClaims/QualifiedHealthClaimsPetitions/ucm096010.htm

You not only need to feed yourself well, there are essential activity (exercise) and sun exposure levels. This would be a very long handbook indeed if we started to go down that path.

If you eat animal products then I won’t say it’s the wrong thing to do. However I do believe that
minimizing
the amount of flesh and dairy products will greatly benefit you.

I strongly believe that incorporating at least 60% raw fruit and vegetables into your diet is essential for you to have the building blocks for vibrant health. Ideally I would recommend upwards of 80% raw food. (But that’s just me!) Still working with or towards those figures, still allows you to have those taste-cravings satisfied. I totally acknowledge that your choice is free.

This book is based on vegan recipes. Often you will have the choice to add in a nut or seed milk. Sometimes that will be as simple as adding a handful of nuts to your smoothie for an initial blend with water before you add the other ingredients.

If you have a really good blender you will be able to blend all ingredients once and be done with it. You’ll learn more about blenders and blending later in the book.

You’ll create creamy and smooth tasting smoothies in this way. You’ll also be adding some other sources of fats, vitamins and minerals that will round out your own nutrition profile.

If you love dairy and if you believe it’s essential for your health then you could consider adding in dairy milk instead of water, nut or seed milks. However I would strongly urge you to research the calcium leaching properties of all animal products.

While it is commonly promoted by certain groups that drinking dairy milk will add calcium to your body, the evidence seems to indicate the exact opposite. These are from reputable clinical studies. So please, do your homework first. Play it safe and avoid cow’s milk products in your smoothies.

Here is a website for you to look at. This first one is not at all an attractive looking site:
www.notmilk.com
. I am not at all affiliated with this website nor do I receive any benefit by you going there. I simply add it because it has many clinical papers referenced and could be a good place for you to start.

If you decide to go there take a look at the index on the left side and maybe start with something like osteoporosis (
http://www.notmilk.com/o.html
) or heart disease (
http://www.notmilk.com/h.html
).

Each page will have many references to clinical studies and papers by scientists. So it’s really worth a look. There are plenty of other websites. Whether or not any website has 100% trustworthy information I cannot say. They can be quite strongly worded and have information that you could be surprised and shocked by.

Do your own research. Try ‘milk myths’ as a search term. This is definitely an important subject. If nothing else doing this research will help you question what you’re being told by readily available regurgitated (pardon the cow pun) information.

Fortify Your Body

Your food has the most incredible ability to fortify your body against many, many conditions. If you’ve ever met anyone with a heart condition such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure or diabetes then you’d probably be aware that one thing that they must take control of is their diet.

If you are diabetic then I encourage you to take a nutritional approach and look at incorporating raw food as your main focus. Please do your research. There is wonderful evidence out there that people with heart conditions, thyroid conditions, diabetes, even multiple sclerosis have had miraculous recoveries, reversals and improvements of different levels by eating more raw food (and some ‘go completely raw’).

I strongly recommend you check out “
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days
”

While my book is not about the raw food phenomenon, (which incidentally I put great faith in as well as a move away from the modern day profit-based pharma-culture) just know that
Green Smoothie Magic
has over 132 recipes that will arm you with
tools
for creating or regaining your birth right: Vibrant life-giving health.

Alkali-Forming Foods

It’s not just me that says this. The more raw food and the more greens the better off you are. One of the reasons is that you create a more alkaline environment in your body. In 1931 Dr Warburg won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that cancer and disease live in acidic environments (that can also be devoid of oxygen).

His research kicked off a wealth of research and results. Much of this points to the fact that disease states thrive in acidic conditions. Further it appears that one should eat foods that will create a more alkaline environment. Good food (mostly organic and raw) with plenty of green leafy vegetables, a complement of fruit, good quality sea salt and some exercise are keys to your health.

But I Can Eat A Salad!

You may say that you already eat well. If you’ve purchased this book (and I thank you for that!) then you either have a great or growing awareness around what is good nutrition.

The amazing thing that green smoothies do is to power-pack enormous amounts of the nutrients and goodness of those incredible greens into an easy to drink and easy to digest format.

I LOVE salad. At dinner times we have somewhere between 1 and 5 different raw salads. The easiest way to make the salad the main focus of your eating life is to make great ones.