Top 12 Health Benefits of Green Smoothies
Isn’t it amazing that Americans worry more about the gas we put in our cars than the food we put in our bodies?
I’ve been getting healthy with a very simple health plan: I eat God’s food instead of man’s food. You can read Dr. Axe’s Healing Food Plan here. I’ve lost eight pounds in two weeks—and I eat a huge amount of food—and I feel great.
Green Smoothies are really one of the most efficient ways for your body to heal itself and the easiest way to absorb nutrients into your body. There are hundreds of benefits; I’ve only listed the top twelve here:
- A quick, effective way for the body to be able to absorb nutrients into the bloodstream and cells.
- When your body receives the proper nutrients, you lose weight because it’s not craving more food.
- Increases metabolic rate (the rate at which the body burns calories).
- Best way to support, detoxify, and strengthen the major organs in the body.
- Quickly absorb large amounts of nutrients into the system.
- Hardly any digestive work is needed to process raw liquid.
- Easy way to get beneficial enzymes.
- More nutritious than green powders.
- Easy to include vegetables you don’t like in your diet (I don’t like kale but it’s easy to hide it in a smoothie).
- Aids the body’s natural regenerative powers.
- Since it’s simple, it’s easy to be consistent.
- Makes amazingly healthy soup bases and nut butters without preservatives or bad oils
I’ve been researching blenders and juicers for several months. My dear friend Dolores knew I was looking for a juicer and generously sent me one of hers. I tried juicing beets to overcome anemia.
It worked! My iron levels came up more with fresh beet juice than with the weekly $450.00 painful Procrit shots my doctor prescribed to produce more red blood cells (and without the horrible side effects)!
Upgrading to a Powerful Juicer
My gift juicer works well for juicing things like grapes, tomatoes and avocados. But is not powerful enough to do things like broccoli, so I add green powder to my daily juice (I alternate between Boku and Garden of Life Perfect Food Super Green Formula).
Drinking a green drink daily made such a huge improvement in my health (I’ve been able to get off eight medications), that I decided to invest in a more powerful juicer. I’m still using the juicer my friend gave me, but from my research I decided the best machine for me is a Blendtec Total Blender.
View Full Blendtec Demonstration Here
This blender is so amazing; they have a site called WillItBlend.com where they show videos blending things like an iPad, an iPhone, marbles, a rake, and much more, to show how powerful it is.
Based on my research, my daughter purchased a Blendtec. Now I’m able to go to her home to make soup bases and juices, then store it in containers to transport to my home. Juice lasts in a refrigerated, tightly closed glass jar for at least 2–3 days.
When funds permit, I will purchase a Blendtec Total Blender. I decided on a blender instead of a typical juicer because:
- Typical juicers are a pain to clean (you have to disassemble several parts after each use)
- Typical juicers don’t juice all the food; there is always pulp let over. A good blender pulverizes all the vegetables or fruit with no waste.
It was a close call between a Vita-Mix and the Blendtec Total Blender
The Cost
Blendtec and Vita Mix run about $400.00. If you don’t have a blender or juicer I suggest you borrow one, or use the green powders and start saving for a juicer now.
There is no better investment you can make in your family’s health!
Juicing Recipes
My favorite place for recipes is Incrediblesmoothies.com
- Smoothie Making 101
- How to Make a Detox Smoothie
- Using Fruit As A Smoothie Base
- How To Make A Green Smoothie
- Flavor Fruits For Green Smoothies
- How To Get More Calcium In Your Green Smoothies
- Big Blend: Fruit and Vegetable Smoothie Recipe
- Green Smoothie FAQ
Juicing Tips
- Organic is best, of course, to avoid pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
- Fresh produce is vital (from the garden or a farmers market).
- The most nutritious vegetables include kale, spinach, carrots, celery, beets, garlic, cucumber and parsley.
- The most nutritious fruits include blueberries, kiwi, guava, cranberries, raspberries, strawberries, paw paw, and apples.
Not Natural? Too Concentrated?
God made most food to be eaten whole—but He also gave us rules on how to keep the land able to produce nutritious food, and we haven’t followed them (crop rotation and resting every seventh year). As a result, our food—even fresh, organic, raw food—is lacking in nutrients.
According to an analysis conducted by The Globe and Mail and CTV News, modern farming methods, long-haul transportation and crop-breeding practices have contributed to a significant drop in the level of vitamins and minerals in our food. For example, in the last fifty years the average potato has lost 100% of its vitamin A, 57% of its vitamin C and iron, and 28% of its calcium.
The book, 10001 Food Facts, Chefs’ Secrets & Household Hints
Resources to Learn More About Nutrition
If you are encouraged to add more raw food to your family’s diet, my first recommendation is to get educated. It’s easy to do for free on the Internet. I listen to a nutritional podcast daily to stay motivated.
Here are some of my favorite sites:
- What the Bible Says About Food
- Dr Axe (my doctor)
- Holy Cow: Does God Care About What We Eat? (Hope Egan)
- Incredible Raw
Some of the following sites have excellent health information; however, they think pork and shellfish are okay. They aren’t, so ignore those parts.
- Dr Mercola (author of Raising Healthy, Intelligent Kids in a Junk-Food World
)
- Dr Fuhlman (author Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss
)
- Weston A Price Foundation
- Kid’s Health
More Resources
Heart of Wisdom publishes What the Bible Says About Healthy Living Cookbook based on Dr. Rex Russel’s book What the Bible Says About Healthy Living. This super cookbook will help you incorporate God’s ingredients into your life—simply and without sacrificing taste. For years biblical health experts have been telling you how to think about biblical eating. Now there is a complete cookbook that helps you take action.
I’m currently reading the book 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food
consume.
The book is illustrated with stories from the author’s personal experience, which makes reading it pleasurable. One quick fact from the book:
- Danish scientists isolated a potential cancer fighter called falcarinol in raw carrots. They discovered that even mild heating of carrots, such as blanching (almost all baby carrots are blanched and soaked in chlorine), reduced the falcarinol in half.
Do You Have a Juicer or Blender?
What is your experience with juicing? I’d love to hear your comments.
Good for you Robin! Congratulations on your success thus far. I will be praying for your journey. Raw whole foods are so healing! I love my vitamix. I seen the blend tec a couple yrs ago, but I had already bought both containers with vita mix. I found other sites where ppl still recommended the vitamix, because on certain “harder” things they said the blend tec could still use a temper which the vita mix has. It would be interesting to compare the 2 side by side for myself one day. I think they both are probably the best blenders on the market. I sooooo love mine. One of the best kitchen investments I have ever made! Now for a excalibur dehydrator!
Cheers to Healh!
Larissa
.-= Larissa Klusman´s last blog ..I Corinthians 13 for Moms =-.
Larissa,
Don’t make me covet. LOL. I want the dehydrator too. I’m going to try building a sun dehydrator with saw horses and a screen. I have from now until tomatoes come in to learn how. I agree Vitamix and Blendtec are the best.
Dear Robin,
I am so thankful to hear about this. I know you have been so sick off and on for a while. This is such great news to hear about your healing with God’s vitamins instead of man’s medicine (I know some people can’t live without them, in some cases, but where you can, it’s a blessing).
Leslie
Hi, Robin…so happy to hear you are feeling so well!!! I, too, have a Blendtec blender as it is part of my mixer. (similar to a Bosch machine) We use it daily to make kefir smoothies, and my daughter makes ‘green smoothies’. I have many kombucha scobys if you would like me to mail you some.
My experience with drinking my blended veggies/fruits is this…long story short…this past Friday I had to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy because all of my ‘raw’ diet (2 quarts of blended juices a day as well as some type of raw salad 3 times a day) played havoc on my digestive system. It gave me colitis and caused gastroparesis. I’ve been praying about simply juicing my veggies since I am not permitted to have any fiber or raw foods at all. If someone has a sensitive digestive system, I feel that juicing would be the way to go for them, rather than blending. This is just my experience. Thanks for the tip on juicing the beets…my anemia/iron numbers are down right now, and that is a great idea. (I love beets!) Blessings to you, Robin! ~Sue~
Robin,
Praise Yah! He has shown you the truth about nutrition and conventional medicine. He did the same for me about 4 yrs ago and it has dramatically changed my family’s health. May I suggest another resource? http://www.WellWithU.com This is a new website that promotes natural health using biblical principles. I have learned so much from this group of people. Although my body has done alot of healing in the past, I felt I was still missing a part of the puzzle. That part was detoxification. There is so much great info on this site and they are working on more! Learning to be healthy His way is a real paradigm shift. Welcome aboard! Carey
Thank you so much for this site!
I have owned my vitamix for about six here and I totally love it. I have never had a single problem with it and use it nearly everyday for smoothies.
We try to juice daily, but we also tend to go in cycles based on just how crazy life is… our standard is usually the cheaper vegetables like carrot, apple, celery and cucumber during the winter and whatever during the summer.
We have many juicers but use a champion juicer for lots of things like juice, raw pates, ice cream etc, which is awesome, but when life was really crazy and challenging a few years back I got a cheapy Jack Lalane juicer which of course is not the best according to the ‘experts’ but IMO it’s only as good as the one you are ACTUALLY USING!!! LOL The Jack Lalane has a large hopper which allows things to be fed into it without cutting it. Just like that late night infomercial you REALLY can juice and clean up in 3 minutes-we’ve time it!!!
My 8.5 yr old and 5.5 year old can run and clean this easily by themselves…due to the size of the hopper though I supervise the 5.5 yr old. Lately I’ve been putting it on the floor with full supervision and my 15 month old feeds all the veggies into it- and then shuts it off!!! adorable to watch!!! and he LOVES the juice.
Alternatively we also make ‘green smoothies’ in the Vitamix (it truly is the other best investment I ever made and we use it at least 3x a day-smoothies, soups, almond milk etc.) I find since I don’t have a juicer that juices greens well, aside from my wheatgrass juicer which I don’t want to drag out, I prefer to put it in the Vitamix- ie. handful spinach, 2-4 cups water, 1/4 – 1/2 lime with rind, 2-4 apples, 1-2 banans and blend together.
Sometiems we just don’t want the ‘thickness’ so I strain it with a nylon nut milk bag which costs about $5 or you can make your own. Since I no longer drink alcohol it is fun to put the ‘green’ juice into a wine glass at dinner
All of my children love juice and green smoothies etc. – my 8.5 yr old has been drinking them since about 6 months of age. An interesting favorite we discovered was from Julian’s Raw book and it is was called Apple Blaster (he also calls it Blood) but I prefer Apple Blaster LOL and is 2lbs (6?) apples, 1 piece ginger (i keep mine in the freezer so it doesn’t go bad), 1/2 cup of beets, 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice. It is shockingly YUMMY!!!! Juicing is AWESOME!!!
yes it can get expensive, but I’ve seen the price of pop and chips or crackers and packaged foods or canned soup and WOW I find that all expensive … heck I can make an awesome lentil soup for pennies compared to the canned one and make 3x as much
Same goes for rice or almond milk- I can make either in under 2 minutes and get as much as a ‘UHT-ultra high temperature treated box of rice or almond milk) but with homemade it retains the nutrients and vitamins. This is actually a good thing for homeschooled kids!
My 8.5 yr old can put on rolled oats, while my 5.5 year old helps add the water and almonds to the Vitamix. I pour it into a cloth nut milk bag and hang it on a hook with a bowl under it. It’s a team effort
In terms of the fresh produce one could buy apples, cucumbers, carrots etc and peel them- takes a few minutes longer but best case scenario
and yes I buy organic when I can…for certain things…anything we eat alot of – brown rice, nuts, seeds, dried fruits, leafy greens, carrots, apples, grapes. In the summer there are usually CSA’s all over the place (where you buy a share of produce at a farm and you get a bucket each week).
We are not vegetarian so we buy organic beef by the side otherwise we could never afford meat. But Really…you just do what you can, if you can’t buy organic, don’t worry about it, fresh IMO is still better then canned or boxed anything. try soaking with hydrogen peroxide or other methods to try and remove residue. Better then nothing
Of course growing your own is awesome too…. http://www.squarefootgardening.com is THE way to go to get the whole family involved and have an abundance of food!, no weeding, I have 8 now next to the sand box
I couldn’t find the time to do a big garden because all my time went to weeding the darn thing. I belong to a local food coop http://www.onfc.ca and we buy rice pasta, rice, quinoa, millet & buckwheat by the 25lb bag or case and I store extra in freezer if there is room.
I also order all our ‘raw and unpasteurized’ nuts, seeds and dried fruit from http://www.realrawfoods.com in British Columbia Canada (I think they ship to US) and their prices are cheaper for raw organic even with shipping when I buy in bulk then at the local cheapo store per lb. Some other families sometimes go in on a shipment with me.
We try not to eat out at all, I don’t buy packaged anything if I can help it, but I do go on strike sometimes and hit a wall LOL It’s what you do 90% of the time….a process I think, forever changing, learning, adapting, experimenting
Hi, I’ve been juicing for a little while now and love it. Just recently I’ve been reading more and more about raw food, or at least plant food and how it is so much better for us than animal food. I’m definitely interested in reading more about raw food, and find the whole thing fascinating.
Thanks for a really informative post!
John
.-= John´s last blog ..May 25, Vegetable Juicing Recipes | Simple Vegetable Juicing Recipes =-.
Juicers are good tools, but blenders are more versatile and they maintain the nutritional value of every ingredient, while juicers, by separating the juice from the pulp of fruits, for example, may leave some important nutrients behind. Both are usable in any kitchen, though. They really help making some tasty and healthy meals. Smoothies are a personal favorite of mine.
Green Smoothies are really one of the most efficient ways for your body to heal itself and the easiest way to absorb nutrients into your body.
Should you simply assume, one apple is the same as the other 99? Absolutely not. And so is true with all fruits, vegetables and herbs you buy to add to your juice recipe. The selection of said ingredients can make all the difference in the world.