Chapter 1

Reaping the Benefits of Green Smoothies

In This Chapter

Grasping just how much nutrition is in a green smoothie

Understanding how green smoothies contribute to your inner health

Seeing the ways green smoothies promote outer beauty

Using green smoothies to prevent and fight disease

What exactly about leafy greens makes them such an important food for health? This chapter explores how you can boost your immunity, strengthen nails and hair, improve your digestion, sharpen your memory, lose weight, and even slow down or reverse certain diseases simply by drinking a green smoothie every day. With the information in this chapter, you’ll be an expert and feel even more motivated to start blending up your own green smoothies.

Understanding the Nutritional Value of a Green Smoothie

Telling yourself to drink a green smoothie every day because you’re “supposed to” isn’t a great motivational tool, but knowing more about the nutritional value of greens increases your chances of keeping this new healthy habit in your diet for life. As an added bonus, you can also better explain your smoothie to family and friends when they see you drinking what they think is “green gunk” for the first time!

Chlorophyll: Drinking the green blood of plants

Plants, trees, leafy greens, and green vegetables are green because they contain a pigment known as chlorophyll. Plants use chlorophyll to absorb sunlight and change it into energy through a process called photosynthesis. One molecule of chlorophyll is very closely related in structure to one molecule of hemoglobin (human blood), so chlorophyll is sometimes referred to as the “blood of plants.”

Because chlorophyll is so closely related to hemoglobin, when you ingest it, you’re basically getting a free blood transfusion. Chlorophyll helps rebuild and replenish red blood cells almost instantly. When you eat green vegetables or leafy greens, you’re actually ingesting edible energy from the sun, giving you an amazing, all-natural energy boost. Chlorophyll helps speed up healing and reduce risk of infection thanks to its antibacterial and antifungal properties. In addition, it protects against free radical damage. Chlorophyll also helps detoxify the lymph system, blood, and liver.

The pH factor: Getting alkaline

Maintaining an alkaline pH in the body is one of the best ways to prevent disease and stop premature aging. Ideally, your body’s pH should be slightly alkaline, in the range of 7.365 to 7.385. When your pH is too high or too low, you can feel tired, gain weight, have poor digestion, suffer from skin breakouts, and feel aches and pains in your joints. Over time, an out-of-balance pH weakens your immune system, leaving you more at risk for viral and bacterial infections, including certain types of cancer.

Most food in the Standard American Diet (SAD) is highly acidic. Refined sugar, processed foods, meat, dairy, wheat products, alcohol, and coffee are all acid-forming. Stress alone can make you acidic, too. It should be no surprise that many people today are sick, tired, or both.

If you stay chronically acidic over several months or years, your body tries to correct itself toward alkalinity by leaching calcium from your bones to buffer the acid. Over the long term, that leaves you at higher risk of osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. Look at vegan animals in nature. They eat edible leafy greens as a dietary staple, and none of them suffer from loss of bone density later in life. Now, that’s some (green) food for thought!

You don’t have to give up all acidic foods, but the more alkaline foods you consume, the better your body can achieve a healthy pH balance. Leafy greens are one of the most alkaline-forming foods in nature. Just by adding more greens to your daily diet, you can counter the effects of other, high-acid foods in your diet.

Enjoying enzyme energy

Enzymes are tiny catalysts of energy that perform specific tasks in your body. Your body makes two main types of enzymes:

• Metabolic enzymes help grow new cells and repair old ones. A lack of metabolic enzymes can speed up the aging process, resulting in more wrinkles, bone loss, and aches and pains in the joints.
• Digestive enzymes assist with the digestion and assimilation of food — mainly proteins, carbohydrates, and fat.

You can help your body with its enzyme activities by bringing in more enzymes, either in food or supplement form. Food enzymes help digestive enzymes break down your food and help metabolic enzymes speed up your cellular repair. You find higher amounts of food enzymes in raw, uncooked fruits and vegetables. Most food enzymes are destroyed when you heat a food above 118 degrees Fahrenheit, so by consuming fresh fruits and uncooked leafy greens, your body gets the enzymes it needs naturally.

Calling fiber your friend

Without a doubt, fiber is the key for good digestive health. On average, Americans eat only 15 grams of fiber daily, yet the recommended daily allowance (RDA) is 38 grams per day for males and 25 grams per day for females (though the recommendations vary a bit depending on your age). What happens when your fiber intake is too low? Short-term, you can suffer from constipation and hemorrhoids. Long-term, a low fiber diet can increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and gastrointestinal problems.

Quickly increase your daily fiber consumption by drinking a green smoothie! Even better, add more fiber to your smoothie with two tablespoons of ground flaxseeds or chia seeds for an extra four to ten grams of fiber. Combining fresh whole fruits, leafy greens, and flax or chia gives you the perfect fiber-rich drink. All that extra fiber helps with weight loss by keeping you feeling full, prevents constipation, and enhances regularity.

Boosting your mineral intake

The noticeably bitter taste in leafy green vegetables comes from their high mineral content. In dark leafy green vegetables, you find plenty of calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, manganese, phosphorous, and potassium. Just by adding a handful or two of leafy greens to your daily smoothie, you’re getting a lot of extra minerals for very little effort.

The benefits of eating a mineral-rich diet include the following:

• Stronger teeth and bones, with a lower risk of osteoporosis
• Improved blood pressure
• Better muscle recovery after workouts
• Strengthened immune system
• Sharper memory and good brain function
• Thicker hair and stronger nails
• Clearer skin, fewer wrinkles, and a more youthful look
• Balanced thyroid function and hormonal system
• Stable blood sugar levels

Increasing vitamins for vitality

Your daily green smoothie offers a nutrient-dense health drink that’s absolutely jam-packed with valuable vitamins for your health. In fresh fruits, you get vitamins A, C, E, and a whole array of disease-fighting antioxidants. In leafy greens, you get folate, vitamin B6, and vitamin K. Add some of the superfoods listed in Chapter 6 and you’re boosting your vitamins even more. Now that’s a great way to start the day!

Getting all the vitamins your body needs benefits your health by

• Fighting infections and boosting your immune system
• Helping heal wounds and reduce scarring
• Building strong bones and muscles
• Strengthening heart and red blood cells
• Improving the absorption of iron
• Increasing energy and vitality
• Strengthening eyesight
• Supporting kidneys
• Maintaining strong teeth and improving dental health
• Normalizing nerve function

Picking green protein

You may not think of spinach, spirulina, and kale as sources of protein, but they are! Greens are a natural powerhouse of protein, and they offer an easy-to-digest, high-fiber alternative to traditional animal-based options. Just think of horses, cows, water buffalo, giraffes, elephants, and gorillas; they’re all huge muscle-mass animals, and they’re all vegans! They get their protein from fresh, raw leafy greens.

Other plant-based proteins to add to your green smoothie include spirulina powder, hemp seeds, flaxseeds, chia seeds, tahini, fresh sprouts, and bee pollen. (Flip to Chapter 6 for important info on consuming bee pollen if you’re allergic to bees or pollen.)

The benefits of eating more plant-based proteins include the following (many of which are benefits I cover in the preceding sections):

• Support an alkaline pH
• Don’t raise cholesterol levels
• Encourage heart health
• Help strengthen the digestive tract
• Promote healthy bowel function
• Boast powerful anti-inflammatory effects
• Boost the immune system
• Reduce risk of metabolic syndrome
• Provide a rich source of minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants
• Contain high amounts of fiber
• Promote muscle recovery and repair
• Minimize aches and pains in the joints

Getting variety with greens

Wild animals instinctively practice variety in their eating habits, and they naturally move or graze from tree to bush to plant, eating small amounts of leaves from different sources. They do this to protect themselves from small amounts of...