Friday, July 23, 2010

Green Smoothies

This week we have a guest article about Green Smoothies.

In addition, the Herb Shop is offering a free seminar on Wednesday, August 11 with Robyn - she will be teaching you how to make green smoothies and discussing the health benefits of having a green smoothie daily. Details about the class are below the article.

Green Smoothies
by Robyn Openshaw, The Green Smoothie Girl

Hello friends,

In my effort to teach people how to convert to a whole-foods, 60-80% raw, mostly plant-based diet, I've found one habit that I consider to be the highest and best use of your kitchen time.

Making a blenderful of green smoothie takes only 10 minutes a day. I recommend doing it first thing in the morning, before the day gets away from you. Then put it in quart or pint jars, in the fridge. Take your quart (my daily recommendation) and a straw to work with you, or running errands.

A 96-oz. blenderful makes a quart for me, and a pint for each of my four children. That's 15 servings of greens and fruit for me, and 7.5 servings for them. Wow!

I prefer drinking my green smoothie at lunch, because that's the meal people typically have no time to prepare. Consequently, it's the meal where we are most likely to eat "fast food" that lacks nutrition and fiber. The foods most Americans eat cause a big energy drain because the body has to work so hard to manufacture enzymes and break down heavy processed foods and animal proteins.

Even if you want something not particularly good for you at lunch, if you've filled your stomach up FIRST with high-nutrition greens and fruit (400 calories in a quart), you'll eat less of the inferior foods. And your blended greens provide external enzymes to break down other food.

Furthermore, you're going to see a stabilization of your energy and mood in the late afternoon. That's when many working people find that they need their productivity most--right as it fails them! Many turn to caffeine or other stimulants just to get through the day.

If your lunch nutrition includes large amounts of the highest-micronutrient foods on earth (greens), you will likely achieve radically improved energy. That may happen immediately. Or it may happen after giving the "cleansing reactions" a chance to subside, if you're new to green smoothies. (Eighteen percent of the 175 people in my study experienced temporary reactions such as headache or diarrhea. That's normal as your body recognizes excellent building materials coming in, and uses that opportunity to "clean house.")

In my research, 95.4% said green smoothies noticeably improved their health or quality of life! 84 percent were so excited, they taught others the habit! And the top benefits reported were more energy (85%), improved digestion (80%), fewer cravings for sweets and processed foods (65%), and weight loss (50%, with an average loss of 18 lbs.).

Search "green smoothie" on YouTube and see the phenomenon of well over 1,000 demos there--it's a hot topic! Mine is the top-viewed demo, and it takes only 3 minutes to watch.

To Your Health!

Robyn Openshaw
GreenSmoothieGirl.com


Robyn's Template Green Smoothie Recipe

Yield: 3 quarts

· 2 ¾ cup water and ice

· ¼ cup raw, organic stevia

Greens blended until smooth up to the 6-cup mark in the blender (VitaMix or BlendTec are best)

Fruit blended up to 9+ cups

Greens can be spinach, collards, kale, chard, greens from turnips/beets, weeds like dandelion or purslane, or lettuces.

Fruit can be anything, though my favorites are 1-2 bananas, 2+ cups frozen mixed berries, and then whatever fruit I have on hand.