Smoothies are a great way to pack in a huge nutrition punch with very little effort. Many people claim that regularly starting the day with a super-nutritious smoothie provides so much energy that they can skip their morning cup of coffee. Others have smoothies for lunch or dinner, or for a midday snack. Since you blend the whole fruit or vegetable, you don’t lose the fiber like you do when drinking juice. That keeps you full longer and provides all the other benefits of fiber consumption. Adding vegetables to smoothies ups their nutritional punch even further and, once you learn a few tricks, you will be able to drink several servings of fruits and veggies before you leave the house in the morning.
Instructions
1. Get a great blender, such as a Vita-Mix, to make your smoothies smooth. While your average inexpensive blender might be fine for amateur blending or even for blending ice, grinding veggies down to a puree in smoothies requires power.
2. Try to keep the smoothie as “whole” as possible. In other words, try to use just fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds if possible and liquid bases from one of these. When possible, pick organic fruits and vegetables. Frozen varieties are available when fresh are not and work great in smoothies.
3. Start with a small amount of liquid base and keep more on hand to pour in if the smoothie gets too thick. Good base choices include water, almond milk, soymilk, rice milk, oat milk, hemp milk, soy yogurt, juice or a favorite liquid. Juice can be out of a bottle, but you can also peel oranges or other fresh (not frozen) fruit and blend them first for a juicy base. With a powerful blender, you can even throw in whole oranges and blend the seeds or leave the greens on strawberries.
4. Start slowly with the greens. Adding greens to smoothies is a great way to get a hefty serving of veggies in and keep the overall glycemic index of your concoction low, but start slowly. Add maybe a few leaves of fresh spinach the first time. The next time, add a little more. Try a few leaves of romaine or kale. You’ll be surprised and how many greens you can pack in without even tasting them. Savvy parents get their children to eat piles of greens this way.
5. Remember fresh versus frozen. Fresh fruits and vegetables blend easily and to a more liquid consistency compared to frozen. When adding greens, remember that a pound of frozen spinach is really a lot more spinach (and a lot more intense tasting) than a pound of fresh spinach. When you’re first experimenting, taste as you go. If you're using all fresh produce, but you'd like it colder, just blend in some ice.
6. Be creative. You can also use carrots, tomatoes, avocados and more in smoothies. For example, Whole Foods has a smoothie called the “white rabbit” that I copy at home. It consists of carrot juice, soymilk and bananas. It sounds strange, but it’s yummy! You can also add cashews to make a smoothie creamy. Blend these together for a guilt-free dessert smoothie: nut-milk, frozen bananas and raw cocoa powder. Add peanut butter if you like peanut-butter cups. For a quick “milkshake,” blend rice milk with frozen strawberries (or any frozen berry). Kids love it.
Tags: fruits vegetables, fresh spinach, rice milk