Green Smoothie Recipe

Most people understand that to be healthy, they need to consume an abundance of nutritious vegetables. The average recommendation is five servings per day, and some health experts suggest doubling that number and eating ten servings instead.

Vegetables are your primary source of vitamins, minerals, and a host of other beneficial nutrients. They also contain an abundance of fiber, which is critical for digestive and intestinal health. Fruits are healthy too, but they’re often high in sugar, which is why most people need to eat plenty of vegetables.

Unfortunately, preparing and cooking vegetables can be time-consuming, and lack of time is a common barrier to eating healthily.

The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time cooking vegetables to enjoy their benefits. Another way to eat more veggies is to make green smoothies. A green smoothie is simply vegetables that have been blended together to make a healthy drink.

You can pack a lot of veggies into a green smoothie, making it a really easy way to consume lots of vegetables in one go. You can also add fruits, herbs, and spices to dial healthfulness up to the absolute maximum.

Learn more about green smoothies and try our favorite green smoothie recipe today!

Green Smoothie Recipe

What Greens to Put in a Smoothie?

The great thing about green smoothies is that you can make them from almost any green, non-starchy vegetable.

It doesn’t even have to be green, although most of the best ingredients are. Good ingredients for green smoothies include:

• Alfalfa
• Avocado
• Arugula
• Bok choy
• Broccoli
• Celery
• Cucumber
• Green peppers
• Kale
• Kiwi
• Lemongrass
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Spinach
• Swiss chard
• Wheatgrass

Most green smoothie recipes also include a base liquid, such as almond milk or coconut water, and maybe a little fruit for sweetness, such as frozen bananas or berries. However, it’s the green ingredients that should dominate the ingredients list.

Delicious Green Smoothie Recipe

While there is nothing to stop you from creating your own green smoothie recipe (you really can’t go too far wrong!), here is one to get you started. Just put the following in your blender and blitz into a smoothie.

• ½ avocado, peeled and destoned
• 1 handful baby spinach leaves
• 1 handful of kale
• 1 small cucumber
• 2 ounces frozen pineapple or banana chunks
• 1 ½ cups coconut water

Are Green Smoothies Really That Good for You?

It’s hard to think of an easier or better way to increase your intake of nutritious vegetables. Just wash your ingredients, blend them, and then drink; simple! The recipe above contains a little over five servings of vegetables in just one hit. You don’t even have to drink it all at once; you can put it in a thermos and sip it over a couple of hours.

Regularly drinking green smoothies will:

• Boost immunity
• Ward off illnesses, including cancer
• Improve digestion
• Improve your skin
• Boost your energy
• Help you lose weight
• Improve your all-over health

Whether you eat plenty of vegetables already and want to consume more, or just find eating vegetables inconvenient or unpleasant, green smoothies can help. It’s also suggested that consuming raw vegetables is better for you than eating cooked veggies because the heat of cooking damages some of the compounds in veggies, rendering them less healthful.

Is it Bad to Drink Green Smoothies Every Day?

Absolutely not! Suggesting that drinking a green smoothie every day is unhealthy is like saying it would be harmful to eat vegetables every day, and that’s clearly not the case.

The only downside of consuming a green smoothie every day, initially at least, is that it could cause some gastric distress as your body gets used to processing a large number of vegetables all at the same time.

Avoid this problem by starting off with small smoothies or drinking half one day and half the next. Increase your intake gradually to avoid stomach upsets, gas, or bloating.

Do Green Smoothies Make You Poop?

Green smoothies are very high in fiber. Fiber is the indigestible part of plants. When you eat a lot of fiber, it gives bulk to your poop so that it passes quickly and more easily through your digestive tract, resulting in bigger, more frequent bowel movements.

This is not a bad thing.

Bigger, more frequent poops help eliminate harmful bacteria from your digestive system and also removes things like worn-out blood and intestinal cells, cholesterol, and other waste. If allowed to accumulate, these substances can affect your health.

Also, fiber means your bowel movements will be easier. Not straining is a good way to avoid things like hemorrhoids and diverticular disease. Fiber is very filling, too, as it stays in your stomach for several hours at a time, which can help prevent overeating and weight gain.

So, while green smoothies can make you poop more, that’s not a drawback or anything to worry about. You should also find that your bowel movements become more regular as your body adjusts to your increased fiber intake.

Bottom Line

While the recommendation to eat five servings of vegetables per day is well-meaning, it’s not always practical. After a hard day’s work, the last thing most people want to do is spend time preparing and cooking lots of different vegetables.

However, a low vegetable intake can quickly lead to malnutrition. After all, vegetables are the most abundant source of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytonutrients, plant sterols, and all the other substances needed for health and longevity.

Green smoothies make eating plenty of vegetables a whole lot easier. Just wash your chosen ingredients and then toss them in a blender. Blitz for 60-seconds and then chug it down – simple!

As well as being insanely healthy, replacing a meal per day with a green smoothie in your diet can also help you lose weight without having to count calories or go hungry. After all, green smoothies are high in filling dietary fiber. Don’t feel you have to stick to ingredients like kale or spinach either; there are lots of different greens you can put in your smoothie. And, if you prefer a sweeter taste, add some fruit too.

Green smoothies are a very simple and time-efficient way to ensure that you are eating enough vegetables, even when you don’t have much time for cooking.