After having promptly finished my first green smoothie using my brand new Breville blender, I feel refreshed enough to write a review on the quick and life-changing Victoria Boutenko’s book, “Green for Life“. Recently, after a long agonizing month in the hospital for my dad, I started a journey to pure health. It has been an eye-opening one even for a casual health nut such as me. Sometimes I have set-backs but I always find my way back to developing healthy habits and feeding my soul with the perfect right food.
My all time favorite green smoothie:
Recipe: 1 large banana, 1 cup of frozen strawberries, 2 cups of fresh baby spinach, (if desired, add 1/4 to 1/3 cup of filtered water).
I had been juicing vegetables for a month now and entertaining ideas of a partial raw foods diet oh but the troubles with fighting those cravings! My intentions on what I want to get out of this book were clear to me: I do not plan to follow the Boutenko family diet of raw non-solid raw foods. I intend to pick up additional healthy ways to boost my diet.
I read this book in 2 days and found it to be very inspiring. The Boutenko family story is a sad one and indeed, their struggle for finding the right diet for them results in a worthwhile discovery to share with the rest of us. I would have never imagined making a green smoothie by mixing greens with fruits, much less blending them together. I love fruits. I love greens. I love vegetables. I usually crave each separately. I particularly do not care for fruits in my salad. What business do cherries and apples have in a salad? Still, I wanted to be open to new ideas so I read on.
Soon, I was nearly convinced that we would find the most nutritional value possible, along with countless health benefits, in a green smoothie. The combination of the pulp and the fiber, the latter of which is removed in the juicing process, contains the nutritional enzymes that together with the juice are absorbed better by our body cells. It is also easier to follow a diet based on a green smoothie than on juicing for any extended period of time. Green smoothie is also thicker, much lower in sugar, and more filling. Also the blending process is much easier than juicing.
I tried two very simple recipe for my green smoothie tryouts: Lettuce and bananas first, spinach and bananas next. I first made them in my old blender so I would say you do not need an expensive blender for this process. It was mentally not easy for me to voluntarily mix those two ingredients but to my surprise, the blended concoction was a light green color with a delicious smell of banana. The texture came out creamy. The taste was the best part – unlike a fruit smoothie, it is not very sweet. Fruit smoothies carry a high amount of fructose, and while natural, it still fluctuates the blood sugar level more than necessary. A smoothie blended with vegetables provides the perfect balance and cuts the sugar level. It is surprising how delicious it tastes but the green thick concoction can turn heads and raise eyebrows, so be ware of just how unique you are!
Boutenko provides less than my desired number of recipes and combinations for a green smoothie. Instead, she spends a lot of time explaining benefits and sharing testimonials in more general terms. I would have liked to learn more about options on how to incorporate the green smoothie in a regular diet, a vegetarian diet, a raw food diet, instead of learning about it only in the context of raw non-solid diet food.
Also she is remiss on defining what a raw food diet means to her and her family so the baseline will not be the same for every reader. But I digress as that may not have been the real intent of her book. Her book has given me an amazing new habit to develop and explore, and I am delighted to have read it.
Drinking a green smoothie will enhance your life, your energy, your whole being, beyond what you can imagine – just as juicing vegetables can. They are also simply delicious. I invite each and every one of you, at any stage of your life, to take serious care of your health so serious problems can stay far away.
Best to be paranoid about protecting that which is most valuable and priceless in our lives than regret later what we could have done with the abundance of information, knowledge and tools at our feet, when it is too late to take any repercussions for lost time and declined health.
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