- Home
- Green Smoothies
- Benefits of Vegetables
Obtain the Health Benefits of Vegetables with these Nutrient Dense Greens!
The benefits of vegetables in our daily diet cannot be overrated. Especially, green leafy vegetables. Greens contain many different nutrients from vitamins and minerals to phytonutrients and omega 3’s.
So we know all about the great benefits, but why don’t we eat greens at every meal? It seems to me that the main obstacle is... our taste buds.
I wasn’t brought up eating a salad on a regular basis. Yes, I knew how good they are for me. I just didn’t want to actually sit down and eat one day in and day out.
Oh, come on... Be honest with yourself. If you didn’t have the salad swimming in tasty dressing, would you eat a salad every day?
This is when a green smoothie comes into the picture. Green smoothies are fruit smoothie recipes blended with greens. Our bodies assimilate even more nutrients by blending than chewing.
Nutrient Density
Greens are super dense with nutrients. When you compare calorie to calorie, leafy green’s nutrient levels skyrocket over all other foods. These nutrients may help repair your body functions, boosts your immune system, protects your eyes, lower cholesterol, prevent cancer, and etc.
But much of these nutrients are encapsulated in walls of cellulose. Chewing thoroughly is critical to break through those cellulose walls to get at the valuable micronutrients. But if you didn’t chew the greens thoroughly into a juicy pulp... the greens pass through our digestive tract. Our bodies can’t utilize the full benefits of vegetables that are locked away.
Again, that is where a green smoothie comes soaring in to save the day! Instead of only assimilating only half of the nutrients, we get 90-95%! When you consume a green smoothie, you are bypassing the need to use high calorie, chemical filled dressings.
Fiber
Fiber is another great benefit of vegetables. Many of my friends and family say that adding greens daily into their lifestyle either through smoothies or salads have their digestion improve immensely.
Did you know that you should have at least 1-3 bowel movements a day? The food that comes into the mouth should be pushing yesterday’s food out. Like a conveyer belt. I'm not sure how people can go for days on end and only have a bowel movement once every 3-4 days.
When our bowels delay in our bodies, the fecal matter starts to rot. We have two problems.
One, our body tries to get rid of the toxins through our bowels but the exit door is jammed. So the toxins stay in our body causing more damage.
Two, the rotting fecal matter starts to produce more toxins for our bodies to remove. But wait... We can’t remove them through our bowels. So the toxins start to exit different avenues, such as our skin causing acne, rashes, boils, etc.
Over the years, I have noticed that kale seems to be the most cleansing of the greens for my body. Experiment and see which greens work best for you.
By consistently maintaining a health digestive tract that will remove harmful toxins, you will never know what diseases you prevented in your future. It really is better to be safe than sorry!
Storing Leafy Greens
If I know that I will be using my greens over the next 2-4 days, I leave them in my refrigerator. But if I need to store them for a longer period of time, I wash them and freeze them in a quart Ziploc bag. Once I want a green smoothie, I throw my fruit and water in the blender with the frozen greens on top and blend away!
Now some words of advice for storing your greens in the refrigerator. The water contained within the cell walls causes the greens to be crisp. The moisture in the leaves evaporate into the air easily. Refrigerators dehydrate any leafy green not stored air tight.
At the grocery store they spray their produce with water throughout the day. Now, I don’t know about you... But I do not have the time or the memory to spray my greens a couple times a day. I grow greens to sell at the farmers' market every year. Here is a simple trick that I teach my customers to keep their greens fresh and crisp. Just keep in a seal bag or container. It is that simple.
Now that we have discussed the benefits of vegetables... what will you do with this information? What new effortless habit can you start today and repeat every day for a lifetime that will exponentially change your health?
Benefits of Vegetables:
Below is a list of different greens that explain the different benefits of vegetables: