My Tasty Green Breakfast Smoothie
It’s delicious, and it makes me feel good all day
By Faith Maloney
“You ate what for breakfast?”
It’s a comment I hear a lot if I happen to confess that I try to have a green smoothie first thing every morning. The smoothie part seems to go over fine but when I say I add several ounces of kale, chard or spinach to the mix I see the faces screw up as if I had said I eat raw onions like apples.
In fact, green smoothies are wonderful. They set you up for the day by providing a good balance of raw nutrients that your body needs to do its thing.
I first read about them in a wonderful book called Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. To be honest, I was skeptical. After all, who wants to eat that many raw vegetables?
But, in fact, the green smoothie is a great way to pack in your daily recommended fruit and vegetable servings in one fell swoop. Of course, as a whole foods vegan I’ll be eating more.
I tend to do the same things most days, but I know others use the green smoothie as a way to experiment with different fruit and veggie flavors. I usually peel a small orange or a kiwi fruit, add a small frozen banana (it’s a great use for those black mark bananas on sale at your local grocery store), a cup of blueberries, a tablespoon of ground flax seed and some pomegranate juice. On top of that, I pile kale, chard or spinach. It does help to have a high powered blender like a Vitamix or Blendtec.
A quick whirr, and it all comes out a sort of purpley color because of the blueberries. I love it. I can actually hear my cells giving a whoopsie-do as it comes on down. “Now this I can use,” I hear them say.
A side benefit from eating a whole foods vegan diet, apart from the fact that you won’t be hurting any animals, is that I find I’m no longer getting sick from the usual ailments that seem to afflict most people.
Try it. You might like it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faith Maloney, one of the founders of Best Friends Animal Society, is a practicing whole foods vegan. She stopped eating animal-based foods many years ago – initially for ethical reasons, but also because she’d been learning the benefits of eating a whole-foods plant-based diet to protect her health. A win-win situation.