Juice or smoothie? If you have wondered about that, let me quickly assure you that both of these are super beneficial for you. And you can use both to improve the health of your family!
When you juice (using a juicer that has filters) you are removing the insoluble fiber – the pulp. Although fiber is good for you, it slows down the absorption of nutrients and some nutrients stay in the fiber. When you juice, you are extracting up to 70% of the nutrition right into your glass1, and without the insoluble fiber your body absorbs 100% of these nutrients. Juicing has its advantages in that you get the nutrients out of the vegetables/fruits in their most absorbable state and so body can get the maximum benefits without it having to do any additional work.
Smoothies on the other hand are what you get when you blend whole fruits and vegetables together to form thick pulpy mixture. You can also add other nutritious ingredients to it – You can toss in a healthy fat, in the form of avocado, coconut oil, chia seeds, or almond butter. And you can blend in plenty of other superfood ingredients for an even broader spectrum of nutrients, like fresh grated ginger, matcha or cacao powder, fresh mint, and cinnamon.
Depending upon what your immediate health goals are, both of these can be beneficial. Juicing is incredibly beneficial for folks who are nutrition deficient and or immunocompromised as in autoimmune conditions. Some children and even adults who don’t like to eat vegetables with their meals can really benefit from juicing since this way they get all the vitamins and nutrients easily. However, juicing can fail to keep you fully satiated since it does not have the fiber to fill you up. That’s where smoothies come in – smoothies can provide great taste and nutrition along with keeping your tummy full 🙂
We have been doing smoothies in our house a lot – I make it for the kids as a snack when they come from school. And my breakfast has been strictly only smoothies now for the past few months ever since I am on a Paleo diet. And I love the fact that I can some up with so many variations of it! I don’t even bother with recipes – its just about throwing different things together and most of the times they do come out great no matter what you put in them.
Many of my friends and family members have asked me what kind of smoothies I make. So in this post today I just wanted to give you some ideas …only to get you started and then all you need is your imagination and a refrigerator full of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables!
- Go Bananas!: I love adding bananas in my breakfast smoothies because they are sweet, they are creamy and they give the smoothie a lot of body, meaning they fill me up! Using bananas as a main ingredient, you can create many different smoothie variations using various fruits like apples, plums, strawberries, mangoes, papayas, cantaloupe etc.
- Use Avocados: I love avocados for almost the same reasons as bananas – they are creamy, and filling. Plus since they don’t have a strong flavor of their own, so they can blend well with a lot of different fruits and veggies.
- Fresh mint/herbs/citrus: Mint or citrus adds a nice fresh twist to your usual smoothie so use it sometimes to change up the flavor profile of your smoothie. A tinge of Fresh ginger or cinnamon are also great ways to spice up your smoothie giving it a whole new flavor level!
- Veggies and Greens: Smoothies are a great way to feed vegetables and nutritious greens to your kids (or to yourself!)- Some good vegetables to add in smoothies are celery, cucumber, carrots, beets and all kinds of greens. Blending Kale or spinach with bananas for example packs in a lot of iron in one glass! And is a great way to increase your iron intake.
- Add nutritional boosters: Adding chia seeds, flax seeds, matcha powder, almond butter, coconut oil and collagen protein etc to your smoothie can give it added nutritional and flavor boost!
- Healthy Fillers: To make the smoothies more filling, you can add collagen protein, nut milks or coconut milk to the smoothie for a creamy and fully satisfying drink!
As I said before I don’t follow any recipes but just the above rules. Following are 3 recipes that I recently made that I made sure to note the recipes for! These are incredibly delicious and satisfying!
Mint Avocado Cantaloupe:
- 1 ripe Avocado(peeled)
- 1 Banana (peeled)
- 2 cups cantaloupe, chopped
- 1 orange (skin and seeds removed)
- 1 scoop collagen protein
- 2 fresh mint leaves
- 1/2 cup water
Green Smoothie
- 1 Green apple (peeled and sliced)
- 1 cup fresh spinach leaves
- 1 Banana (peeled)
- 1 ripe Avocado (peeled)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 small fresh parsley leaves
- 1 tsp chia seeds(omit for AIP)
- 1 scoop collagen protein
- 1/2 cup water
Very Berry
- 1 cup frozen blueberries
- 1 cup frozen cherries
- 1 Banana (peeled)
- 2 kiwis (peeled and sliced)
- 1 scoop collagen protein
- 1/2 cup water
Method: For each of the above smoothies, add all the ingredients to a blender or a food processor and blend completely until smooth! This recipe makes 2 tall glasses!
