The Problem with Green Smoothies- Maybe Not So Healthy...

TRANSCRIPT:

- Hi, I'm Sage. Welcome to back to the Addictive Wellness Channel. Today I want to talk about green smoothies. This is a really interesting topic to me because so many people experience tons of benefits from drinking green smoothies in which they are, say, using almond milk as the base, adding some bananas and some berries, maybe some other fruit, and then some kale or spinach, different greens like that, and they get great benefits from these in the beginning because they're coming off, probably a conventional diet, and for the first time they're getting living foods into their body, they're getting whole plant foods, they're getting a good dose of all these different vitamins and minerals.

For all those reasons, they are getting benefits. They are feeling amazing, they have tons of energy afterwards, might kinda be to do with all the sugar of those bananas, but they're also even maybe detoxing if they've got lots of toxins onboard. So people have a great experience of these very often in the beginning. But the scary thing is that they label them as being so good for you and then, over time, problems can creep up, and because they've labeled them as being so super healthy, you don't necessarily realize that that smoothie that was making you feel so good in the beginning can actually be causing you problems later on.

What's going on here? What's happening is that this is not a good recipe for optimal digestion. When you combine things that require a lot of energy to digest and lots of time, they move through slowly, like kale, for example, it's not gonna go so well with something like a banana. This is something that's very starchy, very sugary, burns up very fast and moves through quickly. To give you a bit of a metaphorical understanding, if you imagine a one-lane road, right, going one direction, and you could only fit one car at a time, and you have a car on there that loves to be driven fast, you have a Ferrari, that's the banana, right? And it wants to go, it doesn't want to sit in traffic, it wants to go. And then you have kale carrying, it's like a big rig carrying lots of stuff, it's got lots of nutrition on board, lots of fiber, takes time, doesn't go anywhere fast. It maybe maxes out at 55 miles per hour on the freeway with the pedal to the metal. You've got a bunch of Ferraris and a bunch of big rigs all interspersed, right, when you got that banana and that kale coming in at the same time.

The Ferrari wants to go, but it can't. It gets stuck there, it gets angry. It starts to really get upset and get road rage. This is happening in your gut. The banana, those starches and sugars, can't get through, and what happens is they start to ferment and you can actually get a proliferation of bad bacteria. This is really not a good situation for gut health, and you're gonna be throwing off your whole microbiome, essentially, in your gut. This is not gonna lead anywhere good. Again, I said you can get a lot of benefits at the beginning because this is better than going and having McDonald's, but in the long-term you may get some real gut microbiome issues, you get a lot of boating and things like that.

I have known people who, they drank green smoothies for a really long time and they say, "I love these green smoothies, and they really connect with them." But they say, you know, "I've also got these problems with bloating. It still comes up for me sometimes." And I say, well, have you connected the two? And they don't really make the connection at first. I love the idea of getting all this great nutrition in our bodies through blended foods, but you gotta be strategic about how you're gonna do it. You can't just combine willy nilly and think it's all gonna digest very smoothly.

Now that said, some people just have this incredibly powerful digestive fire and they can just crush anything, but for most people, this is gonna be problematic in the long run, even maybe in the short run. What can you do if you want to be able to have a green smoothie and get all these greens in in blended form so you can get as much nutrition in your body as possible? Here's what you can do. You gotta get the fruit outta there. You gotta go for a different kind of flavor other than just this total sweetness. You start out putting some ice in the blender, then you put a big cucumber in there, you put a couple stalks of celery, you could even put like some arugula and some kale, if you wanted to do that, and then, you add, and you can do maybe half a green apple, quarter of a green apple, Granny Smith apple, not sweet, really sour, not much sugar in there, and then, you could put some parsley or some cilantro, a little bit of cayenne, some lemon juice, and blend that, you don't need to add any liquid.

Between the ice and all the liquid in the cucumber and the celery it's gonna be enough. That's gonna blend smooth. It's gonna be incredible. Me personally, I love to add a tablespoon of spirulina and a tablespoon of chlorella into there. That's just me, it's a bit of an acquired taste. If you love those super greens, go for it, but start out with just the plain, basic recipe. And we'll make a video soon of that recipe to show you the exact proportions and how it's done. But that's a much better way to do a green smoothie that actually is gonna be able to digest well and not lead to gas and bloating and bacteria and fermentation and things like that.

Guys, let us know what your experience has been with green smoothies. Leave the comment below. We'd love to hear. Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time to watch this video, and I hope to see you again soon. Have a great day.