Green Smoothie Revolution: The Radical Leap Towards Natural Health Hot

It seems that there is a revolution going on that I was unaware of -- a green revolution, and I'm not talking about the environment. I'm referring to the dietary lifestyle of juicing your greens--as in, putting leafy green vegetables into a blender (preferably a high-powered blender, such as a Vita-Mix juicer), in combination with various fruits, and drinking it on a daily basis. Like most people, I had learned that you don't mix fruit with any other food group, but the distinction between vegetables (most of them quite starchy) and leafy greens, got lost in the shuffle. Leafy greens, such as kale, spinach, beet root leaves and so forth, in fact combine well with fruits, especially because most greens are quite bitter and therefore unappealing.

Synchronistically, just before reading Green Smoothie Revolution, I had bought a masticating juicer -- a different breed from a blender, but a step up from your department store variety juicer, and had intuitively added some mango and apple to my Italian kale. It was quite tasty. One of the benefits of blending over juicing is that with a blender, you keep all of the fiber that gets squeezed out in a masticating juicer. You also add water, which means that you can make enough to get you through the day, rather than making each juiced drink anew.

And the benefits or blending or juicing? Since I am not personally addressing a serious or debilitating health issue, I can't offer personal experience that will knock your socks off. However, I do believe the myriad testimonials from people who have cured serious and chronic illness by making this dietary addition to their lifestyle. I believe, because if you do the research --and you can start by reading this book-- you begin to understand that the nutrients in leafy greens are primarily absent from the American diet due to our food choices and cooking methods, that almost all of the nutrients we need to be healthy are within the greens family ("chlorophyll...in essence, liquid sunshine"), and that even animals enjoy greens and will instinctively gravitate toward them when they are unwell (this book includes some green smoothie recipes for dogs and cats as well).

Green Smoothie Revolution is packed with benefits, including numerous smoothie recipes. I'm such a believer that I predict that if everyone in this country got their daily dose of fresh leafy greens, we would eradicate many of the chronic ailments that plague our modern culture, and overall we'd have not only greater health but greater well being and energy to attend to the things that matter most in our lives and in the world. All that, packed into a few lousy leaves!

I can say that within a few weeks of simply adding juiced greens and vegetables to my diet, and without any other dietary changes, I lost a few pounds, my eyes began to clear, and my whole digestive system seemed to get a boost. Not quite world peace, but perhaps a step in the right direction!