7 simple smoothie ingredients - Getting your kids crazy for veggies

If your kids are not crazy about eating their vegetables, first things first - know that you are just experiencing one of the hundreds of parenting opportunities as your kids grow into strong and beautiful adults. While there are always reasons why a kid or an adult does not like a certain food, things like
1. It's in the family
2. S(he) gets all the nutrition from dairy and meats. Veggies are good but my kid like me, his/her mom, grandparent and so on is not a veggie person
3.S(he) like veggies - example is potato, especially it is crinkle cut into a french fry

here are the real reasons
1. Mirror neurons - It is not a part of family's DNA. meaning fun and great life are associated with rich, deep fried, oily, sweet foods paired with the right alcohol in excess as you grow up. All living intelligent forms of life have mirror neurons - we learn, experience happiness and pain consciously and subconsciously. Have you ever pulled your own nails out completely using a pliar? didnt think so ... did just imagining that evoke physical feelings in your body? how about screeching on a old school blackboard with your nails. All of these feelings are the result of our mirror neurons at work - they replicate the physical and emotional sensations in our being just by reading about something. of course, listening, watching has an even more profound lifelong impact.
Now, see if you detect why is that our kids are not fond of the veggies we so desperately want them to eat?
1. Are they picking up on an adult not subscribing to eating more veggies as a must have vs. a nice to have?
2. Do they see role models who have done just fine without proper nutrition?
3. Do they see that fun times in family equate to indulgent eating and drinking all the time?
4. Is every happy memory in their life have something they ate which was otherwise a nutritional taboo?
5. Are we asking them to do something which we are semi-convinced of ourselves and using excuses like 'i am old, i dont need all this now. you are growing up you need it', 'i am imperfect, but you dont have have to be like me', 'my family has always eaten meat primarily, our gene pool is like that, yours is not'
there would be a dozen more seemingly compelling reasons, at the end of the day it will all come back to whether their subconscious mirror neurons are picking up on a belief structure that prescribes and validates the day to day choices we make - food being one of them. It is upto us, the parents to create a positive ecosystem of physical, mental and spiritual options for our families to choose from. It's like a menu really. We don't go to a Indian restaurant and look for home made Gnocchi. The menu of our families daily decisions is based on what we have introduced in it and how passionately we take the time to create healthy + salivating options.

One of the easiest ways to increase our and our kids' consumption of veggies is via Veggie smoothies. Orange, Apple, Melons, Grapes, Bananas are all good - remember they are fruits not vegetables. While consuming fruit smoothies is a great option, especially before intense workouts, games and other physical activity, our goal is to keep Vegetable consumption at 90-95% and fruits to 5-10%.

Use these simple 7 ingredients for a starter vegetable smoothie recipe and add/remove vegetables to/from it. Go light on fruits. They are good but also have sugar, treat fruits as a replacement for candy

1.     broccoli – 2 flowers
2.     celery – half of a single stem
3.     lemon – 1
4.     greens – handful or as much as you can stuff in blender
5.     cucumber – ¼

here are the 2 key ingredients you need to add to the above to make it pallet able for the kids

1. Green apple - 1
2. dried figs –2 or 3. You can add 1-2 more as well to sweeten up the drink as kids get hooked to the taste and texture and reduce it later

Water (purified with no chlorine, flouride and other chemicals) – enough so ingredients are under water and give the blender enough room to churn/blend

Before your kids consume it, show them how it's done. Be the leader and drink twice of what you are giving them in front of them. You are in it together. If it's important for them to be healthy for themselves and you, reverse is equally or probably even more important.

You can stick to this recipe for as long as you want and create great health within your family. When you are looking for variation and want to add more, Nature has a ton more to offer of course, here are additional vegetables you can add to the baseline recipe based on availability and your own systems tolerance of certain vegetable types

    Bok Choy (1/2 of a leaf)
    Mint leaves (especially good in summer) - 4-6
    Fennel stem - 2"
    Beetroot - small slice. say 1/8th of a standard sized Beetroot

If you are active and working out a lot or engage in high endurance sports or just want to switch some veggies out for a change, then add rich sources of protein and/ nutrition like these

    Peas - handful of frozen peas
    Green beans - handful
    Carrots - handful
    Squash - 1/4th
    Chia Seeds - 1 Tablespoon

Do not wait for a perfect day to start making your own concoctions. Start now. Once you start, you will know your way around ingredients and know what works best for your and your families body types. There are 8 rules of thumb to help you get started

1. Go low on fruits and extremely high on vegetables. Vegetables have a low Glycemic index and will make sure that you do not overdose on Sugars
2. Do not mix Yogurt with vegetables. Yogurt goes best with berries
3. Do not mix grains with smoothies. Keep them separate. Try to eat whole grains vs. adding them to smoothies.
4. If you are using a nutrition shake, review the ingredients and see if you can get the original form instead. E.g. You can buy a Pea protein powder box or you can buy frozen organic peas. Any guesses if the raw living pea which potentially has the capability to sprout in the right conditions has more nutrition vs. the powdered form?
5. If your smoothies are bitter, add one of these to sweeten them. Dried figs, Dates, Dried apricots or something similar. Do not overdo though. Sugar is sugar, no matter what form it comes from and too much is never good.
6. Keep at least a 2-3 hour interval between your smoothies and meals. Body needs a minimum of that time to completely digest one meal. If you eat while your system is busy digesting the previous meal, you are confusing your system with competing priorities.
7. Have your biggest meals and smoothies during the day time. Our bodies are in sync with nature (or want to be anyways) and our digestion is best at noon. System starts slowing down for rest towards the end of the day so keep it light then. Swapping evening smoothie with a soup is a great way to go easy on your system
8. Bio-availability - Just because you consumed something does not mean body knows how to extract maximum nutrition from it. There are certain combinations of foods that enable the absorption of nutrients. E.g. Black pepper helps with nutrient absorption in Tumeric. If the combination does not sound right, it probably isn't.

and then the final rule of thumb - no one rule applies, has applied or will ever apply to every human being born. See what works for you. Adapt as you move along. Listen to your body, it's different than your mind telling you to skip the early AM run. Dare to give healthier, sometime radical habits a try within reason and see the results or lack there of for yourself. you will always find a 100 reasons not to do the right things, find the one's that enable and empower you to do instead. Have fun while you are at it. Share the nuggets you find in your own true unique journey with others.