8 Rules of Thumb for Veggie, fruit smoothies

Rules for veggie smoothies, really? That's right, like anything else in life there are rules of nature with vegetables and fruits as well. Many are obvious and we learn from our cultural upbringing, like not putting lemon juice in a cup of chocolate milk. Sorry, if that's your favorite concoction - I didn't mean to burst your bubble. At the same time there's a lot which is not that obvious like limiting the % of fruits in favor of vegetables in most smoothies. As you move towards making plant based diet / veggies a vital and hopefully a major source of your dietary nutrition you will develop a deeper understanding by experience over time. For now, here's some quick rules of thumb that will help you during your initiation phase

Also, do not wait for a perfect day when you have all the know-how 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 body type and in general. If you attempt to put a banana in a juicer, juicer will give you immediate feedback that something is wrong. Here we go:

1. More Veggies than fruits: 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. To be specific if you are making a veggie + fruit smoothie, attempt to stay at 90%+ vegetables and 10% fruits. That's not to stay fruits need to be avoided, but if you can get away with one green apple in a smoothie do that vs. adding 5 apples to a smoothie that constitutes 90% of the volume.
2. Skip/Substitute dairy and do not combine with veggies: If you are consuming dairy, do not mix Yogurt with vegetables. Yogurt goes best with berries. Ideally swap out Yogurt with a non-dairy alternative like Organic Coconut milk. Refer to The China study research by Dr. Colin Campbell for reasons why keeping dairy to a down low would be a great strategy for long term health. Forks over Knives documentary also highlights the same if you like watching over reading like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School
3. Do not mix grains with smoothies. Keep them separate. Try to eat whole grains vs. adding them to smoothies.
4. Stay close to the raw form: If you are using a nutrition shake supplement, 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. Healthy sweeteners: 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. Just add enough of these rich natural sources of sugar which have other great nutrients as well
6. Space it out: 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 and vital organs like Liver, Pancreas, Our microbiome in gut and in general the entire system are always working in overdrive. Think about this - if you are cooking something like Kidney beans or Chickpeas that a take a long time to cook. Just about when they are 75% cooked, you add 2 cups of raw Kidney beans to the cooker? What does that do to the dish? Do the new beans take only 25% time and the whole thing is cooked or have you set yourself back by 100%? 100% is the right answer. You waste more time, more energy and at the end the dish is a mish-mash of overcooked and under cooked beans. It's easy to see the problem here in our kitchen. It takes a little bit of effort to see that this is what we do our digestive system when we keep bombarding it with stuff throughout the day
7. Have your biggest meals and smoothies during the day time. Our bodies are in sync with nature (or want to be anyways if we allow them to) 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 or a bowl of dal(lentils) 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 Turmeric. If the combination does not sound right, it probably isn't. Whatever combination you are preparing, check with the following sources - Common-sense, ask the chef in your home (usually the Mom), internet searches are sort of ok too - but in general internet information has gotten to a point where you can find almost anything you want with the tilt you want. You can find a million results for why Ghee is good and probably and equal number for why it is bad. Sponsored and in many cases in-accurate search results are not a substitute for common-sense and the richness we have in our traditions and cultures

Most importantly, if you believe that you need to make a change in your diet-style, find a good "Why". If you don't have a compelling why, your belief will be weak and anything we do not believe in does not last. If you had an option to do something 4 times a day for the next 6 months so someone close to you like a parent, sibling, child, friend could live for another 2 years vs. passing away in the next 7 days, would you do it? You bet you would. What if that action was cooking and juicing for them? Wait a second. the reason you would do it because you have found a good why. Why is then doing that same thing right now for you and your family any different - even if you are not suffering from a known disease? If the actions you take better the quality and potentially the quantity as well of your families life, why not?

God Bless and cheers to a healthy life for you and your entire family