Want to Live Healthier While Saving Time and Money in 2013?

If you’re like most people, chances are you have New Year’s resolutions that involve becoming healthier and/or saving money. What if I told you that there was something that could help you accomplish both goals, while also saving you time to fulfill your other New Year’s resolutions? It’s incredibly healthy, tasty, filling, and inexpensive.  Better yet, you don’t even need to cook it.  I’m talking about a green smoothie.

A green smoothie is simply fruit blended together with a green, leafy vegetable like lettuce or kale.  I first read about the idea after doing a lot of research which suggests that green, leafy vegetables are among the healthiest foods people can eat.  But most people are reluctant to eat too much of them because they taste, well, too “green.”  After all, you might be thinking, “Lettuce in my smoothie, are you nuts?”

The genius of the green smoothie is that when you blend fruit together with leafy greens, the fruit is sweet enough to mask the bitterness of the greens.  There’s nothing wrong, of course, with an all-fruit smoothie, but adding greens allows you to make the drink a lot healthier without significantly affecting the taste.  You wind up with an extremely healthy drink that’s just somewhat less sweet than an all-fruit smoothie.

If you believe “quick” and preparing something yourself can’t go hand in hand, have no fear – the green smoothie requires none of the fuss of cooking and is about as quick to prepare as you can imagine.  It takes about a minute or two to wash all the ingredients, another minute or two to blend them, and then another minute to wash the blender.  Ask yourself how much faster that might be than driving down to a restaurant and waiting for someone to prepare your order.

“But will it keep me full?” maybe you’re wondering.  My experience is that green smoothies aren’t just a snack, they’re a bona fide meal.  They keep you full because of all the fiber you’re consuming in the greens and fruit.  That, in turn, keeps you healthier and richer because you’ll feel less hungry and be less inclined to purchase unhealthy snacks throughout the day (and if you do get hungry you can simply have another smoothie).

And it’s extremely easy to consume on the go.  You simply need to pour it into a travel container and drink it.  I’ve even drank green smoothies while I was driving.

Doing an Internet search for green smoothie recipes can be a mixed bag and may lead you to some recipes with long lists of ingredients, which can discourage you from making them altogether.  My favorite green smoothies are the simplest because they’re the easiest to make and still taste great.  They’re also the least expensive and can be as cheap as $1-$1.50 for one smoothie.  That’s why I find it best to start simple and work your way up from there.  I like to make them just by using 1 cup of greens (kale, lettuce, and collard greens are my favorites), ½ -1 cup of fruit (anything you like; my favorites are pineapple, apples, and blueberries),  1 banana or ½ avocado (keeps the greens from separating from the fruit), and 1 cup of water (makes it easier to blend everything).  Feel free to use frozen greens or fruit for your smoothie, since they won’t spoil. Fire up the blender for one minute and that’s it, you’re done.

Having made green smoothies for about a year and a half now, I’ve also found that the smoother and more finely blended the smoothie is, the tastier it’ll be because you won’t have to deal with a grainy drink or pieces of fruit that the blender missed.  So while a regular blender will usually do a serviceable job, if you find yourself enjoying green smoothies as much as I do, something you might want to consider later on is purchasing a restaurant quality blender.  I own a Vitamix blender, which was expensive upfront but is expected to last 25 years.  I can’t say enough good things about it since it makes a noticeable difference in how finely it blends the greens and the fruit together.

To take my smoothie on the go, I pour it into a a cleaned and washed-out glass tomato sauce jar.  I like the glass tomato sauce jars because they hold a large amount and the opening is big enough to allow you to stick your hands in and wash the jar after you’re done.  Plus, after you pour the smoothie in, simply screw on the top and take it anywhere with you without having to worry about the smoothie spilling and making a mess.  Put the jar in a bag and you have an extremely travel-friendly drink that you can take out and consume anywhere you happen to be during the day. Another strategy I like to use is making twice the amount of smoothie.  Then I can drink one in my apartment before I leave for the day and pour a second one into my glass travel jar to drink when I’m out and about.

When you’re first starting out, you may find you want the smoothie sweeter, so don’t hesitate to add more fruit, two kinds of fruit, or even a few medjool dates, which are really sweet and will do wonders for sweetening your smoothie.  You can also add some protein powder, coconut, or flax seed, which can make your smoothie even more filling.  The best smoothie though, of course, is the one you’ll actually drink, so feel free to experiment or try recipes you find online until you find something that works for you.  And I hope the information I’ve shared about green smoothies will help you re-define for you what’s possible for a quick and healthy meal as much as it has for me.

 


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