Anyone can make a blender smoothie recipe with fruit. Fruit has lots of sugar in it, so pretty much anything you throw in there is going to taste great—-berries, bananas, peaches, melons, apples, pineapple you name it.

But remember the goal: to get more vegetables, and especially greens, into your diet. The vast majority of Americans are getting far too much sugar, so a fruit smoothie may not be the best thing for you, despite high vitamin/mineral and fiber content.

My recipe collection has my template recipe that allows you to use a wide variety of greens, and a wide variety of fruits and flavors, using just one recipe. This template recipe gives directions for how to convert new people, picky people, and kids, to green smoothies, while shooting for a maximum greens-to-fruit ratio.

But some of you want to skip the fruit in your smoothie altogether. Maybe you’re trying to cut out sugars (even unrefined fruit sugar), or you’re on the candida diet, or you’re diabetic or highly hypoglycemic. If so, try this all-green smoothie that is both highly edible as well as nutrition-packed and low in sugar. It also has some necessary and nutritious fat in the form of avocado:

Laura is a former university student of mine, and is one of the most well read people I know in alternative health, having spent seven years of her life in bed with chronic health problems. She drank this smoothie for six months, as she does not do well with sugar of any kind, including fruit.

• 1 avocado
• 1 large cucumber
• 2 cups spinach
• 2 large leaves collard greens
• 2 leaves black kale
• 3 lemons, juice only
• 1.5 cups water
• (a few slices of a Gala apple sometimes)