If you do just ONE thing to improve your family’s health, make it green smoothies! Believe it or not, kids WILL drink it, and you will be surprised that you enjoy them and even learn to crave them. Don’t let the name put you off—I make them look more purple than green, with a magic ingredient called frozen mixed berries!

You can read Victoria Boutenko’s book, Green For Life, for comprehensive overview of why this is so important. I had three people in a one-week period recommend the book to me, and I’ve learned from past experience to sit up and listen when things happen to me in threes! (Actually, I’m getting smarter and now follow through when I hear something TWICE.) Her research of people drinking green smoothies yielded 100 percent positive reviews, with the top three health benefits being better digestion/elimination, more energy, and weight loss! Check out this blog by a woman who has lost over 100 lbs. and intends to lose 200+ more, drinking nothing but green smoothies: http://greensmoothieexperiment.blogspot.com/

I’ve written a book review as a summary and motivation for you to start making them. And included in my recipes is my a master template for green smoothies that you can adapt to various greens and fruit for variety. It’s easy, it takes 10 minutes of my day, and it’s the highest and best use of my kitchen time!

Who eats a big plate of plain, raw, kale, collards, spinach and celery? Mustard greens, arugula, turnip greens, dandelion greens, beet greens, and chard don’t end up in too many salads. Just the time to chew it would be half an hour (oh, and the chopping)! They’re a regular feature in my green smoothies every day. My kids drink a pint every day, and you can make it ahead and stick it in the frig. And, in a smoothie, you don’t have to drizzle them with fattening, chemical-laden salad dressings to get them down.

You won’t believe how much green food it has in it: chlorophyll and a powerhouse of enzymes, vitamins, and minerals. Unlike a juicer (which makes such a mess and throws away much of the plant), green smoothie is packed with insoluble plant fiber capable of carrying many times its own weight in toxins out of the body. Drinking a quart a day addresses what I believe is the #1 deficit in the American diet: lack of leafy greens. (And I am NOT talking about iceberg lettuce, an essentially nutrition-free food.) A close second deficit is lack of overall plant fiber in the diet, but eating green smoothies addresses that, too.

I love that it’s “fast food” that’s healthful. Unlike a salad (we do love salads and eat them for dinner, too, to further augment our consumption of greens), I can make it the night before, and put it in a quart thermos in the frig. I grab the smoothie, a straw and a napkin, and put them in an insulated lunchbox with a re-freezable cooling thingie, to go to work the next day. Your co-workers will definitely say, “WHAT IS THAT?” if you drink it out of a quart jar like I do. (If you’re shy, you can always hide with the aforementioned thermos.) But if you respond with enthusiasm (and maybe a plug for this web site or Boutenko’s book), some of them will ask you later how to make it. Teach them and spread the word as your good deed for the day! People love a live demo, but I’ve given very detailed instructions in my “template recipe.”

You can put your green smoothie in a quart or pint jar. But maybe you prefer to avoid glass breakage or hide its green loveliness from your co-workers or the other soccer moms. If so, order this virtually indestructible, dishwasher-safe, non-leaching/non-plastic Lexan Fairshare Camping mug to hold well over a quart of smoothie:
Lexan Fairshare Camping Mug