Green smoothies are in fashion, particularly here in Boulder, and are promoted as one of the best things you can do for your health. In case you’re one of the rare few who has never had one, green smoothies are usually made up of about 40% leafy greens, 60% fruit and often contain a bunch of other goodies to make them tastier or more nutritious such as chia or flax seeds, maca or camu powder, cacao nibs, hemp protein, spirulina or coconut oil.
At first glance, the power-packed hit of vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and fibre you get from a green smoothie seems indisputably healthy… so why on earth would you avoid them?
Well the Ayurvedic view is never just about NUTRIENTS… it is always about QUALITIES and these seemingly super-smoothies have some qualities that can have a negative effect if consumed regularly over a long period of time.
So here we go, three reasons to avoid smoothies, from an Ayurvedic and Chinese Medicine perspective:
1)THEY AGGRAVATE “Spleen Qi deficient” and Yang and Qi deficient people
Green smoothie recipes usually call for chilled water or the addition of ice cubes. On top of this, the majority of the fruits and veggies added to them are cold in quality. Even if you’re adding some warming ginger to your smoothie the overall quality of smoothies is still usually COLD. Leafy greens like kale, chard, spinach and cabbage; veggies like broccoli and celery; as well as a number of fruits are also DRY and ROUGH in quality.
Foods that are COLD, DRY and ROUGH, directly aggravate these costitutions. Like increases like. When our system aggravated it causes increased dryness, roughness, coldness, mobility and variability in the body/mind. This can be experienced as variable appetite; gas or pain after eating; dry constipation or loose motions (incrased mobility); dry/rough skin and hair; variable energy; poor circulation and pain or cracking in the joints.
From a mental perspective, this aggravation is associated with increased mental agitation, restlessness, flightiness, grasping, anxiety, poor concentration, poor memory, changeable moods and insomnia. There is a strong association with the nervous, endocrine and excretory systems .
2)THEY DEPLETE
There is an associated with catabolism or the breaking down of tissues as well. This is one of the reasons why people often feel very energetic when initially getting into green smoothies (and raw food generally) – because when a cell breaks down a huge amount of energy is released, like an exploding star!
The good news is your fat tissue gets broken down…. but the bad news is all of your other tissues do too including the deeper tissues of bone, marrow, nerve and sexual reproductive tissue. Depletion of these important deep tissues is never a good thing – we’re talking weaker teeth, weaker bones, compromised nerve conduction and communication, hormone issues and infertility.
Also, these deeper tissues are responsible for directly nourishing the foundation of our immune system. If they become depleted, we can become susceptible to auto-immune problems, chronic fatigue and other diseases of depletion.
3)THEY ARE DIFFICULT TO DIGEST
Although many of the ingredients in a green smoothie are actually light, the sheer quantity of ingredients (e.g. 10 or more cups of fruit and veggies in one smoothie) makes them very dense and therefore heavy. If you’re adding a bunch of superfoods to the mix, your smoothie is going to be even heavier. And heavy food, although satisfying to one’s hunger, is difficult to digest. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE WE DO NOT CHEW SMOOTHIES, and the whole enzymatic breakdown that happens in the mouth is missing.
Green smoothies are also very complex. Our digestive fire (‘Agni’ in Sanskrit) likes simplicity. For example, our Agni has no problem digesting a few veggies that have been cooked with mung daal, rice and spices to aid digestion. Foods cooked together in a single pot have time to get to know each other, to combine their qualities and be transformed from several individual ingredients to a single meal with a particular character. In contrast, smoothies contain a multitude of ingredients with very different qualities combined raw in a blender. Raw food prepared in this way may be delicious, but it doesn’t allow for this subtle marrying of qualities. As a result, the meal remains very complex which is difficult for the body to digest.
From a Chinese Medical perspective, green smoothies also contain the number one food combination no-no. Fresh fruit should never be combined with any other foods. As we know, green smoothies combine fresh fruit with leafy greens, veggies and superfoods. Although somewhat pre-digested thanks to the blending process, the smoothies still stay in our stomachs for as long as the most difficult food contained within them takes to digest. As a result the fresh fruit (which is light and easy to digest in comparison to all other foods) generally stays in the stomach for too long and ferments – causing over-digested food wastes.
Short and Long Term Considerations
In the short term, green smoothies may be cleansing, due to their high fibre content but they tend to put a strain on the digestive fire – which most people experience as a sensation of lasting ‘fullness’ (and think this is a good thing!). In the long run, the aggravation leads to an imbalanced of the digestive fire , associated with pain, bloating, flatulence, burping and also leads to the under-cooking of foods or undigested food wastes. This is where the ‘cleansing’ benefit is reversed. These undigested wastes accumulate in the digestive tract and eventually overflow and relocate into the deeper channels and tissues of the body where they wreck havoc with cellular nutrition and waste disposal and can become the root cause of all disease.
MAKING GREEN SMOOTHIES ‘HEALTHIER’
So there you have it! Some pretty good reasons to reconsider the green smoothie trend.
Having said all that, it should be noted that if you have a robust constitution with a super strong digestive fire and a body in need of a little cooling, you’ll be able to handle green smoothies better than most (particularly during the summer months).
If you’re already addicted to green smoothies and are determined to keep having them for whatever reason, try the following adjustments to make them slightly more friendly:
“CHEW” your smoothie
- ✦add a pinch of turmeric and ginger and a squeeze of lemon to the mix to aid digestion
- ✦have them at room temperature, not cold… or even add a little hot water
- ✦keep the ingredients to a minimum, keep it simple and less dense – less is more!
- ✦add a little coconut oil to offset the dry/rough qualities of the veggies
- ✦try them without fruit or use fruit that takes a little longer to digest, like avocado or ripe bananas
- ✦avoid the addition of superfoods – they make them even heavier
- ✦only have them a couple of times a week, not daily.
