Greens! Greens! Greens!

Fruit smoothies are great, but you need more greens to your Booseblend mix.

Smoothies are great for a whole different bunch of reasons, but one of those is their magical ability to take almost anything and turn it into something delicious.

There’s a hundred different combinations you can use to add some of those leafy, lovely, lushous veggies to your diet without being forced to chow down in a traditional fashion.

Whatever type of green you put in will give it a different type of flavour and consistency, so it’s really important to get the right combination. 

One real handy tip is to make sure you’re cycling through the different types of greens you’re putting in your smoothie. Changing up the type of greens you’re whizzing up means you’ll be getting a variety of different nutrients and it’ll stop you getting bored of your healthy smoothies. One of the benefits of the Booseblend is that you’ll be able to do this wherever you are as the portable nature of the blender means you’ve got no excuse to be without it.

The benefits of eating healthy has been discussed until the cows come home, but just in case you need a refresher I’ll go through a little bit more for you. They can be a top source of calcium that doesn’t involve dairy, as well as being high in vitamin C or magnesium.

They can keep for about three days, as well, which is great if you’re a little bit strapped for time and need to do a monster batch to have over the course of half a week. It won’t taste as good as the fresh stuff, but it’s better than nothing and it’s still a decent option.

If you have a good ratio of fruits to veggies, the sweetness of the fruit is still present but the greens can help balance out the flavour and reduce the amount of sugars within the smoothie.

Green smoothies are super easy to digest and they still have plenty of fibre within them - unlike juices, which are stripped of their fibre during the process of completely obliterating the fruit and veggies.

Combining green leaves with fruit is a really good idea because of the way the two interact with each other. And that’s handy, because unless you’re extremely brave or the biggest fan of pure kale on the planet, you’re going to want to combine the two.

The fiber in green leaves helps to absorb the sugar in fruits at a slower rate, which can help to mitigate things like bloating or a little sugar rush after having a smoothie packed with plenty of sugary fruits. 

The last thing you want after packing in all those fruits and veggies to your morning smoothie is to feel the encroaching grumbles of hunger after a few hours. Including some dark, leafy greens helps to ensure that doesn’t happen.

A dark, leafy green can also help to ensure your cravings or hunger pangs don’t return too fast after consumption and, as a handy little bonus, there is some evidence that suggests they can help protect the body against type 2 diabetes.

Because smoothies tend to be so calorie dense, you can sometimes feel a little bloated after having them. That’s because they sit in your stomach for a while before digestion, so a good tip is to eat them slowly with a spoon and that’ll help reduce any bloating sensation you might have.

Spinach and kale are two of the most favoured ingredients for this type of smoothie, and for good reason. They’re both super healthy and work well with heaps of different ingredients. 

 

 

For example, this recipe looks to stick with a bright and colourful approach, but as mentioned previously it adds some spinach in at the end to help reduce the impact of the sugars and to keep you fuller for longer.

It calls for frozen bananas, which is great because it means you can pick some up in the discount aisle and pop them straight in the freezer, some frozen mango, frozen pineapple, a splash of almond milk and then your leafy greens.

This smoothie will be great if you want something with more body and thickness. The frozen fruits will give you an ice-cold kick, but you can also use the fresh variety if you’d prefer. The tropical flavour should go down an absolute treat, too.

It can all be whizzed up in the Booseblend Pro, as well, so don’t worry about whether or not your machine can handle that many frozen items at once.

One of the very best things you can put in there is kale. This might look like the back of a mop, but it’s got far more benefits to it than chowing down on your cupboard cleaning products.

With a rough texture and a slightly weird appearance, it might not seem like this would be one your first stops when it comes to selecting a dark, leafy green. But kale is jammed packed with just about everything you could want - according to Healthline, it’s one of the most nutrient packed things in the world.

A single cup has things like vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin B6, manganese, calcium, copper, potassium and magnesium. It’s a pretty thorough list, and it should be more than enough to convince you that kale is the bees knees.

It comes with 33 calories as well as six grams of carbs and three grams of protein - and despite kale being really, really low in fat it still has an excellent omega-3 fatty acid called alpha linoleic acid.

All these beautiful things add up to make kale one of the planet's most nutrient dense foods available to you - and it goes great in a smoothie.

As a little bonus, kale also comes with a good portion of antioxidants - which are well known for their ability to keep free radicals out of the body. Winner, winner, kale dinner. You can’t go wrong.

Avocado is a surprising little trooper that can add a luxuriously smooth texture to your smoothie without filling it with heaps of sugar that’ll burn off in an instant, cause a rush and leave you with a headache.

If people think our little seeded mate can only be served smashed and with a sprinkle of salt, they need to think again. A few scoops of avo, well, as much as you want really, can be the perfect addition to any smoothie and this is an ingredient your Booseblend will be able to manage with no worries at all.

For a start, they can help to improve the health of your heart - says an article in the HuffPost. They are full of fat, but the good kind. All those monounsaturated fats can be burned right off as a good source of energy, and they contain hardly any carbs - which is great if you’re trying to avoid that sort of thing.

They are also a good source of fibre and can help to keep the gut moving along nicely, as it were, as well as providing more potassium than a banana does and some folic acid, too.

Phew. That’s some list. Oh yeah, and they taste good as well. Seems like we’re on to another winner. But if you’re worried this smoothie is looking a little bulky, you can always turn to our friend the cucumber.

A few years ago there was a video that went viral, in which British born Jamaiacan reggae star Macka B vibed about the benefits of the cucumber. And now we’re going to do the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCIAUGSRfXM&list=PLuETEDQJSkZjStuRl_Xd5mFAjqyut-pXX&index=101

He didn’t mention putting it in a smoothie, although there was a brief mention of a juice, so I guess we’ll pick up where his story left things. 

They’re good for weight loss because they have a really low calorie content and they’re really good at protecting the cells in your body.

 

Cucumbers are around 95% water and this’ll help keep you nice and hydrated without even realising it. We all like a sneak food now and again, but sneak water! That’s a whole different level. Let’s face it, drinking loads and loads of water every day is hard - but nature has provided us with a way around it. It’s just good for you on a lot of different levels.

You might not want to get all the greens mentioned here into a smoothie all at once. That’ll be packed out, and there might not be that much room for any other flavours in there! This cucumber and avocado smoothie might be a good one to start with. The recipe calls for a bit of zest in there with lime and some coriander will give it a slightly different flavour.

Alternatively, kale goes well with almost anything! Try throwing it in with a bit of pineapple or frozen berries for a juicier, sweeter taste. Give things a little experiment, try different combinations out, but don’t forget the golden rule: you need your greens.

As usual with life, it all boils down to how many greens you eat. Who would have thought it?