Last week, my video with Rebekah stirred a little bit of controversy. One of her tips to lose ten pounds was to drink your meals. Since many of you still have questions about green juice, I accepted the opportunity for a guest post from Kimberly Snyder, a semi-controversial nutritionist herself to bust a few common myths when it comes to green juice. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.
It’s inevitable. With success comes detractors, and this is especially true in the health industry. Everyone knows the “right” way to lose weight and get healthy and any other method is inferior. Forget that every individual has a different history, metabolism, psychology and emotions. Who cares if it’s working? If a certain diet, habit or food doesn’t fit within their dogma; a myth is perpetuated to bring it down. There are even myths about consuming fruits and vegetables, especially in liquid form. These illusions tackle the range of green smoothies from the preparation to the content and can all be debunked with a little critical thought and information.
Juicing Takes Away The Fiber
It is often argued that by juicing a fruit or vegetable, the water and nutrients are utilized, but the digestive health improving and disease preventing fiber is left out. To this, I have no argument, and is why I don’t advocate juicing. I much prefer smoothies, which don’t juice the ingredients, but rather chops and blends all of the ingredients into liquid form. However, unlike juice, what is left is still a whole food product. Nothing has been lost, the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and fiber are all still available.
Those quick to dismiss juice’s lack of fiber fail to mention the average American diet’s lack of fiber (experts recommend twenty to thirty grams daily). Taking smoothies out of the equation, green juices lack fiber, but contain exponentially more nutrients than the food many typically consume. However, a thirty-two ounce serving of a glowing green smoothie contains twelve grams of fiber. This amounts to over half the daily recommendation in one serving. Doesn’t sound like a like of fiber to me.
A Blender Destroys the Fiber
Those who continue the fiber argument with this myth think very highly of blenders. Even the best blender on the market, the Vitamix, cannot obliterate or even alter the molecular structure of insoluble fiber. In fact the blender aids in soluble fiber and nutrient absorption, separating it from other vitamins and minerals.
Green Smoothies Can Cause Disease
You read that correctly, there is a myth that all of the fruits and vegetables in the glowing green smoothie can actually lead to sickness. Now you can begin to see the lack of common sense of the health industry. The controversy surrounds what is known as oxalates. Oxalates are found within every living thing (plants and animals) that result from the incomplete metabolism of carbohydrates. When oxalate combines with calcium, it forms and relatively insoluble salt (calcium oxalate) which is most often associated with kidney stones, but can result in stone formation in the brain and fibromyalgia.
There are a few problems with the oxalate arguments. First, those that develop calcium oxalate are generally predisposed to them and have issues whether they drink green juices or not. Secondly, those with a predisposition are generally encouraged to decrease their animal protein intake. Animal proteins are generally a bigger contributor to oxalate problems than vegetables due to their digestion and absorption. Finally, issues with oxalates are associated with cooked vegetables, which results in the calcium bond, not raw vegetables. The glowing green smoothie does not contain any animal protein or cooked vegetables. If still concerned about oxalates, the greens of the glowing green smoothie can be changed regularly to receive a variety and prevent oxalate build-up.
You Can Never Be Full Drinking Green Smoothies
The most common misconception about including green juices into a diet is that one will never feel satisfied and constant cravings are likely. The dispute against this claim is based on the factors that result in hunger and the actual content of green juices and smoothies. Two of the most common causes of hunger are a lack of nutrients and dehydration. The make-up of most fruits and vegetables are over eighty-five percent water. For example, a thirty-two ounce serving of a glowing green smoothie will provide approximately thirty ounces of water. That’s almost four glasses, half of your daily recommendation.
In addition, fruits and vegetables are the most nutrient dense food type. This means that they are stocked full of the vitamins and minerals that will help your body optimally function. The glowing green smoothie contains four servings of vegetables and three servings of fruit. Again half of the daily recommendation in one glass! When the body’s nutrition needs are satisfied, hunger will dissipate and eventually disappear rendering this protest useless.
Green juices are not a fad diet, they are not meant to deceive or harm. Instead they are a means to improve your health through easy consumption of nutritious food.
Guest post contributed by an editor for Kimberly Snyder, a New York Times bestselling author and the go-to nutritionist for many of the entertainment industry’s top celebrities.
