Green for LIfe by Victoria Boutenko

Even though I love to eat salad, I’m always feeling like I could use more greens in my diet. Greens are, in fact, way easier for us digest when we chew extremely well (which Paul Pitchford told me is at least 30 chews per bite) or in my new favorite form: the green smoothie. My doctor was kind enough to share the work of a local Ashland Oregon author Victoria Boutenko who wrote Green for Life. This book has really changed the way I eat. Victoria herself is mostly a raw foodist, which is something I am not. I believe that lightly cooked foods can be a lot easier to digest and it’s generally what I recommend to my fertility clients. That said, Green for Life has bridged the two worlds of raw and cooked foods for me. By using a powerful vitamix or comparable blender, the green are liquefied making them highly digestible and I would argue absolutely delicious.

Benefits of Green Smoothies

Beyond being a fabulous source of chlorophyll, a lot of the research in the green smoothie revolution is based on the fact that human beings are most compartable to chimapnazees. In fact we share about 99% in dna structure. While we do a lot of testing on these animals about various human conditions, not enough consideration has been given to their diet and what makes them healthy. What Victoria concluded is that it is there above average intake of greens. Also the way they break down the cellular wall structure to access the nutrients present in the cellular walls. With this level of nutrition, hydrochloric acid is increased in the gut which contributes to many healthy benefits including: improved digestion, increase in dietary fiber, increase in chlorophyll rich blood building properties, decrease in inflammation, gentle detoxification and more energy. I would highly recommend reading Victoria’s book to hear about all the incredible benefits derived from drinking one quart of green smoothie per day.

My Simple Green Smoothie Recipe

Every day I fill the blender with variations of the following ingredients:

2 cups filtered water
a bunch of kale
a bunch of spinach
½ a peach
½ a banana
a handful of blueberries

I love to add Vital Proteins Collagen Powder for a solid 20 grams of protein to start my day. It also adds a healthy source of fat like flax oil or coconut oil.  If you need assistance with fertility supplements: please email me at kathryn@fertilefoods.com.