Healthy smoothies made with a variety of high-antioxidant fruits and vegetables, especially when combined with antioxidant superfoods, are the most nutrient-dense meals you can make. They're also just about the quickest, too!
I'm going to show you how to make a smoothie that's loaded with phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals and enzymes, and that comes in a whole-food form that's easily digested and assimilated.
The good news is that anyone can learn how to make a smoothie that's healthy and delicious! Another plus is that any smoothie recipe can be easily modified to suit your particular taste. In six easy steps, I'm going to show you how to make a smoothie that's incredibly healthy and easy to make.
1. Choosing a Blender.
The highest quality blenders have between 2 to 3.5 horsepower. These blenders will blend almost anything into a creamy, smooth texture without a hitch. VitaMix and BlendTec are the brands most recommended by professionals.
Most conventional blenders have motors rated at less than 1hp. These may work fine if you stick to soft, easier-to-blend ingredients like bananas, blueberries, pineapple and the like. They may not give you a real smooth texture if you use ingredients such as ice cubes, fibrous vegetables or nuts in your smoothies.
2. Choosing a Smoothie Starter.
Most smoothie recipes call for some amount of liquid to allow the ingredients to move around inside the blender and make your smoothie the right thickness. I'll show you how to make a smoothie using the right ingredients for your starter - and reveal some ingredients to avoid.
Water is a great way to make low-calorie smoothie recipes, and it's cheap, too!
Fruit Juices. You can use any type of juice - orange, apple, grape, pineapple - whatever. Fruit juices should be used in moderation, however - they're high in fructose. Even though the fructose is natural, consuming large amounts by drinking juice can give you too much sugar all at once.
Avoid highly-processed juices - they're not the same as fresh-squeezed. Most of these fruit juices are so processed that they only contain a fraction of the nutrients they originally had. You can spot these juices easily because the expiration date is weeks, even months away.
Milk and yogurt are two very popular beverages that people use to make smoothies. However, I think that homogenized and pasteurized dairy products are not a healthy choice.
Soy milk has become very popular in recent years, and soy foods have become a staple for many people who are trying to eliminate dairy from their diet. But soy also has its detractors. There's much disagreement about whether soy milk and other soy-based products can be considered healthy. Most of the soybean crop grown in the United States is also genetically-modified, so stick to organic brands.
Milk substitutes are the least objectionable of all the packaged beverages you can use to make your healthy smoothies. I'm talking about rice milk, hemp milk, oat milk, coconut milk and almond milk. Although healthier than cows' milk, they are still processed foods, and you don't know what processing has been done to them. If you have a heavy-duty blender, it's easy to make your own fresh almond milk. That's the best option of all.
