Is a Green Smoothie Really Necessary for Health? on PaleoJay's Smoothie Cafe podcast

No- but it sure helps!  

The hierarchy in my mind to get, attain, and keep really good health is first to make sure your nutrition is good and wholesome, and this includes getting pure water.  This is the prime directive of animals the world over- get good nutrition!  

After that, surprisingly to most, is getting quality sleep.  Sleep is right up there with shelter- it does for your body and brain, spirit and outlook just what nutrition does- it enables you to stay alive, and to not only suffer along, barely making it day to day, but to thrive.  We are meant to thrive on this earth, and in a natural state we would, without the intrusions of governments and other rulers that control us and don’t allow us to run our own lives.  

So, since the food we take in is central to our health, we should strive for the most nutritious food we can find.  Nutrient dense foods, foods that are so packed with the many vitamins, high quality protein, good fats, and plentiful anti-oxidants we need to be super healthy.  And, right up there with super healthy foods such as pastured beef liver and wild caught sardines is a blender made smoothie!  The state of the art blender to use is the long-running Vitamix, but there are others that will get the job done as well.

The advantage of a blended smoothie such as this is that all the vegetable and fruit used is in it- all the fiber, and all the nutrients as well.  Cooking can destroy some nutrients, although it can also make others more bioavailable.  So you want raw veggies and berries, along with the cooked ones you also consume.  Both are valuable, and necessary!

How do you make such a smoothie?  Here is a link to a post on www.paleojay.com that I did some time ago:

 http://www.paleojay.com/search?q=paleo+smoothie   

Not much has changed, although I make minor changes to the ingredients, which I list at this link: 

 http://www.paleojay.com/2011/07/paleo-quick-start-smoothie-ingredient.html

You can copy me exactly, or change up some of the ingredients to suit your own taste and goals.  But the basics of making a quality blended smoothie never change- some healthy liquids like full fat kefir, green tea, and coconut milk, green veggies, a raw pastured egg or two, citrus and berries, spices like turmeric and ginger, and vitamin D liquid.  It kind of depends on what you have on hand, and what agrees with you as an individual.

After you’ve fulfilled your nutritional needs in such a manner, you can add in some real foods you have prepared around your family table.  And that takes care of your last needs, those of family and community!  Your TRIBE.  Get together and enjoy spending quality time with friends and family, on a daily or near daily basis.  For that community is just as important for creatures such as us, long term, as is good food and water, sleep, and exercise.  We need it all, but it all starts with nutrition.  A blended smoothie is job #1!

Add in the GOOD STUFF! Podcast #117 for Paleo Jay's Smoothie Cafe

I think one of the crucial parts of a healthy, Paleo type of health transforming diet that is NOT noticed by most, is the fact that, unlike the standard mainstream diets- like “Low fat High Carb”- which is the standard American Food Pyramid- the key point is to add in good, natural foods.

It is really NOT to “eliminate bad foods”!  Of course, I want you to eliminate toxic, processed foods.  Fake Foods like modern “altered/fake” wheat.  Fake Foods like soda pop!  Fake foods that are anything low fat!!  And fake foods like vegetable oils, which are chemically and industrially extracted- ALL OF THEM!

But that’s it- just take care of that, and you will start to feel better quickly, and forever.  Health conditions will start to drastically improve, and you will feel amazingly better!

But don’t stop there!  Many do; they just start getting rid of things that are obvious toxins, like donuts and breakfast cereals, and think:

“Well, I’m feeling way, way better!  I’ve lost a lot of fat weight, and my brain feels alive and well- what should I eliminate next??”

This is the mindset that develops:
“Since I improved my health so much by eliminating wheat, low fat dairy, and processed crap foods- where should I eliminate next??”

And the person goes on to eliminate

 All dairy, full fat included
Most FAT, including really good, wonderful fats like olive oil, avocado and coconut oils!
And they cling (especially women) to the misguided notions that calories need to be drastically limited!!

Those are the common, and most pernicious “denials” of the self fulfillment of maximum nutrition and healthiness.

Here is the PaleoJay prescription for maximizing your health, in a Paleo way:

Drink a Green paleo smoothie each and every day!  At least 16 ounces, which is one canning jar full.
Eat a LOT of fat!  Good fat, pastured butter, coconut oil, lots of cream in your coffee from pastured cows if you can get it.  Olive oil, fatty grass fed beef, pork, and chickens!
BONE BROTH!!
 Seafood, at least once per week, minimum!

If there is one thing important for your health, after a really nutrient dense foundational item like a Green Smoothie, it is bone broth.  Just do it!  Take the bones from your grass fed beef, chicken, or pork- put them into your slow cooker filled with good quality water, a little apple cider vinegar, and some sea salt. Simmer for about 24 hours, and then drink some, or just can it all (sans the bones!).

I mean, just ladle it into canning jars, cap with the lids, and line up in your fridge like little soldiers...

Just like I hope you have little canning jars (16 oz. seems ideal) of a Paleo Green Smoothie lined up on one side of your fridge, on the other should be these little bone broth soldiers.  They are ready and waiting, to march onward to maximizing your health and wellness!

At least a couple of times per week, heat up some bone broth in your microwave, or else use it as the base, the broth, to make soup, or another dish.  You can easily drink it plain, as a hot beverage, or you can add it to a good quality canned soup to make it super soup!

However you do it, this will do more for your body than anything else, except for your Paleo Green Smoothie, which you should have every single day as a “foundation of health”.

I like to think of it as the “nectar of the gods”!  Or else the fountain of youth!!

And if you add in bone broth??!   Well, just add some canned sardines to that as the main course...

Now, we are talking AMBROSIA!!

PaleoJay’s Smoothie Cafe Podcast #68 Don’t Just Eliminate Foods on the Paleo Diet- Add In Nutrient Dense Foods!

Let’s say you’ve been on the ancestral, paleo, or barbarian diet template for awhile, perhaps a year or longer!  You’ve probably improved your health and wellness quite a bit- lost fat, gained muscle, have improved digestion and health, and a new clarity in thinking.  But, perhaps not....

If this is the case, perhaps you have concentrated only on eliminating bad foods loaded with anti-nutrients; things like grains, sugar, vegetable or industrial seed oils made from grains and processed, margarine- those are all wonderful things to get rid of, and doing so enables your body to begin to heal all the damage they have caused to your body and brain over the years as they were damaging your intestinal villi, and otherwise tearing down your health.

But this is just Job #1!

The other half of the nutritional equation, which is every bit as important, it to add in those nutrient dense superfoods to give your body the raw materials it needs to actually BUILD excellent health!

So, just eating lots of gluten free goodies, while not as damaging as their grain-based counterparts, are still not giving your body what it needs to thrive and rebuild.  You need to add in those foods that are the most nutrient dense on the planet.

If you make a green, Paleo Smoothie and drink it pretty much every day, you are pretty much most of the way there, nutrient density-wise!  I go out of my way to have it include just about everything your body needs.  Think of the Smoothie as the Anti-S.A.D. diet- that diet of pizza, coke, fries, sick and abused and confined animal hamburger and chicken, noodles, fake fat, processed breakfast sugar cereals- you get the picture!

Those foods, while they are hyperpalatable, and are engineered to be that way just to sell- and they displace the foods that your body actually needs, and just give you loads of body fat and inflammation.

So, go with the Paleo Smoothie- great start!  You can include the vegetable sulphur rich foods with their organosulpher compounds, and do it in a raw form very efficiently and easily, but just blending them in!  Things like:


Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts...  These sulphurous category of vegetables have been pointed out by http://www.terrywahls.com/The-Wahls-Protocol as a very important category of nutrient dense foods, with which idea I completely agree with her!

Terry Wahls is and important figure in the ancestral, or nutrient dense style of eating, and is coming out with a new book which I think will be a must read.  Go ahead and sign up for the pre-order at the link above, watch her viral TED talk, and absorb the information she has to offer.

Back to sulphur-rich foods:  there are some other great organosulpher foods that are not really appropriate for the Paleo Smoothie, like:

Onions and Garlic, Shallots and Leeks

Garlic, in particular, is probably the most potent organosulpher foods you can take in!  What to do?  Simple- in addition to your smoothie, most days also have a giant salad- lettuce, spinach, meat or seafood,  lots of real olive oil and apple cider vinegar, and lots of garlic and onions!  Get yourself a good garlic press, like the ROSLE I have, and add in the anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, anti-microbial, and glutothione stimulation that this wonder food will provide- not to mention garlic tastes great!
Glutothione is particularly important, as it is the “the master anti-oxidant” that will enable your body to fight inflammation, raise energy levels, and slow down the aging process, among other wonderful properties.

Getting all of this through real foods in incredibly important.  I you use glutothione supplements, this could shut down the production of it by your own body over time... so, just get the nutrient dense, sulphur rich foods your body needs, and let it make it’s own!

Also include sulphur rich animal foods, like eggs yolks, grass fed beef liver, grass fed beef, and even high quality grass fed whey protein! (That last can go right into your Paleo Smoothie!)

And so, remember- eliminate the BAD, but also be sure to embrace the GOOD!

J

Another day, another Paleo Smoothie...

My computer is still down, so I thought at least I'd share this morning photo with you

Made yours yet?

J