Complete Guide to Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Green Smoothies! Part 3 of 3

Q: If you have green smoothies, can you have fruit on top of it; or do you just have your fruit in the green smoothie?

A: You can eat anything you decide is good for you. It’s absolutely up to you. In my book, there are pie charts. The pie charts are diagrams that show the ratio of chimpanzee’s diet, the mainstream diet, and then a raw food diet. I was going to do the fourth one: I was going to put what people are supposed to eat. I decided not to do that. Everybody is so different. It depends where you come from, your country, your background, what are your genetics, what diseases you had in your childhood.

There are so many things that are considered, like if you have enough sunshine or a lack of it. Like in Iceland, they don’t have any sunshine in the winter. I just don’t want to tell people what to eat. Some people will eat less fruit. Some people will eat more fruit. Some people will even eat fish, like in Iceland. They need to get vitamin D from the fish, because they don’t have sun. It’s absolutely up to you what to eat on top of that.

Q: What would be your opinion on protein powders? There are raw hemp protein powders being used in a green smoothie. There is somebody with a little concern about protein deficiency. They started to include protein, then switched to eating green smoothies with the hemp protein.

A: I think hemp protein is really not protein. It’s more like fat. There is more protein in greens than in hemp. It’s easily digestible protein. There is some protein in hemp. There is also fat in hemp. Some people might need fat. It could just be different from person- to-person. I’ve met people who really needed fat. I don’t think that is that bad. We just have to see how much to eat this.

But for children, I would add hemp for the fat. Children need more fat than adults. In my book, I have one testimonial from baby Zunger, who was grown basically on green smoothies. He was an adopted child. His parents didn’t know what to do because he didn’t want any wet nurse milk. He didn’t want goat’s milk. He weaned himself off any milk. He was all shaking for the green smoothie. He wanted green smoothie! His mother was adding flax oil and hemp protein in his smoothies. He is a very, very healthy child.

I’ve read literature about children. Children need more fat than adults. For children, I would sometimes add maybe some nuts or seeds or any other sources of fat, but not for the sake of protein. For adults, absolutely, greens have more protein than anything else. That’s where cows get their protein—from greens.

Q: Can I Do a Green smoothie Challenge and be nursing at the same time?

A: Absolutely. Congratulations. I’m so happy you’re hearing that. Actually, Clara Liven, mother of baby Zunger, asked me to leave her e-mail in the book next to her testimonial. She welcomes people to contact her. We sold 10,000 books, and only two people contacted her in all that time. I don’t know if people think she’s too busy or what. She’s welcoming. She said, “Please tell everybody to call me. I’m very happy to share.” She has lots of knowledge. I haven’t nursed children since I was on raw food. They already were grown-ups. She’s really knowledgeable. She should be asked that.

It’s organized in nature in such a way that babies, all species of animals and humans, receive the imprints from their parents on their brain. This is the most important skill they need to have for their lifetime. They have these imprints for each infant. For example, to walk, to turn over, to suck, to eat,—anything. For each imprint, there is a special period, which is called, ‘the critical or sensitive phase of life’. For humans, there are many different phases for different things.

What I want to talk about is there is a time when they get used to their mother and a time when they begin to see things. The most important thing I want to mention is there is a time when they learn what to eat. That happens right when the baby is weaned off the mother’s milk. At that time, whenever the baby is watching his mother, the most important figure in his life, whatever she’s eating and whatever she’s sharing with baby leaves an imprint for the rest of this baby’s life. It will be very hard to change.

I remember with my older son, Stephan, I was thinking it was so cute when he was eating adult food even when he was six months old. I would give him a piece of white bread with some cola and potato chips. I would take pictures. I would say to everybody, “He’s so cute! He’s just like a little man.”

Now these are his favorite foods. I just blame myself. Didn’t I know better? Of course, I didn’t know. I think it doesn’t matter if you want to make your baby a raw foodie or a vegan or not. I would recommend, based on that, that beginning from nine months to about 18 months old, surround your child with lots of pictures of fruits and vegetables. Have a little fruit on the counter, everywhere, even if you don’t eat it. It’s just for imprinting. Go with an apple around the baby, with a banana, with a pineapple. Eat good things in front of him. We learn what to eat as soon at a very younge age.

I’m not saying he’ll eat nothing bad. Because of bad advertising, no matter what, they will go out and will see it everywhere, even in school, on every TV commercial. They will have too much. To counterbalance it, you want to leave a very good imprint. Even if you are eating a mainstream diet, he will have very healthy cravings. I’ve done research. I’ve found that the very first taste humans develop as a child, even before they’re born, is a sweet taste. It is very important. When we eat something sweet, our body creates some hormones that are actually opiates. They calm us down. They are like opium, like morphine. Whenever we are stressed out, our body is so creative that we begin to crave sweets.

Valya, my daughter, and myself, we did questionnaires of some people. We found that when people have a good, healthy imprint from childhood, when they get stressed, they crave grapes and pears and bananas. When people have a bad imprint, they crave candy, chocolate, and cake. In the middle, there’s a group of people who would crave dried fruits, like raisins or dates or dried figs. Isn’t that interesting?

Q: “How does one combat,” (and that’s the word they used) “cravings for cooked food?” Does it have to be a fight?

A: Some people just fail in this fight. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult. I see that for some people, it’s easier to overcome the temptations. For some, it’s more difficult. I’m certainly the one for whom, if I didn’t have my family on raw food, it would be very difficult, with the conditions that I was raised in and I see. I’ve met some people in my life who say, “Well, this is not a big deal. Just not to eat this or that is not a big deal.” Like my assistant in my office: She doesn’t even understand how one could even crave anything like that. She was raised vegan. She says, “I don’t even understand how someone would crave pie.” She says that when she is hungry, she just craves grapes.

My daughter, when she’s hungry, she craves grapes. She feels bad about this. I wish I was in her shoes.

If from the first two years of baby’s life, he is mostly indoors, then he would want to be indoors most of the rest of his life. If he’s seen TV working all the time in the room, that will leave a very strong imprint in his life. That’s just something to think about. I don’t really think it’s possible for most people to do any better than they’re already doing. Women know when they’re pregnant. They quit smoking and drinking. They’re really doing the best they can. They really keep everything clean and fresh. Maybe if you could just keep this in mind and take away any possibility of unnecessary exposure to something bad in the early ages of childhood, that would even do more good to your child. He will be happier. She won’t have as much peer pressure and won’t go into drugs that much. He or she would really have an easier time in their life.

Q: What’s the basic green smoothie recipe and can we use frozen fruit?

A: The basic recipe is just dinosaur kale (maybe four leaves, or five or six leaves to your taste) and two or three really ripe bananas. I want to emphasize they have to be ripe. Maybe one, very ripe, sweet mango, and then water to the consistency that you like. Maybe two or three cups of water. Blend it well, and drink it. Enjoy it.

If you don’t have the mango, you can use an apple. You can use a pear. Yes. Absolutely. You can even use frozen mango or frozen blueberries, frozen raspberries. That’s okay.

Yesterday, we made in my office a very nice smoothie which was a purple color. We used red kale, raspberries, and something else purple. I think it was red pear. It made an absolutely fantastic look. It didn’t look like green smoothie. It looked purple. It was delicious. Sometimes, just two ingredients are great.

I have a recipe on my website for pudding (green pudding), which is in the January 2006 newsletter. It’s very, very beautiful. It’s so delicious. You just wouldn’t believe how delicious it is!

Q: Can you mix durian with greens?

A: I haven’t done it yet. Several people asked me. Where I live in Ashland, Oregon, they don’t sell fresh or frozen durian. When I get to get these durians, I enjoy it so much alone that I don’t even bother to blend it, yet. If somebody ever mixed it, let me know.

Q: I was wondering also about chocolate, about the raw cocoa powder. I’ve been loving these chocolate smoothies, not with any greens, but with durian, with this chocolate. It’s so good.

A: When I take any kind of chocolate, I cannot sleep all night, especially from 12:00 to 3:00. When I was younger, when I was sick, when I ate cooked food, I used to have Restless Leg Syndrome. When I eat even raw chocolate, even a little bit, I have this symptom come back. It’s too bad. I just cannot tolerate any chocolate. I think everybody has to decide, try things, see how they feel, and have their own personal answer to their body.

A lot of people are selling the idea that raw chocolate is good. Actually, there is no such thing as raw chocolate. I don’t want to go into the details. There are some articles on my Web site. Also, other people have written about it — some people who actually work for some companies who manufacture this raw chocolate. It’s not what it claims to be. I just wanted to say that. A lot of people are using our addiction to chocolate to market it as a raw food and make money from it. I’m not saying that you’re making a bad choice or anything like that. I think people are misleading the public and making them believe things that are not true.

Does it have all the vitamin C that I’ve been hearing about? It’s supposedly this great antioxidant.

I’ll just tell you how much vitamin C the beet tops have. It’s 133 grams of vitamin C in parsley. In beets it is 30 mg, which is more than a lemon actually. The greens have way more vitamin C. I wouldn’t recommend eating chocolate for vitamin C.

Q: I was told not to eat fruit to get better from Candida. I’m worried about all the fruit in the smoothie.

A: I can briefly answer that. I believe that humans cannot be healthy without fruit. I think that greens have insoluble fiber. It’s insoluble fiber that absorbs extra sugar. It absorbs lots of sugar. It totally counterbalances the fruit. When the fruit is mixed with greens, then it’s not harmful at all.

In my book, there’s a testimonial from Elizabeth Bechtel. She even put her whole name there. She insisted. She had Candida for so many years. She was hospitalized for Candida. With the help of green smoothies, she totally got rid of it.

Q: I’m very excited to hear you say that that does happen. How about for hypoglycemics? Does it work the same with bananas and things like that? I’ve been warned against those. There are certain conditions the doctors tell you are fed by sugar. They say you should not eat things like bananas.

A: It’s the same thing. The fiber absorbs sugar. I believe that you cannot be healthy without fruit. We have to eat fruit. I’ve met several people who did not consume fruit for a long time in their lives, like six months or whatever. They don’t look very healthy. They are very pale and missing something.

Q: I have a question about watercress: Is it considered an herb or a green?

A: I would say it’s an herb. It has very strong, spicy taste. I just happened to have, three days ago, a smoothie with watercress. I also had pear and something else. (I think lemon juice.) It was great! It was wonderful. It was not spicy at all.

Q: How often should you rotate your greens? Every day, every week, monthly?

A: If you have a choice, you can rotate them. You can put two or three greens at a time, or every day is good.

Q: Can you become too alkaline?

A: You cannot become too alkaline. If you ever have purple measurements on your litmus paper, that means that your body is very acid. It’s too acid.

The buffers. The acidity, by throwing too many minerals out of the body, is bad for you. The body throws ammonia in the blood, in the urine, and then it makes it look like it’s too alkaline. You cannot make your body too alkaline. If you ever have too many greens, your body says, “You will just slow down.” You cannot become too alkaline. Every time you have a stress, you become acidic. There are so many things that make you acid. In my book, Green for Life, I have a list of things that make you more acid.

If you are surrounded with bright colors, it makes you acid. Noise makes you acid. Somebody tells you a harsh word, you become acid. You take on a $10,000 mortgage, you become permanently 20% more acid. Don’t worry. You do not have a risk, a chance, to become too alkaline. Just the opposite.

Q: I have a question about Asian greens. I live near Baltimore, and there are lots of Asian markets here. When I walk in, it’s like green, green, green in the Produce Department. Of course, they’re not organic. I’d like to try some of them in these smoothies. Do you have any comments on that?

A: I didn’t experiment a lot with Asian markets, because we don’t have them here in Ashland. I did eat them in a salad several times, when I was visiting Los Angeles. Somehow, I trust Asian people more than I trust commercial agriculture, anyway, because I think they have some wisdom that comes from generation-to-generation. I would still go with organic. For the sake of variety, I would go for Asian. At the same time, what greens they have there mostly are pea greens and broccoli greens — so-called raw broccoli. You will get tired of them very quickly. They have lots of alkaloids in them. Once in a while, I don’t think it will hurt to have variety. You couldn’t just live off them. Do whatever you can, and in the summer just live off the wild edibles.

Q: How does one find the wild edibles?

A: You go to the herb walk or the local farmer who has horses or goats and you ask them. They would know at least a dozen for you. Also, I have the names listed in my book on page 101. You can just make a copy of this list and go to some farmer, any gardener. They will maybe give them away to you for free, because they weed them and throw them away. They’re called weeds.

I have a little story about the Asian greens. When I went on a trip recently to Asia, there were so many greens I’d never seen in my life before. I had seen them, perhaps, in some Asian markets. Most of them, I hadn’t seen. I just went to the markets and asked people if you eat them raw, or how you eat them. Even though I didn’t speak the language too much, I asked them if you can eat it like that. I tried them. They were good. Many greens… I don’t even know their names. They were great. They were much better than some of the greens we get here. Some of the Asian greens are more for cooking. Mustard greens. They use that a lot. Different types of broccoli. Those are a little more strong.

Q: How about water plants—plants that you find next to water sources and that kind of thing?

A: Like what, for example?

Q: There’s water celery, docks, chards.

A: I love it. You mean in nature? Absolutely! That’s my favorite. Yes.

Q: Are there concerns about the ability of these plants to cleanse the water? They’re filtering out a lot of material. Of course, we wouldn’t be eating the roots, but the greens contain some of this. Is there any concern in that way?

A: Concern of what?

Q: Whatever material was in the water.

A: I was picking mine in the wilderness where there were no industrial plants. It was fine. Do you get it in the city?

Q: Yes, in the cities or in the country.

A: They probably will have something in them. They could have heavy metals and rubber. You could walk a little further upstream or something.

Q: I ask because I live in an area of heavy agriculture. A Maybe you could consider moving away.

A: I want to say that the plant would get the contamination from the outside. I don’t think it would get it from the inside. It would probably die. It would assimilate things that are bad for it. The plants in the city can be contaminated by the air. I don’t think they could get contaminated by the water. In that case, they couldn’t grow. It’s much like seaweed that’s inside the water. You’re right. Probably the roots would not be good; but the greens would be okay, if the air is okay. The air is fine here. It’s just the water. From all the pesticides and such that you can’t control, it’s something to question.

Thank you to Victoria Boutenko

No discussion of Green Smoothies would dare not mention and honor Victoria Boutenko for her extraordinary contributions to the “discovery” of Green Smoothies. We highly recommend the book, Green For Life which is a suitable supplement to the 21-Day Green Smoothie Detox program’s materials.