Smoothies are a highly nutritious way to get the most out of your fruits and vegetables. Superfoods enhance these healthy beverages even further, adding powerful living protein, age-fighting antioxidants, and mighty micronutrients in their perfect, raw, natural state.
Nature created fruits, vegetables, greens, seeds, and spices as springs of nutrition, powerhouses that create vital living food from captured solar energy. Plants then envelope these nutrients within fibrous cellular walls, barricading everything inside. Chewing helps break down these walls when we eat raw plant food, releasing the sustaining nutrition for our bodies to use.
However, chewing isn't always the most efficient way of unlocking the nutrition. Our bodies cannot digest the fiber in cell walls and expend a lot of time and energy trying to shake and squeeze nutrition from our food during the digestion process. Anything not unlocked is lost to us and discarded as waste.
Smoothies don’t squander nutrition but set free these nutrients before even entering our mouths, as breaking down cellular walls in a blender is much more efficient than chewing. The fruits and vegetables are also still raw so the enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants are not damaged by heat. Our bodies are then open to absorb these liberated nutrients immediately, without expending as much energy to do so.
The indigestible fiber that goes into those cellular walls and locks in the nutrition is not without value itself. Dietary fiber helps clean and regulate digestion. It carries toxins, cholesterol, heavy metals, and waste from our systems. It also creates a feeling of satiety or fullness so we don’t overeat. Smoothies don’t discard valuable fiber.
Fiber makes these nutritional smoothies worthwhile substitutes for complete meals, supplying a prolonged feeling of satisfaction and a steady release of energy. Fiber controls and sustains the release of nutrients over time, eliminating fluctuations in blood sugar that can cause damage to the brain and blood vessels and also acting as an effective defense against sugar cravings. This slow release keeps the liver from being overburdened and overtaxed which can result in the formation of fats the body doesn’t need and you don’t want.
Superfoods are the most nutrient-rich plant foods on the planet. Superfoods immediately nourish, protect, and refresh every organ and system of the body. They boost the immune system, supply both macro and micro nutrients, and combat aging and illness. Some superfoods to consider adding to your smoothies include maca root, chia seeds, goji berries, hemp seeds, acai berries, dandelion leaves, coconut water, and camu camu berries. These are exotic superfoods, but there are superfoods that are more familiar, like broccoli, spinach, avocado, kiwi, walnuts, and pineapple.
Combined, these make perfect vegan protein smoothies fit for any lifestyle and any activity level to nourish your body beyond what you thought possible.
*Article courtesy of Sunwarrior website