Smoothies make an easy, delicious and energizing breakfast, lunch, snack and are even perfect for a quick, light supper.
There are 4 simple steps to make sure your smoothie fills you up, energizes you, tastes yummy, and is a complete meal (not just a milkshake in disguise).
- Balance the mix of your fruit and vegetables: try for a 50/50 ratio of vegetable to fruit or even higher on the vegetables. Too much fruit for most people will equal a sugar rush and then a crash. Some of my favorite veggies are spinach, cucumber, celery and kale.
- Make it creamy: my favorite strategy is to add 1/2 small frozen banana, or 1/4 of a small ripe avocado, or 1 cup of frozen fruit.
- Add some good plant fat: this will slow down the absorption of the fruit, repair muscles, fuel your brain, and give your skin a healthy shine from the inside out. Try 1-2 tablespoons of either ground flax seed, chia seeds, hemp seeds or 1/4 of an avocado per serving.
- Add some good plant protein: by good I mean plant protein that would taste good in a smoothie, so tempeh is out. The seeds mentioned above are great sources of protein, so is kale and spinach, fortified plant-milk is great and so is 1-2 tablespoons or nut or seed butter such as almond or pumpkin seed butter.
My Creamy Peach-sicle Smoothie recipe has a good balance of fruit and vegetables, lots of protein from the spinach, hemp and almond butter, lots of good fat to help you burn fat for fuel and it’s super creamy.
