Day 83: Four Means to Get your Greens
Day 83: Four Means to Get your Greens
David Rainoshek Presents His Real-World Raw Food Paradigm:
1. Salad 2. Soup 3. Smoothie 4. Juice
Welcome to Day 83!
Accessibility is the foundation of our approach to the transformative practice of living, plant-based nutrition and cuisine. For the last two decades years we have eaten, studied, and taught tens of thousands of people about whole foods, vegetarian, vegan, raw/live vegan, and integrated nutrition and food preparation. Through this experience we have developed the Four Means to Get Your Greens.
What you are about to access is a real-world green baseline for any dietary approach up and down the Spectrum of Diet that can be made with no culinary expertise, only using a knife, cutting board, high speed blender, and a mesh bag.
There is an immense amount of nutritional science, technological innovation, superfood nutrition, trial and error, and years of experience behind what may seem on its face to be a simple and straightforward way of eating.
Many conscious eaters beyond ourselves had to experiment and make do with less than the best information, equipment, and foods before we reached the incredible point we are at now where we can eat a Four Means to Get Your Greens approach with joy, confidence, and ease.
THE FOUR MEANS TO GET YOUR GREENS
Those who think they have no time for healthy eating will sooner or later have to find time for illness.— Edward Stanley (1826-1893) from The Conduct of Life
YOU MAY NOT HAVE A LOT OF TIME TO BE IN THE KITCHEN, but you want stellar health, and you would rather take time to eat life-affirming cuisine than to suffer the personal or planetary effects of eating anything less than your full nutritional potential.
You know what your nutritional needs are, and after hearing about all the nutrient dense superfoods available, the essential fats you want to include, the 1-2 lbs of leafy greens you will eat each day, etc., you may be looking for a way to do all of this that takes minutes instead of hours, the flick of a switch instead of a culinary degree.
You are in luck. Eating the best nutrient-dense live cuisine that will feed you for your whole life is embarrassingly and brilliantly easy. It honors the best live-food nutritional research, and simultaneously allows for your own intuition about what you need in your cuisine to individualize your diet.
The way to understand how to do this is in terms of the 1-2 lbs of leafy greens you need to eat each day, which until a few moments before reading this may have sounded impossible.
The Four Means approach can be done with basic kitchen utensils such as a knife, cutting board, spoon, spatula, nut mylk bag, and a high speed blender like a Vitamix or K-Tec. Preparation and clean-up takes minutes, does not involve complicated recipes, is infinitely variable, nutrient dense, super delicious, and completely portable for those of us with active lives, which is everyone.
One to two pounds of green leafy produce is the fundamental groundwork for a low-glycemic, nutrient-dense cuisine that will help you eat fat and fruit in amounts that will not create hypoglycemia or constipation, two major challenges to most people new to eating a living plant-based diet, for example.
In my (David) nutrition practice, I have found that all people need at minimum 1 pound of leafy greens each day, and many do well with as much as 2 pounds or more. This amount can vary based on whether you are a slow or fast oxidizer, or how new you are to eating a plant-source only diet. If you are new to plant foods, you may do well getting most of your greens using one of the blended/liquefied Means. Determining the appropriate amount of greens for you will be a matter of personal experimentation, and some investigation into your constitutional type. Remember that excellent test to help you individualize your diet is in Conscious Eating by Dr. Cousens. See chapter 3, “A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Personalizing Your Diet,” and chapter 4, “Personalizing Your Diet to Your Mind-Body Constitution” for this detailed guidance. It is important to understand that by eating 1-2 lbs of nutrient-dense leafy greens each day in your diet, you ensure that you do not eat too much fat, or too much low-glycemic fruit, either of which, or the two in excess as a combination, will create poor blood sugar control. Let’s get into this balanced, fast food approach to eating the best cuisine your body, mind, spirit, time constraints, and busy schedule have ever experienced.
ONE: SALAD
You can eat your greens
TWO: SOUP
You can make blended green soups
THREE: SMOOTHIES
You can make blended green smoothies with chia seeds or low-glycemic fruits, if your blood sugar is stable for 6 months
FOUR: JUICE
You can juice your greens into Green Vegetable Juice (GVJ)
This food travels easily in a Tupperware or drinking container, can be taken on the go just about anywhere, and all Four Means can be prepared in advance at home, ready for you at every point in your day. Before we outline what a day of eating using the Four Means approach looks like, let’s briefly look at the Four Means themselves.
1. SALAD: EATING YOUR GREENS
This is the age-old way of eating a plant-sourced diet. Make yourself a large salad, salad dressing, crackers, perhaps a soup, and you are good to go. Eating this way, you can realistically expect to eat ½ lb of leafy greens at a meal.
The trick here on individualizing your diet is to really eat at least ½ lb of greens, and not overpower the calorie percentage of this meal with too much fatty dressing, pates, crackers, olives, and avocados.
2. SOUP: BLENDING GREENS AND GOODIES
Soups are infinitely variable, and their great advantage is the possibility of adding things in that you would never consider eating on their own, such as whole ginger root and multiple cloves of garlic. Also, because the entire meal is blended, it is more bioavailable (the blender pre-chews it for you) as long as you chew your soup as you eat it. This form of blended salad travels well, and can be made in the morning before heading out for your day. We are not necessarily recommending that all of your meals be blended as chewing has been shown to significantly increase serotonin production and eating whole foods helps to exercise the strength and fire of the digestive system. Therefore, when eating blended soups, chew! This goes for smoothies and juices, as well.
A blended green soup made in a high speed blender has at its base a fat, such as sesame tahini, olives, avocado, or a salad dressing. Then you are adding in everything that you would have in a plant-sourced salad: leafy greens, cucumbers, celery, tomato, peppers, etc. Next we include sea vegetables such as dulse, arame, wakame, sea palm, and hijiki. Finally, spices such as whole garlic, whole ginger root, cayenne, Himalayan crystal salt or celtic sea salt, mustard, and fresh or dried herbs of your choice. Add about ½ cup of water to your blender full of nutrient dense green soup ingredients, and make your soup. As you eat it, know that the nutrient dense nutrition you are getting out of this one bowl of soup is immense. During the winter, you can gradually heat these soups by setting your stove on the lowest possible setting, stirring constantly, and measuring the heat of your pot until it reaches 105 degrees F. Pour and serve immediately. Eating greens this way, you will find yourself with about ½ lbs of greens in your bowl!
3. SMOOTHIE: GREENS AND FRUIT OR LOW/NON-GLYCEMIC
The key to anti-diabetogenic green smoothies is to achieve a sweet taste without the use of high glycemic index fruits. For the purposes of maintaining proper blood sugar as a diabetic or former diabetic, this means using super-low glycemic chia seeds with your greens, in conjunction with sweet spices such as cardamom and stevia. On the Phase 1.5 Cuisine, a low-glycemic fruit such as blueberries can be added in limited quantities. The way to make a blended green smoothie with chia is to add one cup of chia seeds to a blender of greens, add water to desired consistency, and blend a smoothie. For great recipes, see the Rainbow Green World Cuisine recipe section which follows the Four Means.
4. JUICE: GREENS AND VEGETABLES
It is easy to juice a pound of leafy greens into a quart of Green Vegetable Juice, combined with celery, cucumber, lemon, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, ginger, cayenne, and many other low-glycemic delicious juiced ingredients. Green Juice travels, and makes for a great breakfast, mid-morning snack, afternoon pick-me-up, or even a hydrating, nutrient-dense dinner that won’t put you to sleep, or keep you up at night with indigestion. You can afford to miss the fiber on this juice, as a cuisine of living plant foods will supply your digestive system with adequate fiber throughout the day, provided that you are also practicing the first three of the Four Means. Equipment needed is your high-speed blender, knife and cutting board, nut mylk bag, and a glass quart-sized container to carry your green juice. Drink within 8 hours for optimum freshness.
A FOUR MEANS DAY!
Green Smoothie Resources
Green Smoothies are all the rage now, and this is a nutritional trend that will stand the test of time because we are not going to stop needing leafy greens, low-glycemic hydrating breakfasts, or efficiently-made portable superfood nutrition.
Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko
Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko
World’s Safest Liver Cleanse Smoothie
By Victoria Boutenko
The liver is the largest internal organ in the human body, it performs over 500 different functions. The liver affects our entire body’s health and well-being. The ingredients in the following smoothie are rich in valuable nutrients and anti-oxidants and are well known to help cleanse, strengthen, tone, and nourish the liver. To keep my liver healthy, I drink 2 quarts of this smoothie at least once a month. If you cannot find dandelion greens in your local health food store, you may substitute it with romaine lettuce.
Blend well all the ingredients in the blender. Drink slowly and enjoy!
4 cups fresh dandelion greens
½ head endive
2 cups cilantro
2 cups apple juice
1 banana
2 pears
1 inch fresh ginger
1 cup cranberries
Yields 2 quarts
Today’s Downloads
a chapter from Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko
After I published my first book about green smoothies, I have received many inquiries from my readers asking whether blending was preferable to juicing. I also heard that some nutritionists were concerned that blending might accelerate the oxidation of the food. I was very curious to find the answer for myself and decided to seriously research this question.
I conducted a simple experiment. I chose potatoes for my experiment because it is easy to observe the process of oxidation in potatoes. You probably remember an instance when you left a slice of raw potato on your cutting board and observed it turning brown within several minutes. That is why my grandmother used to put peeled potatoes in water, to prevent browning or oxidation.
First, I peeled two potatoes so that the color of their peel wouldn’t interfere with the results of my experiment. I then juiced one potato in a twin-gear juicer and blended the other one in a Vita Mix blender with one cup of water. I placed both cups of fluid on the table and took a photograph of them. I was taking photographs frequently for two days. The potato juice started to turn brown within a matter of minutes and became dark brown by the end of the first hour. The blended potato stayed almost white for two days. The top of both liquids, which was exposed to the air, turned dark almost instantly. I repeated this experiment three times with different kinds of potatoes and various shapes of glasses. The results were the same. Potatoe Experiment
It was clear that the juiced potato oxidized much faster than the blended potato. Since I am not a professional scientist, I decided to seek the opinion of someone with the appropriate expertise. I went to the local university and consulted with Gregory T. Miller, professor of chemistry of Southern Oregon University. After researching this matter, he wrote the following:
The browning is the result of oxidation of specific biomolecules in the fruit or vegetable. My students study this in lab so I have some familiarity with the process (albeit they are studying the enzymatically regulated oxidation). My wife is also a winemaker and deals with oxidation of her juice/wine or a regular basis. I also possess a huge number of resources on the oxidation topic in the form of biochemistry, medical, and nutritional books. Here are my thoughts:espiratory tract ailments.
Many people believe that the blending process will cause increased oxidation due to thousands of tiny air bubbles getting mixed into the “juice”. This effectively increases the surface area of oxygen in the liquid and facilitates the oxidation process. However, in grapes at least, I have observed the opposite to be true. The blended grape stays a truer color much longer. I believe this observation in grapes to be a result of numerous antioxidants released as the grape is blended (breaks open more cells than juicing). I believe this is what you are seeing with the potato, as well.ermelon-like slices, or scoop out the two white fleshy halves with a tablespoon.
Potatoes contain numerous antioxidants. This may come as a surprise to many people because of the pale color of many varietals. Among others, potatoes are rich sources of phenolics, flavonoids, carotenoids, and anthocyanins. The concentration of each vary with the type of potato. Since your potatoes are skinless (where the greatest concentration of the tyrosinase enzyme is located), I believe the blending process releases a much higher percentage of these antioxidants from the tissue than the juicing process.
It is also possible that, in many fruits and vegetables, the bulk of the fiber released during blending reduces the oxygen saturation in the solution but, if true, I think this is a secondary issue.
Now I understand why it is commonly advised to drink squeezed juice within minutes of making it, and why smoothies can stay fresh for two or three days in the fridge. Even though I can clearly see the many benefits of smoothies, I still don’t want to completely disregard juicing. One of the main advantages of juice is that it requires next to no digestion and can be absorbed and assimilated immediately into the bloodstream, allowing the digestive system to rest. This important quality of juice allows it to be used by people who suffer from severe nutritional deficiencies or have highly irritable digestive system. People with these conditions often cannot tolerate any fiber at all, and juice may provide invaluable nourishment for them. Later, when their health will improve, these people can switch to drinking smoothies.
I agree with Dr. Doug Graham that juices are a fractured food, which is missing an essential component—fiber. When we consume enough fiber, we take a load off of our organism by improving our elimination. Toxins often build up in the colon and fiber cleans them out. When most toxins have been removed by fiber, then the body has a greater ability to absorb nutrients, thus improving digestion. Humans could not live on juices alone, whereas green smoothies are a complete food.
If I don’t have a blender around me, I juice. One time I gave my blender to my brother because I thought that he needed it more than I. While waiting for my new Vita-mix, I was juicing greens because I could not live without them. While I was juicing, I quickly got tired by the limited variety of flavors, in addition to that, I noticed that I I felt hungrier and I had to add more salads to my menu, as juices were not as filling as smoothies. Contrary to that, smoothies are very filling; I can live on them for days, and even weeks. I know of people who have chosen to live on smoothies for several weeks or months with beneficial results. You will find the extraordinary story of Clent Manich’s green smoothie experiment further in this book.
More information at Victoria Boutenko’s website, www.GreenSmoothieRevolution.com.
green for life by victoria Boutenko: Health book summary!
Mike Adams’ HealthBookSummaries.com has done a summary of Victoria Boutenko’s instant classic, Green for Life, which is now available to you! Check this summary out, and get the book! This is one of the most important books you can have in your health library, and a GREAT GIFT for friends who are looking to access more plant-based nutrition. Everyone loves a smoothie, and knows we need more greens – but how to get them? Green for Life tells you why, and HOW!
Green smoothies
Find out why Green Smoothies are one of our favorite meals!
Great Books
By Victoria Boutenko
Thanks to processed and fast foods, being overworked, and feeling stressed while eating on the fly, it is increasingly difficult for most of us to eat anywhere near a balanced diet. We may not be obviously sick, but may suffer from lack of focus, insomnia, sluggishness, or any host of symptoms caused by nutritional deficiency. Green Smoothie Revolution takes aim at this silent epidemic by restoring balance to our diets.
Combining nutrition and know-how with recipes that pack a powerhouse punch, Victoria Boutenko reintroduces long neglected fruits, vegetables, and greens in the most persuasive style for our busy lives: with fast prep and delicious results. Featuring 200 recipes, Green Smoothie Revolution offers both simplicity (4 ripe pears, 1 bunch parsley, 2 cups water; blend well) and enough variety to keep taste buds happy and nutrients coming from a wealth of options.
By Victoria Boutenko
Everyone knows they need to eat more fruits and vegetables, but consuming even the minimum FDA-recommended five servings a day can be challenging. In Green for Life, raw foods pioneer Victoria Boutenko presents an overlooked powerhouse of nutrition in this equation: greens. For their bounty of minerals and nutrients, greens exceed other vegetables in value. Green for Life details the immense health benefits of greens and suggests an easy way to consume them in sufficient quantities: the green smoothie. This quick, simple drink benefits everyone, regardless of lifestyle, diet, or environment. Green smoothies eliminate toxins, correct nutritional deficiencies, and are delicious as well.
Green for Life includes the latest information on the abundance of protein in greens, the benefits of fiber, the role of greens in homeostasis, the significance of stomach acid, how greens make the body more alkaline, the healing power of chlorophyll, and more. Also included are the results of a pilot study demonstrating the effectiveness of adding just one quart of green smoothies a day to one’s diet, without changing anything else in dietary intake. Green smoothie testimonials and recipes give readers confidence and motivation in exploring green smoothies for themselves.
By Lisa Montgomery
Discover new ways to eat raw with delicious smoothies, milks, and soups!
If you’re just starting out in the raw lifestyle, or have been a raw foodie for years, Liquid Raw is your source for fun and exciting meal ideas. Liquid foods are often easier to prepare and digest, providing the perfect transition for those beginning a raw diet. For those experienced in the raw foods lifestyle, Liquid Raw offers a new twist on many staples, as well as inspiration to keep your diet interesting. With a variety of juices, smoothies, dressings, soups, and milks, Liquid Raw offers excellent raw food recipes that are sure to please!
Some of the over 125 refreshing and creative recipes featured in Liquid Raw include Green Smoothie, Strawberry Choco-Nanna Smoothie, Un-Egg Nog, Almond Milk, Chocolate-Cherry Shake, Ruby Rejuvenating Juice, Lemon-Zucchini Bisque, Moroccan Tomato Ginger Soup, Strawberry-Mango Pudding, Chocolate Mousse, and much more!
Packed with lots of practical and helpful information, Liquid Raw also includes:
• Guide to the health benefits of a raw diet
• An introduction to juicing
• Tips for finding the perfect juicer and blender
With unique and exciting raw recipes, Liquid Raw is sure to bring your raw diet to new heights!
Media, Films, & Documentaries
The Miracle of Greens | Sergei Boutenko | Live Presentation
Green for Life | Victoria Boutenko
[DVD Presentation] Greens Can Save Your Life with Victoria Boutenko
In this inspirational lecture, Victoria addresses some of the most intriguing questions regarding health.
Is anything missing in the raw food diet?
How do chimpanzees eat in the wild?
What is green smoothie and what are its benefits?
Why is it hard to love greens?
What is the nutritional value of greens?
Fiber – the magic sponge.
What is the significance of stomach acid?
How can greens make the body more alkaline?
Why is healthy soil more valuable than gold?
[DVD Presentation] The 7 Best Greens Smoothies from Raw Family with Valya Boutenko
Valya’s DVD The 7 Best Greens Smoothies from Raw Family brings Valya herself into your living room to show you how to prepare 7 of our all-time favorite green smoothies.
In addition to demonstrating how easy it is to blend up exotic concoctions, Valya shares many timesaving tips and answers the most frequently asked questions about making delicious green smoothies.
This DVD is a must see for anyone interested in becoming a green smoothie pro!