Digestion Tip Number Two.

Becca's Digestion Tip Number Two: Blend your greens.

Green leafy vegetables are amazing. They are full of so much nutrition yet are relatively void of fat and calories. Greens are bitter and thus stimulate digestion, and are high in vitamins K, A, and C, iron, fiber, and calcium ...to name a few.

However, in order to get the most of greens, they have to be consumed properly. First, they should be eaten with some fat in order to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins, so dress them with oily salad dressings, pair them with avocado, or sprinkle them with seeds. Second, they need to be chewed REALLY, REALLY well. The cells that make-up leafy greens need to be broken in order to release their nutrients. The body can't digest cellulose, therefore it is important to chew greens well to get the most nutrients out of them. However, a nifty solution to this problem is to blend your greens. By blending greens, all of their nutrients are released quick and easily. Smoothies are great for increasing the amount of greens in the diet. The other benefit of blending greens is that you can mask their taste by adding 'better' tasting ingredients to the mix.

Smoothies in general are a very easy way to incorporate a whole lot of nutrition into one easy-to-prepare-and-consume beverage. They are an excellent solution for those who don't like eating greens, but really should be eating greens. Some smoothie suggestions: take one cup of water, add one well-packed cup of greens (spinach, kale, arugula, endive, baby greens, beet greens, swiss chard, etc), and add one tablespoon of nut butter (this adds fat to help the body absorb fat-soluble vitamins), and one cup of fruit (banana, blueberries, mango, chopped and peeled apple, etc). This is a very simple smoothie formula. Other important add-ins may be seeds (hemp, chia, flax, etc), fish or flax oil, more fruit, and/or protein powder. With all of these additions, you won't even realize that you are eating veggies!