Green Smoothie – Pros and Cons

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Drinking smoothie is a great way to consume healthy and fresh foods. Even though, there are many benefits of drinking smoothies, when it comes to green smoothie information become confused. Namely, there are many pros and cons of its use. Green smoothie contains leafy greens as its main ingredient. Its other ingredients are liquid base and fruits that give it tasty flavor. According to health experts, drinking a green smoothie is the best way to boost our energy, defend our body from free radicals and lose weight. It is a fastest and easiest way to consume healthy nutrients, a lot of vitamins and a bunch of minerals. Despite that, others claim that regular drinking of green smoothie can impose some consequences on our health in a long run. What they are worried about the most are the fresh leafy green vegetables that contain a high level of oxalates. Oxalates are known as the cause of some health problems such as Candida, fungi, or kidney stone. To find out more about the pros and cons of green smoothie, the article “Green Smoothies – Friend or Foe?” gives us the list of benefits and the article “Green Smoothies Are Bad for You!” lists all the cons.

The Pros:

convenient
portable
hydrating
dense nutrition in one meal – peace of mind
high fibre = filling
easy to disguise greens with a stronger flavour in a smoothie
easy to adapt each day with different add ins
good to use up produce that is on the verge of going off
with added protein (of some kind) it can make a complete meal
a tasty snack if that’s how you like it!

Objections to green smoothies include the following:
Blending food oxidizes the nutrients, so the nutritional value is destroyed.
Green smoothies bypass our “chewing” enzymes, so we don’t get optimal nutrition from the food.
Green smoothies let us easily overeat, so we consume too much food in a single sitting.
Mixing food types is bad for digestion, so smoothies cause poor nutrient absorption.
Green smoothie diets are expensive – fresh produce entails high cost.
Green smoothies are high in Oxalates, so they cause kidney stones – or worse!

High level of oxalates that green smoothie contains might seem worrying, but they can hardly be the cause of any serious health problem. Namely, even though some green leafy vegetables like kale, parsley, spinach, swiss chard, collards, etc., contain a lot of oxalates, they actually cannot solely cause, for example, a kidney stone. According to experts, there is no direct link between consumption of leafy greens and kidney stone. The cause of kidney stone is rather an inability of a body to prevent the production of oxalates. It might be that larger amount of oxalates can challenge the people who already have a genetic predisposition to develop some of the above problems. But, in any other case, the pros of the green smoothie greatly exceed their cons.