A chapter from Victoria’s newest book “Green Smoothie Revolution”

Many different fruits and vegetables are green in color simply because they are unripe. They do not belong to the category of greens. For example, many green apples, grapes, melons, bananas, limes, and pears are unripe yellow fruits. Similarly, green bell peppers are unripe colored bell peppers. Unripe fruit usually contains enzyme inhibitors, which slow the action of our digestive enzymes and may cause irritation of the intestines. In addition, unripe fruit has a higher content of starch and less fruit sugar, which makes it harder to digest. For this reason, I never buy unripe fruit. However, I am concerned that many people don’t understand which greens are most beneficial, because I have received e-mails from confused readers who stopped buying ripe fruit in order to consume more greens. Keeping greens in the same category as vegetables is misleading and can even be harmful to public health. I suggest that our produce departments have at least the following three separate sections: fruits, vegetables, and greens. I define “greens” as the flat leaves of a plant, attached to the stem, that can be wrapped around a finger, with a very few exceptions, including nopal cactus leaves and celery.

Dr. Anne Wigmore, who pioneered raw food in the United States, taught in her lectures that green leaves are the only food that can be combined with every other food group without any negative effects.

In his book Food Combining Made Easy, Dr. Herbert Shelton explains that starchy foods have to be eaten alone because starches are digested with enzymes different from those used for any other food group. Combining starchy foods with fruit may cause fermentation and gas. Dr. Shelton has found that combining green vegetables with every food group produces favorable results.

I see several benefits in adding greens to other foods. For example, besides having high nutritional value, greens contain a lot of fiber. The fiber in the greens slows down the absorption of sugar from fruit. This quality makes drinking green smoothies possible, even for people with high sensitivity to sugar, such as those who have diabetes, candida, or hypoglycemia.

Vegetables such as carrots, beets, broccoli, zucchini, daikon radish, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, eggplant, pumpkin, squash, okra, peas, corn, green beans, and others do not combine well with fruit due to their high starch content. While these vegetables are nutritious and beneficial for our health, their high starch content makes them unsuitable for use in smoothies.

If you do not want to mix sweet fruit into your green smoothies, you can use nonstarchy vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, avocados, celery, and others. You can also consider using low–glycemic index fruit such as berries (any kind), apples, cherries, plums, and grapefruit.

So, can we combine greens and fruits in our smoothies? Absolutely.