Power Blast Smoothie

Jump to Recipe·Print Recipe· 5 from 4 reviews

This one’s for you, David!

My friend David has been requesting a smoothie recipe since the beginning of this website. I struggled with motivation for creating a recipe because I just throw a bunch of stuff in the blender and hope for the best. Often times it’s where dying fruits and veggies make their grand finale.

“What do you add? What’s in there?” He’d ask me after I’d text pictures of my smoothie, proud to have conquered the struggle that takes 7 minutes of effort. I’d list a bunch of ingredients, but he wanted to know how much of each item. “I don’t know,” I’d write back, “I just eyeball it.” Completely unhelpful.

Motivation struck one day and I headed to his house to make a smoothie for my website. I figured strength in numbers, let’s get this smoothie recipe up on my site! I add my ingredients to the blender, David records what I do, and voila! We take a sip and it’s quite possibly the worst smoothie I’ve ever made. They’re always hit and miss, especially the ones with dying produce, but this one took the cake. “It’s not that bad. Maybe a little peppery,” David suggests, wincing as he takes another sip. It was bad.

The next time I come over, I make another one just for fun. It turns out absolutely fabulous, tasting like the good ones normally do. “Where’s the paper, we have to write this down!” David scrambles to find our smoothie notes to write in the changes and of course I didn’t measure anything. But this recipe is the gist of what I did!

For my smoothie recipes, I may not have everything measured perfectly. Think of this as a guideline and be creative with it!

Can smoothies spike blood sugar?

Yes. But the beautiful thing about smoothies is the fruits and vegetables are wrapped in fiber, which helps to lower blood sugar. You do have to be careful because it’s processed into a drink that makes it so much easier to consume quickly versus sitting down and eating a plate full of all those same ingredients. With smoothies, you want to take your time and don’t chug it! You can even “chew” the smoothie to slow your roll. I prefer smoothies over juicing because of the fiber: juicing removes all that incredibly important fiber and your blood sugar doesn’t stand a chance!

You don’t cut off the lemon rind?

Nope! Throw the whole slice in the blender, rind and all! The rind is full of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber! It gives you a vitamin C boost, which also helps with iron absorption from the spinach. Just make sure you wash the lemon well before you cut into it!

Flaxseed power!

Flaxseeds are small but mighty, packing an impressive amount of omega-3s (1 Tbsp contains 1,597 mg!) lignans, and fiber as well as vitamins and minerals. Make sure you’re consuming ground flaxseeds, whole seeds will just pass through before the body has a chance to extract the nutrients.

Lignans are a phytoestrogen and antioxidant and flaxseeds contain 75 to 800 times more lignans than other plant foods!¹ Phytoestrogens have estrogenic and anti-estrogenic effects in the body, which means you can get the best of both worlds. When you consume phytoestrogens, your body produces less active forms of mammalian estrogen. This reduces breast cancer risk and can help with menopausal symptoms.²

The easiest way for me to get flaxseeds into my regular diet is to sneak them into smoothies! I also sprinkle them on oatmeal, cold cereal, and spaghetti. Easy peasy.

What are hemp hearts?

Think you need fish for omega-3 fatty acids? Think again! Three tablespoons of hemp seeds contain 3,000 mg of ALA omega-3 fatty acids, which is 162–236% of the daily recommended intake.³

Hemp hearts are hulled hemp seeds, they have a delicious buttery/nutty flavor and are loaded with healthy fats, protein, omega-6 as well as vitamin E, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron, and zinc.

Hemp hearts may reduce blood pressure, lower your risk of heart disease, and aid in digestion.