All About Smoothies: A Conversation with Kristine Miles, Author of The Green Smoothie Bible (Part 1)

If you’re a fan of smoothies, or if the proliferation of smoothie bars has piqued your interest, then you’ll love Kristine Miles’ new book, The Green Smoothie Bible, which contains everything you need to know about this super-nutritious, milk-shake-like drink: what they are, why they’re so good for you and how to make it. Kristine, an Australian physiotherapist, is a life-long vegetarian, and raw-food enthusiast who is passionate about nutient-packed smoothies. After years of research and experimenting, she has given us her 300 best recipes, organized according to the health benefits each one offers. So, if you’re looking for a daily dose of greens that will support cardiovascular health, weight loss, or hormone support, Kristine has a recipe for you.

In a recent email conversation, I asked Kristine about her passion for smoothies and the basics of smoothie-making. Later this week, I’ll post the second part of our conversation, in which she explains what makes a smoothie hormone-friendly.

My passion for smoothies, green smoothies in particular, came from reading the raw food book “Green For Life,” by Victoria Boutenko, the pioneer of the green smoothie movement. The concept of blending greens to maximise nutrient assimilation and combining them with fruit for palatability, instantly resounded with me.  I have always loved just fruit for breakfast, but it never sustained me ’till lunchtime. Green smoothies solved all of these issues. 

Wendy: What’s your favorite smoothie — the one you probably have a gallon of in your refrigerator?

My favourite smoothie varies depending on the seasons. I am a big fan of seasonal smoothies. I love it in late spring and early summer when mangos are everywhere and I love combining mango with banana, or with orange. But by late summer, I am well and truly over mango smoothies! In my book I devote a chapter of green smoothie recipes each to each season.

What I’m Reading This Week

Here’s my pick for the three best, noteworthy articles I’ve read this past week. I think you’ll find them interesting too.

Is it Crohn’s Disease or Lactose Intolerance?
Healthline.com

This article, which provides an important comparison between the symptoms of Lactose Intolerance and Crohn’s Disease, can be found on the front page of Healthline.com (where you’ll also find my article about “Foods to Boost Memory”). Many of the symptoms are the same and it’s possible to be misdiagnosed. Since one is harmless, and the other isn’t, it’s a good idea to be knowledgeable about the differences.

Younger Women Need Improved Awareness of Their Heart Disease Risks
Women’s Health Advisor (A subscription newsletter published by Weill Cornell Medical College) April 2012

This newsletter’s lead story reports on the need for women to be more educated about the risks of heart disease and stroke.  In general a higher percentage of women than men die as a result of

Eating Chocolate Makes You Thinner? I Knew It Was Too Good To Be True

Eat Chocolate and Get Thinner. Chocolate Makes You Fitter. Those were the headlines last week, based on the findings of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and an a University of Calif.-San Diego press release titled “Regular Chocolate Eaters are Thinner.”  What delicious news! We all so wanted to believe that chocolate was a “free” food. But was it believable? I think deep down, we knew it must have been one of those PR type things. But heck, an ounce a day of chocolate can’t hurt anyway. There seem to be so many studies showing that chocolate is good for you!  We’ve even know about the benefits of Resveratrol thanks to a 2008 study by Hershey’s Center for Health and Nutrition.

But one doctor, Yoni Freedhoff MD, the founder of a nutrition and weight management center in Ottawa, has blown the whistle in an article that appeared last week on his blog, “Weighty Matters.”  He argues that there’s no growing body of evidence suggesting that chocolate is magically calorie neutral (or calorie negative). Moreover, he wrote, the study that these headlines were based on was grossly flawed (my words, not his);

“Basically here we have a study with no controls whatsoever rendering conclusions impossible, authors who rather than mention their study’s pretty much insurmountable methodological limitations instead made up a “growing body of literature” on magic calorie neutral or negative foods, a press release that spins it all as fact and as a result, as of early this morning, less than 24 hours after publication, there were already 443 ‘chocolate makes you thin’ stories on the newswire to further misinform an already nutritionally confused world.”

Products I Like: This Handcrafted, All-Natural Soap Is a Winner

For several years, I’ve been making an effort to reduce my exposure to chemicals in my food, my home and especially in the products I use on my body.  When you consider just how many personal care products women typically use just to get out the door in the morning, it makes sense to switch to brands that contain only natural or organic ingredients whenever possible.

This explains my ongoing quest for finding the perfect, hand-crafted soap: chemical and synthetic free, not sweet or overly scented, moisturizing, with a pretty good lather. I seek them out at farmers markets and boutiques wherever I go, near and far. I’ve found some good ones over the years, but I really hit the jackpot last Fall with a soap made by Montclair Skin Care, a start-up company located in the San Francisco Bay area where I live.

The founder, Kim Emanuel, an engineer by trade, started making soaps for his wife, who had become ultra-sensitive to the chemicals found in commercially-made, personal care products when she hit the menopause years. He was soon making soaps for her friends, and friends of friends, then selling them, along with additional skin-care products he developed, at local farmers markets on weekends, where they were a big hit. Keeping up with orders from his website and now, four Bay-area Whole Foods Markets, has become more than a full-time day job for Kim.

A GI Doc Talks About Bloat and Why Women Have More Of It Than Men

A common, but uncomfortable symptom of menopause is bloating of the abdomen. It’s so prevalent among women in their 40s and 50s that Dr. Robynne Chutkan, a Gastroenterologist and founder of the Digestive Center for Women near Washington, D.C., is writing a book about it. In a recent telephone conversation she told me that bloat is one of the most frequent complaints she hears from her patients. So, I asked her to explain the causes of bloat and why so many women (and so few men) experience it. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation.

First, what motivated you to spend the time to write a book about bloat?

Dr Chutkan: There isn’t a cocktail party, yoga class or school meeting that I go to when I don’t get asked about this condition. Every woman I meet seems to suffer from bloat at some point in her life and there are many causes, besides just constipation, that people don’t know about.

Why is bloat more common in middle age and why don’t you hear men complaining about it too?   

Dr. Chutkan: To begin with, the problem is linked to motility (how fast food moves through the digestive tract). This tends to slow down around the time of perimenopause in women, most likely due to fluctuating hormones.  It happens to men much later in life – usually in their 70s and 80s.

Then, there are the significant anatomical differences between the male and female colon. For example, it takes me three times longer to do a colonoscopy on a woman than a man. That’s because the female colon is 10 cm longer and much like a slinky- all tangled up with lots of redundancy. By contrast, a man’s colon is shaped like a gentle horse-shoe.

This Gorgeous Cookbook Will Inspire You To Eat More Vegetables

I’ve never thought to recommend a cookbook before, but Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi  is worth a shout out.  If you’re on a plant-based diet, or you consider yourself  ”mostly vegetarian” like I do, then this is the book for you. Ottolenghi, the chef-owner of four eponymous food shops in London, shows that vegetarian, healthful dishes don’t have to be ordinary.

Consider the eye-catching eggplant dish on the cover, which Ottolenghi calls “rustically elegant.” He pairs it with a sauce of buttermilk and greek yogurt and adds lemon thyme and pomegranate seeds. Yummy!  This is just a hint of his unique, fresh approach that you’ll find throughout this book, which contains 120 recipes organized by ingredients (roots, fruits, funny onions, leaves etc.). He pairs these everyday ingredients with innovative flavors, in imaginative ways: Pear Crostini

What I’m Reading

Here’s my pick of the three most interesting or newsworthy articles I’ve read this week.

Rodale’s The Daily Fix Newsletter – Why Women Shouldn’t Eat Factory-Farmed Chicken.

Years ago, I felt (and tasted) the difference when I stopped buying Foster Farm-brand chicken and switched to organic, locally raised poultry. Now I know why. As this article points out, tests by ConsumersUnion regularly show that as much as two-thirds of grocery-store chicken contains bacteria. That means that “dirty factory farms are filling our guts with bacteria that can cause all sorts of infections. And for women, that could mean more uncomfortable urinary tract infections (UTIs).”  Did you know that 80 to 90 percent of routine UTIs are caused by E. Coli? And supermarket chicken could be where all that bacteria is coming from, according to a Canadian researcher.

More Magazine (March issue), “Anti-Aging Arsenal: Four Nutrients You Now Need” 

We’re so busy counting calories and fat grams, we often overlook the importance of consuming micronutrients that are essential to the proper functioning of our bodies. As the author of this article points out, avoiding certain foods such as meats and eggs,

Give Yourself A Break

Next week is National Wellness Week, where many spas, wellness centers and fitness studios are offering spa treatments, private training, yoga instruction and other services for either half off or flat-rate $50 deals. It’s a national initiative, so chances are there are great deals and special events taking place where you live.  In New York City, for example, I counted 56 businesses that are offering discounts on everything from Hot Chocolate Manicures to Chiropractic exams and Table Thai Massages.  To book a treatment at a participating spa or wellness center near you, go to the SpaFinder/Wellness week website, enter your zip code, and check the “wellness week” filter on the right side. The website also offers expert advice from wellness professionals.

If you could use a “time out” that lasts more than an hour, and you’re able to get away for a few days of physical and spiritual rejuvenation, and learn something to boot, here are some events and destinations that might interest you.

What I’m Reading This Week

Between Twitter feeds, magazines, health newsletters, blogs and three daily newspapers, I read a lot about women’s health and healthy aging.  So I’m going to start a weekly post in which I pick a few of the best articles that I think you’ll find interesting too. Consider me your personal information sherpa.

This week, there were two articles about exercise in the “Well” Column in the New York Times that are worth calling out.

The first, “Getting Fat but Staying Fit?,” references a study that explored whether you can be fit when you’re overweight. Researchers concluded that exercise does, in fact, mitigate the health risks associated with being overweight.  You’re in trouble when you are overweight and sedentary.  The bottom line, Ms. Pope writes “exercise by itself won’t erase the heart risks of extra body fat, but it may blunt them.”