You’ve just woken up…
Most important meal of the day…

So, what do we eat every morning?

Well, with the exception of some weekend days when we have a cozy brunch, we start with a smoothie. “Smoothie” can mean anything these days so let’s cover the why and the what:

Why a smoothie?

When you wake up your stomach is empty and ready to soak up whatever you put in. This is the perfect time to feed your body. As you go through the day you start eating other foods that may compete for absorption or bind to certain nutrients, keeping your body from being able to absorb them. By engineering a smoothie with easy to digest and easy to absorb foods, you give your body the opportunity to absorb as much nutrition as possible.

Easy to digest is the second key as you want both quick nutrition to boost you into your day and you also want to minimize the load you put on your body. If you can minimize its job between breakfast and lunch you give your body more time to focus on being healthy and fueling your brain instead of fueling your gut.

What’s in a smoothie?

When engineering the right nutrition for your body it’s important to know what you are putting in, and more importantly what you should leave out.

“Worth it Smoothie” – A smoothie is made from coconut milk (or similar alternative), quality fresh or frozen berries/fruits, vegetables, and added super powders or concentrates. Berries over fruits, and in moderation to avoid blood sugar spikes. A good quality blender is required.

“Worth it Shake” – Powders or concentrates shaken or stirred together with water, coconut milk or other alternatives. No blender needed.

The rules:

• No milk products, no grains, no beans, no sugar.
• Fresh or frozen berries/fruits. Berries, the darker the better, are a good first choice for their high nutrition and low sugar content.
• Fresh bright colored and leafy green vegetables, preferably not frozen as frozen vegetables are normally heated which destroys certain nutrients.

The boosts (powders & concentrates)

Protein boost – You don’t need a lot of protein unless you’re lifting heavy weights and working on building quick muscle, but good quality proteins are important to how you feel and function. A lot of proteins are based on milk, soy, or egg which all can give an allergic response and cause brain fog or worse. That leaves pea, rice and hemp as protein sources. Looking at the quality of the protein, how much your body can absorb and what tastes best, pea protein comes out as the clear winner for us. It’s worth noting that whey protein, which is the most common, is from milk, but causes fewer problems than casein, the other protein found in milk. We still recommend stay away from this in the morning.

Nutrient boosts

This is the meal where we are going to maximize the amount of available nutrition for our body. A filling and nourishing smoothie with berries and vegetables is a good start, but really we can do better. Enter super foods.

Spirulina – a blue green algae packed with nutrition. Our first choice.

Wheat grass and barley grass – Also packed with nutrients, these grasses don’t contain any gluten or grains, but since the seeds do there can be the chance of cross-contamination. It’s great nutrition, but if you are very sensitive to gluten, then you may want to stay away.

Good fats

Coconut oil, mct oil, avocado. A good fat source in your smoothie not only has the benefit of keeping you full longer, but also can be used by your body as fuel or as a building block to hormones and other metabolic components.

Sweetener

When you make a smoothie with lower sugar content from less fruits and more vegetables and super foods it won’t taste nearly as sweet by itself as a smoothie made with only fruits. If you can down your smoothie or shake without any sweetener then that’s great, but if you would like some added sweetness then there are some good sugar alternatives out there.

Stevia extract – our first choice, pure stevia extract is 300-500 times sweeter than sugar. From the stevia plant, the sweetest parts are separated from the plant through water extraction, and then dried.

Xylitol – a natural sugar alcohol found in many fruits and even our own bodies. This is the natural sugar substitute that tastes and looks most like sugar. If you eat too much at one time can cause a laxative effect.

Smoothie ingredient ideas

Good green leafy examples:
Kale, Spinach, Dandelion Greens, Arugula, Romaine, Cilantro, Parsley
Good berry/fruit examples:
Blueberries, Blackberries, Raspberries, Strawberries, Pomegranate, Lemon, Lime, Grapefruit, Apple, Kiwi, Orange, Mango, Banana

Add omega-3 for balance

After we blend our smoothie we add omega-3 fish oil. It’s so important that we get our omega-3 levels back in balance with our omega-6 levels as both sugar and omega-6 intake have increase by over 600% in the past 150 years.

We don’t use capsules with omega-3 since omega-3 is so unstable. It is better to be able to be able to smell the product instead of finding out that it is rancid by burping it up. We use an omega-3 fish oil blended with high polyphenol olive oil which minimizes oxidation and maximizes absorption. We need a high dose of omega-3 to get our bodies back in balance and with a high dose it is extra important to have a very stable omega-3.