Can Green Smoothies Restore Your Vision?
Being on a whole foods plant-based diet for several years, I never appreciated the transformative power of drinking green smoothies–until I met the Green Smoothie Girl in person.
Robyn Openshaw’s lecture “Ten Minutes a Day to Spectacular Health” for Vegetarian Society of Hawaii in March so inspired me, I haven’t needed my eyeglasses for the first time in 30 years.
Robyn’s philosophy is for people to spend as little time as possible to achieve the most dramatic health impact. “I’ve learned from traveling around and getting thousands of emails,” she explains “people want to eat right, but they don’t know how anymore. Because ours is the first generation who did not learn home cooking from our mothers and grandmothers.”
Robyn’s goal is that everyone who hears her lecture will begin drinking a quart of green smoothies each day, “to get a massive amount of the lowest calorie, highest micronutrient foods as painlessly as possible, and inexpensively.”
The concept is based on the work of Dr. Joel Fuhrman, whose Nutritarian Food Pyramid defines the healthiest diet as one consisting of foods with qualities of maximum nutrients and minimum calories (H=N/C) and says “your future health can be predicted by the micronutrient per calorie density of your diet”
Fast Tube by Casper
One single step–drinking a quart of green smoothie each day–would transform the average American adult’s intake of fruit and vegetables from 2 servings/day to 12-15 servings, with the major benefits of better digestion, weight loss, and more energy–with less sleep needed. Drinking 200 calories of nutritious green smoothies also bumps out unhealthy processed foods.
I was relieved when Robyn reassured us that her objective was not for everyone to liquify all their foods, because green smoothies cannot replace a meal for me–at least not a regular basis.
Robyn recounted the miraculous benefits her family has experienced as a result of following a raw plant-based diet and drinking green smoothies including:
- Reversing her grandmother’s stage 3 metastatic melanoma cancer (after doctors told her there was a 99% chance she’d die in a year–and rejecting chemotherapy–she lived another 25 years)
- Curing her son’s asthma after giving up dairy products and steroid treatment that would surely have stunted his growth
- Eradicating 20 chronic health conditions she was suffering herself, including tumors, eczema, migraine headaches, infertility, and losing 40 pounds and improving her vision to 20/20 at age 45.
“We would never again be on another antibiotic, get a prescription for steroids or go to a doctor again,” she said, ‘because I assembled an arsenal of my own knowledge and went from a super scary place to a completely empowered place where I was no longer afraid.”
Robyn’s story moved me, echoing my own experience and strong belief in Hippocrates’ saying “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. The following day, I stopped wearing eyeglasses (the progressive ones I got just before beginning a plant-based diet) and discovered that my vision was almost perfect!
She also revealed results of a survey of 175 people drinking green smoothies for 30 days:
- 95% responded they greatly improved health and quality of life
- 85% had more energy
- 80%-improved digestion
- 65%-fewer cravings for sweets and processed foods
- 54%-more positive, stable mood
- 50%-improved skin tone
- 50%-weight loss (18 lbs on avg)
Finally, she called upon a volunteer from the audience to eat a tray of green vegetables to graphically demonstrate exactly what she meant by “painless”.
“Green smoothies allow you to get the broadest variety of greens, things you’re not eating now” she said, as she quickly blended a smoothie consisting of organic kale, chard, celery, banana, pineapple, apple, and a frozen berry mixture. Green leafy vegetables should make up at least one-third the volume of a green smoothie, with fruit and water making up the other two-thirds.
Robyn follows and recommends a 60-80% raw, 95% whole foods plant-based diet consisting of (in descending order):
- green leafy vegetables
- other vegetables
- fruits
- legumes
- whole grains
- nuts and seeds
She clarified “the remaining 5% is not because you are supposed to eat 5% animal products, but “so you won’t go running out the door” because 100% is too difficult for most people. However, the VSH Honolulu audience was in no hurry to go, as we were treated to samples of Robyn’s delicious and nutritious green smoothies.
If you want to experience spectacular health, why not try making green smoothies and begin your own green smoothie habit today?
This post is also available in: Japanese
