By: Cat Ebeling, RN, MSN-PHN, co-author of the best-sellers:  The Fat Burning Kitchen, The Top 101 Foods that Fight Aging & The Diabetes Fix

Cauliflower is super popular these days, and it makes the perfect low carb base for so many dishes. You can swap it out for rice, potatoes, beans, pizza crust—you name it, cauliflower can become the perfect non carb-y carb, thanks to the keto diet and low carb diets.

The great thing about cauliflower is that besides it being such a versatile low carb option for so many foods, it also is full of nutrition, fiber, and phytochemicals, so it’s the perfect choice!

Cauliflower is a member of the cruciferous vegetable family, along with broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage, and more. These slightly bitter tasting veggies contain a lot of super phytochemicals to help fight cancer, protect your bones, balance your hormones, strengthen the immune system and detoxification.

Cancer fighting

Cruciferous vegetables have a strong cancer-fighting link, and are helpful to prevent breast cancer, colon, liver, lung and stomach cancers as well. It not only helps to slow the growth of cancer cells but it also helps to prevent the growth of tumors as well.

Cruciferous vegetables are rich in a compound called glucosinolates which are sulphur containing compounds. The sulphur is part of the reason cruciferous vegetables have such a strong odor.

Inflammation fighting

We know that inflammation is the beginning of many chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s and more. Lowering our toxic intake of foods that cause inflammation, while eating more ant-inflammatory foods will go a long way towards protecting our health and longevity. Cauliflower lowers oxidative stress and fights free radicals in our body. It also contains a host of powerful antioxidants including vitamin C, to fight inflammation and protect health.

Aids in Digestion

Compounds in cauliflower including sulforaphanes, glucobrassicin, glucoraphanin and gluconasturiian, aid the liver and support detoxification. These sulfur containing compounds help with nutrient absorption, and toxin and waste removal. In addition, glucosinolates help protect the stomach, and reduce leaking gut syndrome and other digestive disorders. They also feed our good bacteria in our guts, keeping a healthy gut environment which in turn aids our immune system, and reduces unhealthy bacterial overgrowth in the gut.

Cauliflower has a high fiber content, and one cup of it cooked has about 10 percent of the recommended daily amount of fiber. Diets rich in fiber help with digestions and help keep us regular. These beneficial effects not only make life more comfortable but also help maintain colorectal health.

Helps Keep our Hormones in Balance

Eating a diet heavy in cruciferous vegetables helps to maintain the proper levels of healthy estrogen, for both men and women. An inflammatory diet and unhealthy lifestyle make hormonal imbalances very common. In addition, processed foods like soy, meat, dairy, yeast and refined sugar can all lead to high levels of a bad version of estrogen in the body. Too much estrogen can cause health issues like weight gain, hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, breast and ovarian cancer.

High Antioxidant Levels

Cauliflower contains ample amounts of vitamins C and K along with the mineral, manganese which neutralize free radicals before they can cause damage to healthy cells and contribute to disease. Vitamins C and K are considered powerful antioxidants that may help prevent conditions such as cancer, heart disease and arthritis.
One cup of cooked cauliflower provides 70% percent of the recommended daily amount of vitamin C, 19 percent of the daily vitamin K amount and 8 percent of the daily manganese amount, according to World’s Healthiest Foods.

Can you Eat Too Much Cauliflower?

Given the prevalence of cauliflower everywhere, can you eat too much of it?

Large quantities of cruciferous vegetables can inhibit thyroid function, but only for those who are deficient in iodine.

Cauliflower and other cruciferous vegetables are known to cause some gas and bloating, especially if you eat them raw. Cooking helps to relieve the gas issue, and also helps with absorption of vitamins and minerals.

Cruciferous veggies including cauliflower do include compounds called purines which can aggravate kidney stones and gout, but generally there is little risk unless you are eating large quantities.

Roasted Cauliflower, garlic and Tahini Dip

One of my favorite ways of enjoying cauliflower is roasting it. The roasting brings out a rich, nutty flavor in cauliflower and it blends well with garlic. Check out this delicious low carb dip with sliced fresh veggies.

Ingredients

• 1medium sized head cauliflower, chopped into florets
• 1 head garlic
• Juice of 1 fresh lemon
• 2 tbsp tahini paste
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 tsp each ground black pepper and ground cumin

Directions

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Toss chopped cauliflower in a bowl with olive oil, sea salt and pepper. On a large rimmed nonstick baking sheet, spread cauliflower. Slice off about ¼ inch off the top of the garlic head so that cloves are exposed and wrap garlic in foil and place on baking sheet with cauliflower. Roast for 45 minutes, turning cauliflower halfway. Remove from oven, unwrap garlic (being careful of steam) and set aside to cool for 10 minutes. Add cauliflower, tahini to food processor. Squeeze out garlic from peel, add lemon juice and 1-2 tbsp water. Process until smooth. Serve with sliced cucumber, sliced carrots, and sliced radishes.

Get your FREE copy of the Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook.

Looking for easy, tasty recipes that help you burn fat, then look no further…

This free recipe book is packed with over 80 fat-burning Keto recipes, such has mouth-watering chicken, beef, pork meals and more…

Best yet, every single recipe uses a slow cooker. Spend less than 20 minutes in your kitchen whipping up these delicious meals.

References
https://www.livescience.com/54552-cauliflower-nutrition.html
https://draxe.com/nutrition/cauliflower/

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Have you ever noticed that in the fall there are a lot of vegetables that are orange, red or yellow colored? Pumpkins, squashes, carrots, beets and sweet potatoes are all heavy on healthy antioxidant. These foods also contain alpha carotene, and beta-cryptoxanthin, which protect your cells and keep them healthy.

The powerful antioxidant, beta carotene not only turns into vitamin A in the body, but also protects against heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Pumpkin contains both vitamin C and vitamin A that help to strengthen the immune system—which is perfect timing for protection against colds and flu. Pumpkin’s powerful antioxidants also help to fight cancer.

That vitamin A from pumpkin also helps to strengthen the eyesight and protect against diseases like macular degeneration. Beta-carotene also helps prevent diabetes, along with the healthy fiber that pumpkin contains, which is low glycemic, keeping blood sugar low.

The fiber and rich taste of pumpkin are also very filling without being fattening. The low-glycemic attributes of pumpkin help to keep the body in fat-burning mode—not fat-storing mode. And pumpkin’s natural fiber helps to feed those healthy bacteria in the gut, while increasing your brain’s level of serotonin, the ‘feel good’ brain chemical.

Beta carotene also protects the skin against sun damage making it a healthy way to ‘eat your sunscreen’, and it also promotes younger, smoother, healthy-looking skin.

Pumpkins also contain plenty of potassium which balances out sodium and helps to decrease blood pressure. Increased potassium also reduces your risk of strokes, protects against heart disease, and helps the body to preserve bone density.

Pumpkin is the perfect vegetable to add to soup. It adds a satisfying richness and creaminess along with its healthy additives. This creamy version also contains cauliflower puree to add to the thickness and creaminess without adding dairy, making it a perfect low carb soup. The added sausage makes it high in protein, along with the kale to round out its amazingly healthy ingredients.

Ingredients

• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 2-4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 small onion chopped
• 1 lb turkey, chicken or pork Italian sausage, remove casings
• 1 red pepper chopped
• 15 oz can pure organic pumpkin puree
• 2 cups baby or dinosaur (lacinto) kale chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 4 cups chicken bone broth
• 2 cups cauliflower, chopped
• 1 Tablespoon butter (grass-fed)
• ½ teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• Feta cheese for garnish

Instructions

In a soup pot, add olive oil and brown the sausage, breaking up into smaller pieces. Add garlic, onion, peppers, salt and pepper and sauté for a few minutes.

Add the pumpkin, broth, and kale and continue to cook for a 5 or so minutes.

While pumpkin mixture is cooking, chop the cauliflower into fine pieces in a food processor, and cook 10 minutes with some butter and about a ¼ cup of water until soft. Let cool for a few minutes and add back to food processer and blend until smooth. Add cauliflower mixture to the soup and mix well.

Cook for an additional 5 minutes. Garnish with feta cheese if desired. Makes about 6-8 servings. Enjoy any time of the year!

Get your FREE copy of the Keto Slow Cooker Cookbook.

Looking for easy, tasty recipes that help you burn fat, then look no further…

This free recipe book is packed with over 80 fat-burning Keto recipes, such has mouth-watering chicken, beef, pork meals and more…

Best yet, every single recipe uses a slow cooker. Spend less than 20 minutes in your kitchen whipping up these delicious meals.

The post Delicious Pumpkin, Sausage & Kale Soup (packed full of inflammation-fighting nutrients) appeared first on thenutritionwatchdog.com.

By: Cat Ebeling, BSN,co-author of the best-sellers: The Fat Burning Kitchen,The Top 101 Foods that Fight Aging&The Diabetes Fix

Did you know it is considered “too much” or unhealthy actually, for the average woman to drink more than 2 glasses of wine a day, and for a man it’s three. That’s not much. In an effort to drink less, and drink healthier alcoholic choices, I’ve started looking at some healthy drinking alternatives.

Fortunately, there are some awesome new products coming out that are lower in alcohol, lower in calories, and lower in carbs and sugars. I love that! Let’s take a look at the new hard kombucha vs. cider vs beer vs. wine.

Hard Kombucha

Kombucha as we know, has lots of great health benefits. [Link to other kombucha article here].

Kombucha helps to populate your system with healthy bacteria, boost immunity, supply extra B vitamins, detox the liver, increase your energy levels, help fight cancer, and improve your mood. All good things!

In research published in the Journal of Medicinal Food 2014, researchers from the University of Latvia did say the following about the genuine health benefits of kombucha:

“It is shown that [kombucha] can efficiently act in health preservation and recovery due to four main properties: detoxification, anti-oxidation, energizing potencies, and promotion of boosting immunity.”

When regular kombucha is brewed, it contains a tiny bit of alcohol in it from the fermentation process. But now brewers have figured out a way to make kombucha with about 5% alcohol in it as well. A little more than the average beer, but still less than a glass of wine. So now you can get tipsy and still feel healthy? Pretty awesome right?

According to Forbes magazine, kombucha is one of the fastest-growing beverages with sales estimated at $1.8 billion by 2020. So why not expand this success to ‘hard’ kombucha?

When kombucha is brewed for a higher alcohol content, there is a secondary fermentation cycle added along with more sugar and a type of yeast. However, the yeast eats up all the sugar, so the sugar is 100% fermented, making a nice dry, low sugar/low carb drink with a little bit of a buzz. Some of the hard kombucha is actually sweetened with stevia, creating a hard kombucha a delicious, slightly sweet taste with very little sugar, carbohydrates—and decidedly low calorie!

Kombucha also has health benefits other than probiotics, even in the higher-alcohol versions, the beneficial acids like acetic (the same beneficial acid in apple cider vinegar), lactic, glucuronic, butyric acid are all still there, along with B and C vitamins.

Several hard kombucha brews have appeared on the market with alcohol from 3.2 to 8 percent. That puts them at the level of a beer (typically a 4.5 percent alcohol) and below a wine (typically 11.6 percent).

The real question, however is can those probiotics even survive in that amount of alcohol?

Probiotics generally don’t like alcohol, period. Some say there are not enough viable probiotics in even lower-alcohol versions, even though some kombucha companies are claiming that there are.

Other independent lab testing of hard kombucha, ranging from 7 to 8 percent alcohol, has confirmed significantamounts of bacteria and yeast, gluconic acid and acetic acid that were comparable with what you would find in an average kombucha tea purchased at a store.

But the bottom line is that hard kombucha is still booze, so if you overdo it, you are still drinking too much alcohol, although you may have less of a hangover. And if you are trying to cut back on alcohol, it may be difficult if you are a kombucha connoisseur, because these new boozy kombuchas taste delicious and refreshing!

So, as the hard kombucha trend grows, we’ll be seeing it more and more alongside cider and other alternatives to beer.

Hard Cider

What about hard cider? It has often been offered as an alternative to beer, especially because most ciders are considered gluten free. There are huge varieties of ciders available, some with astonishing amounts of sugar or corn syrup and other additives, while others are quite dry, low in sugar and low in carbohydrates, natural and/or organic.

Hard cider is made by fermenting a combination of yeast and apples—a fruit known to contain vitamin C and other antioxidants. Cider often contains some of the phytonutrients that come from the apple skin as well.

Some have confirmed the high levels of health-enhancing antioxidants in cider, similar to some of the benefits of red wine. A half pint of cider can deliver the similar amounts of antioxidants as a glass of red wine. Cider makers often boast that they are making a drink from a superfood, but it’s not all that simple.

While whole apples may contain antioxidants, if they do not come from organic apples, they also contain plenty of toxic chemicals that comes from the spraying of the apples.

Apples also contain up to about 65 percent fructose that is naturally occurring, but is still sugar as far as your body and your waist recognize.

Sugar content of most commercial hard ciders can be staggering– up to 23 grams (7 teaspoons!) per serving in some cases.

That’s a bit like drinking a soda!

We all know that diets high in sugar are connected to obesity, heart disease, depression and cancer, making cider a questionable choice for drinking.

While that may a ‘sobering’ fact, the key to choosing a healthier cider is to pick one that is labeled as “dry”. The sweeter ciders often have added sugars in addition to the sugar in the apple, while the dryer ciders allow the yeast to consume the majority of cider’s natural sugars and result in a less sweet drink with a higher alcohol content. That’s a win-win! Choosing a dry cider will help to keep your sugar consumption low while still enjoying an apple-y taste. Some of my favorite brands only contain a couple grams of sugar and are very low carb/low calorie.

Beer

The craft beer market has totally exploded and new flavors and combinations of ingredients show up daily, so it’s hard to make generalizations about beer. Beer is made from a combination of yeast, hops, barley, and other grains like buckwheat, corn, rice and sorghum. Yeast and water are added to the mix to start the fermentation process. Having a product made from grain can be slightly more inflammatory to your body, especially if you are sensitive to grains.

If you are avoiding gluten, generally most beer is not totally gluten free, despite some of the labeling that says it is. Most gluten free beers contain small amounts of gluten. The purely gluten free beers are made of sorghum or buckwheat and are not usually as hearty or tasty as regular beer.

Beer is generally thought of as a lower alcohol product but some beers can have as much as 8-9% alcohol—similar to a glass of wine.

Beer is high in carbohydrates but generally not that high in sugar content. The IPA style beers have more carbohydrates than the average beer. A pale ale contains about 10-14 grams of carbohydrates, while IPAs can have up to 20 grams or more per 12-ounce bottle! So if you are trying to lose weight, cut carbs or calories, beer is not your best bet.

Beer does not contain fruit juice (usually unless it is to flavor a craft beer and then it’s not much). Beer’s nutritional value looks a bit different from that of cider: Beer’s composition of yeast, hops, barley, and other grains that do contain a variety of different antioxidants and nutrients.

Beer does contain some protein and vitamin B compared to wine or cider. While some beers may contain up to about 10% of the recommended daily intake of folate, drinking in general washes out B vitamins, so you probably are not doing yourself a favor by drinking it for the vitamin content.

Naturally occurring polyphenols (usually found in hops and malt) are often removed since they can make beer cloudy.

Compared to cider, beer contains less polyphenols concentration. However, a study by Oregon State University found that hops often contain flavonoids (a type of polyphenol compound), which provide antioxidant protection to cells . Beer’s health benefits extend to the heart too–Italian researchers found that the moderate consumption of beer reduces the risk of heart disease by 31 percent.

Although beer is low in polyphenols, its nutritional value is bolstered by high levels of vitamin B, potassium and folate.

Both beer and cider are pretty high calorie/high carb drinks, and cider usually contains loads of sugar too.

What About Wine?

Wine can carry an alcoholic punch of about 9-12 percent by volume, higher than most beers, and about twice as much as the new hard ciders and hard kombucha. So needless to say, you don’t need to drink as much. On top of that, studies show that a glass of wine hits your system more quickly, so it’s easier to overdo it. But wine is a delicious, crisp enjoyable alcoholic beverage and a classic!

While alcohol itself contains calories, the sugars and carbs in alcoholic beverages also add to the caloric bottom line. A pint of beer contains more calories than most hard kombuchas, and some hard ciders (depending on sugar content). Most wine, especially the drier wines, have about half as much calories as beer, at about 85-100 calories per 6 ounce glass.

Wine’s big advantage, however comes from the famous polyphenols from the skins of the red grapes. Many of the healthiest, longest living societies around the world—especially the Mediterranean drink wine and enjoy long, vibrant, healthy lives.

Both red and white wines contain health benefits, with red edging slightly ahead in the antioxidants. A study of 25,000 European found that those who drank moderate amounts of wine (1-2 glasses a day), had a 34 percent lower risk of death from all causes—especially heart disease and cancer. It’s thought that the rich blend of polyphenols in the wine, combined with the healthy bacteria and yeasts contribute to the health benefits.

Since most of the polyphenols in wine come from the grape skins, red wine contains higher amounts of antioxidants, including resveratrol, than white wines, which does not include the grape skin.

And natural wines—whether red or white—especially if they are unfiltered contains a beneficial blend of bacteria and yeasts that support a healthy gut microbiome and help your body absorb more zinc, magnesium, calcium and iron.

One other thing to consider in hard kombucha, hard cider, beer and wine is how it is grown. Is it organic? We know that apples for cider are often heavily sprayed with pesticides, and the grains and hops in beer most likely encountered toxic glyphosate spray, if not organic. Grapes grown for wine can also be hit with toxic pesticides, so your best bet is to go with an organic wine.

The new lower alcohol drink choices out there can be a healthier choice with lower alcohol content. The key is to buy organic, natural and low sugar, and shop wisely.

And, with any alcoholic drink, moderation is the name of the game. One bottle of a low carb beer, a low-sugar cider, or a small glass of wine can provide a good dose of antioxidants and less alcohol, so learn to in moderation.

References
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2018/12/13/is-boozy-kombucha-good-for-you-its-getting-so-popular-it-might-not-matter/?utm_term=.fd0e8e7134ff
https://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-hard-cider-healthier-than-beer.html
https://greatist.com/health/beer-or-cider-healthier

The post Hard Kombucha vs Hard Cider vs Beer appeared first on thenutritionwatchdog.com.

By: Cat Ebeling, co-author of the best-sellers:  The Fat Burning Kitchen, The Top 101 Foods that Fight Aging & The Diabetes Fix

Green smoothies and green juicing have taken the world by storm. Everywhere you look, there are green smoothie detoxes, and green juice powders, and green drink “cleanses”.

These green smoothies or green juices often contain a large amount of spinach, kale, chard, collards, arugula, or other greens.  Yes, we have heard our whole lives that we should be eating more greens, but the green juice/smoothie cleanse may have taken it a step too far. While a little may be good, too much is NOT GOOD.

As you have probably heard me say over and over again, “Eat REAL food”.  I have never been a huge fan of smoothies, shakes and juices. Real food is where it’s at.  I certainly don’t think our primal ancestors lugged a blender or juicer around during the day to blend up all those berries and greens they gathered. Nope, chewing is important, and it is necessary part of good digestion and good health.

Smoothies sound great, but since they are liquefied food, you generally end up consuming WAY more than you normally would if you were eating those things as solid food. What would fill a massive bowl as whole food, gets blended down into the size of a large drinking glass. There is often too much fruit, too much sugar, too many greens, too many carbohydrates, etc. All downed with a just a couple of gulps.  And as we’ll show you in a minute, there can also be TOO much of some problematic compounds in these green smoothies or green juices that you need to know.

So–how can a green smoothie be bad for me? It’s got everything good in it, right?

Yes, dark green leafy greens and cruciferous veggies can be powerfully healthy, and they contain a boatload of antioxidants like beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin and other fantastically healthy phytochemicals as well. They can help fight cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. These veggies also boost immunity by lowering inflammatory responses, reduce cell damage, and aid in digestive health too.

And yes, I know it sounds crazy for me to be cautioning anyone to watch out for overdosing on green vegetables, but the fact is, you CAN overdose on them, and many people are doing that without realizing it.

Spinach and other green leafy vegetables including chard, dandelion greens, kale, collards, beets, arugula and broccoli, all contain substances called oxalates. Oxalates bind to calcium and iron in the body and actually prevent the body from absorbing these important minerals. See more foods and oxalate content here.

What’s more, when oxalates bind with calcium they can create kidney stones, exacerbate painful gout, and cause other arthritic joint problems. Calcium oxalate is actually responsible for almost 80% of kidney stones. Oxalates can accumulate in the body and build up in the kidneys, causing serious problems, as was the case with this woman who ended up in the ER as a result of a green smoothie cleanse. Research shows that green juices and smoothies contain high levels of soluble oxalates and that drinking these green drinks too often can not only cause oxalate kidney stone formation, but even lead to renal failure.

People with certain inflammatory diseases including gout, arthritis, and even vulvodynia should avoid foods containing oxalates, because they can make those conditions much worse. Oxalates have been considered as playing a role in these diseases:

• Thyroid disease
• Vulvodynia
• Calcium-oxalate Kidney Stones
• Cystic Fibrosis
• Sarcoidosis
• Asthma
• COPD
• Autism

Excess oxalate can also lead to oxidative damage and the depletion of glutathione. Glutathione is one of the most powerful antioxidants in the body, and works to optimize liver function, helping to metabolize environmental toxins that enter the body.

Generally, most people can break down and process reasonable quantities of oxalate in the digestive system and it passes out of the body through the stool. However, those who have Crohn’s disease, IBD, intestinal permeability, poor fat digestion, celiac disease, inflammation, prolonged diarrhea and other digestive disorders may not be able to process oxalates out of the body as efficiently. Antibiotic use also eliminates the necessary bacteria that break down oxalates in the intestines, so they can harmlessly pass out of the body.

Many diet and health ‘specialists’ promote green smoothies or green juicing as a detox. And unfortunately, as is the case with smoothies and juices, you can over consume green leafy veggies, because you’re ingesting WAY more than you could if you had to chew them up and eat them as a whole food. And over consumption of even healthy foods like greens can actually bring on kidney failure, as in this case of a green detox gone bad.

According to this handy reference guide, a high oxalate intake is defined as consuming 250 mg oxalate per day. But a mere cup of raw spinach contains around 656 mg oxalate, and some people are using several cups of spinach and kale in these smoothies and juices, which is a massive quantity of oxalates. So, you can see how easy it is to consume too many oxalates in one glass of green smoothie or green juice!  Especially if you were doing a detox and having two or more green smoothies or juices a day.

Another issue with eating—or drinking—too many cruciferous vegetables like kale, collards, arugula, broccoli, cabbage and bok choy is that these vegetables can pick up a heavy metal mineral called thallium from the soil they are grown in. Thallium, for some reason, tends to concentrate in cruciferous vegetables, even if there is not much in the soil. This means if you happened to be eating an overabundance of cruciferous vegetables, you could be overloading your body with this toxic metal as well. Overdosing on thallium can cause strange symptoms like patchy skin issues, hair loss, arrhythmias, nausea, diarrhea, peripheral neuropathy, foggy thinking, digestive issues and more.

A molecular biologist, Ernie Hubbard, found similar symptoms amongst many of his health-conscious clients who were experiencing bizarre reactions that did not seem to fit any type of disease pattern. After a thorough investigation, he was able to trace their problems back to thallium toxicity from an over consumption of cruciferous vegetables.

There is one more issue with cruciferous vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables, which include the ever-popular ingredient, kale, contain compounds called glucosinolates, which inhibit iodine uptake by the thyroid. Iodine is a very necessary nutrient for thyroid health.

These goitrogens, as they are called, have been scientifically studied and are known to interfere with proper thyroid function. An overabundance of cruciferous vegetables (especially raw) in the diet can actually decrease thyroid hormone output, resulting in a hypothyroid situation. Hypothyroid symptoms include weight gain, hair loss, lack of energy, sleepiness, depression, anemia, and decreased immune function.

What Does this Mean — Avoid Greens Altogether?

Use organic veggies if you are making green smoothies—and don’t overdo it! As mentioned above, too many green smoothies can defeat the ‘detox’ part of a cleanse. Cut back or rotate the green leafy vegetables with high oxalate content to limit the oxalate levels you are taking in.

Opting to eat your greens and cruciferous veggies in their whole-food form is probably the best and healthiest option. You get the nutrient qualities of the greens without overdoing it and causing an overload of any other unwelcome ingredients. Chewing whole foods, as in a salad or side dish, is the best way to eat any food, not blended and masticated as juice or a smoothie.

Final Thoughts

Overdoing ANYTHING—even a good thing, can be bad, whether they are green smoothies, detox cleanses, juicing, etc. Green smoothies and green juices can contain too much thallium, oxalates, and goitrogens.

Smoothies of any type are a concentrated way to gulp down way too many calories, too much sugar, and too many other undesirable ingredients as well. A ‘detox’ diet of green smoothies or green juices may actually overload your body with toxic substances. Smoothies in any form are a concentrated way to drink down a massive amount of calories, and as you can see, a whole lot of other stuff too.

Veggies can be an awesome thing to have in your diet, and I still recommend you include a good portion of multicolored vegetables in your diet—as whole foods.

While you cannot avoid oxalates in green leafy vegetables, be sure to choose organic vegetables to reduce the amount of toxic metals such as thallium, and toxic residues. Conventionally grown spinach and kale both contain high amounts of toxic pesticide residues.

Certain types of beneficial bacteria in the gut actually help to break down and process oxalates in food. Supplementing with probiotics and fermented foods that contain Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Bifidobacterium animalis will help to break down and prevent oxalate buildup in the body.

Just remember, too much of any kind of good thing can go bad.

[Mike’s note:  Although some people seem to do fine eating leafy greens, I personally discovered about 3 years ago that leafy greens did NOT agree with my body, and was harming my digestion.  I probably ate a leafy green salad every night for 15 years and never questioned it, because everybody tells you to “eat more veggies”, especially leafy greens.  

However, whenever I tested eliminating the salad and focusing my meals more on meat, starch, avocado, and cooked veggies, my digestion would dramatically improve, I would have no bloating, and would feel better overall.  My bowel movement the next morning would be much better too when avoiding leafy greens.  Then, I would test adding leafy green salads back into my daily meals, and my digestion would suffer again…including bloating as well as a bowel movement the next morning that was excessively loose.  So I FULLY removed all leafy greens from my diet 3 years ago, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done for my digestion.  The more I talked to other people, friends, Naturopathic Doctors, etc, I kept finding time and time again that there are a lot of people that don’t digest leafy greens well at all, and do better with cooked veggies and roots like carrots, beets, and sweet potatoes.  As a nutritionist, I can say with 100% certainty that there is NOTHING “essential” about eating leafy greens… we can get every single nutrient we need from other foods like non-leafy veggies, fruits, nuts, meats, eggs, etc]

References:
http://alwayswellwithin.com/2010/04/27/high-oxalate-foods-can-trigger-pain-and-inflammation/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934313003446
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352364615300092
https://robbwolf.com/2018/03/07/can-a-green-smoothie-cleanse-put-you-in-the-er/
https://chriskresser.com/the-dark-side-of-green-smoothies/?_ke=bWlrZWdlYXJ5OThAZ21haWwuY29t#comments?utm_source=klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_term=dark-side-green-smoothies&utm_content=4_19_18&utm_campaign=ck_consumer

The post The Dangers of Green Smoothies (Can contain toxic levels of certain compounds) appeared first on thenutritionwatchdog.com.