How to get your children to drink green smoothies
I have been doing a lot of reading lately on nutrition and read about the nutritional value of drinking green smoothies every day. Now I already love to make smoothies for my family using spinach, orange juice, strawberries, blueberries, etc…but I did not really look at it as a way to get a huge portion of our daily fruits and vegetables. Since my children love smoothies, I plan on making more of them and adding all kinds of stuff to them – stuff they would not eat normally 🙂 – and hopefully boost their health.
My youngest children do not eat vegetables very well. So I wondered if making them some smoothies too would be a good way to get some greens down. Yesterday morning I stuffed my blender full of spinach, 2 cups of orange juice, 1 cup of water, some vanilla, some lemon drop stevia to sweeten it, strawberries, blueberries, a frozen banana, some sliced cucumbers, some ground flax, and some coconut oil. I blended it all up until it was nice and smooth. Then I poured some in coffee mugs, cut plastic straws in half (so my younger ones would not have to suck the smoothie so far to get some in their mouths) and gave it to them. They LOVED it! The key is to add in a lot of fruit at first and then reduce that amount as they get used to it.
Why don’t you give a “green” smoothie a try?
![Let’s Look at Menu Planning + Live Q & A [Video]](https://sherigraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Lets-Look-at-Menu-Planning.jpg)
This sounds good. Thanks for the recipe. James and Molly were making apple juice and carrot juice in our juicer yesterday and had a good time (I haven’t juiced anything for several years, and this was an adventure they decided to do on their own)– maybe a green drink would be another good experiment.
We drink green smoothies as well and my children love them for the most part. My 2 year old cries when he sees me making them he can’t wait to get them he calls them “green” He wants his green it is so funny.
We add dffrent things as well no real recipe. I like mine real cold so I add ice instead of water. Also I use the froxen orange juice concentrate non mixed. The frozen juice concentrate works as a sweetner as well.
For us the best way to make them in in a bullet type blender it has a bunch of cups so I can make everyone their own and mix it and then they drink out of that cup. For me it is a lot less trouble then making them in the blender and then cleaning it.
I have found that the riper the bananas the sweeter they are. I like to freeze them after they get real ripe.
We love apples in outs as well. I have also used agave to sweeten it but most of the time they are sweet enough for us and I don’t add any extra sweetner.
Sorry didn’t mean to take over your post just comparing apples for apples.
Blessings,
Angie
Hi Angie! Thanks for sharing! Yes, it is fun to kind of create your own recipe. I have been know to throw in some baby carrots at times too…the kids never know!
Hi Sheri,
I am wondering if you just wing this or if you have a specific recipe including amounts? I wouldn’t mind trying this, but I have a psychological aversion to green stuff :> It would have to be fruit sweet in order to get it down.
Hi Heather, I’ll try to get a post up soon with the recipe that I like to use now. I kind of just throw stuff in, but here it goes:
Green Smoothie
5 oz. spinach (at Walmart I buy 10 oz. bags and use about half of a bag – you can freeze spinach too, so I always have some spinach to use for my smoothies)
2 cups water
3 dropperfuls of Lemon Drop Stevia (you can use honey or other sweetener in place of this – just sweeten to taste when you are done)
1 cup frozen blueberries
1 cup strawberries or frozen mixed fruit
1 cup chunked pineapple (optional but SO good!)
1 banana (optional)
Additional water or orange juice
Put the 2 cups water and spinach in the blender and blend until smooth. Add the sweetener and frozen fruit 1 cup at a time until smooth. Add in more water or some orange juice until it gets to the consistency you like it.
This recipe will not really look green, especially the more blueberries you put in. It is sweet and so yummy! Give it a try!
You are so sneaky! LOL! I’m going to have to give this a try.