Kale Smoothie Recipes

1. They’re easy
No sauteeing, no waiting for water to boil, no toasting until just right, etc. What’s easier than throwing a few ingredients into a blender and hitting a button? Absolutely nothing! I love and advise making kale smoothies primarily because it’s simply impossible to argue with their ease of creation.

2. They’re inexpensive
When I go to the grocery store, I am always impressed and amazed by the fact that kale is one of the cheapest things there. Usually priced between $1-$2 for a group of around 15 gigantic leaves, there is just not a better deal than this out there.

3. They’re customizable, so you never get bored
Every morning when I make a kale smoothie, I just don’t want to repeat myself. Also, I am fascinated by flavor combinations. Put those two things together, and you get a breakfast treat with infinite variations.

4. They’re light, and don’t weigh you down
What’s the last thing in the world you want after you eat breakfast? That’s a rhetorical question, so I will answer it for you: to feel weighed-down! You’ve just had a great night’s sleep, you’re raring to get started with your day, and you eat a sausage on a stick wrapped in chocolate chip pancake batter? I don’t think so. I just won’t allow it.

Look at how bad that makes you feel afterward! All greasy and grody and guilty… No, thanks. When you start to take care of your body, you begin to feel more in tune with it. And when you feel in tune with what’s happening in there, you start to want to give it the correct fuel. Then you discover kale smoothies, and you realize that your breakfast doesn’t have to be heavy to be substantial.

5. Completely fresh – No preservatives or chemicals
Fresh ingredients, in any meal, are really key to your feeling good. When you eat things that are pre-packaged, they typically need to be able to survive a long truck trip from the place of manufacture to the store where you buy them, and that means preservatives and chemicals will be included. A leaf of kale knows not what a preservative is. Go ahead, ask it, I’ll wait.

…See?

6. They take care of your veggies for the day
This is one of my favorite reasons. Let’s say you aren’t a kale breakfast smoothie drinker yet. You’re at work, your friends want to go to lunch. They’re like, “Let’s go to that greasy spoon where we can get some pizza and burgers!” and you meekly say, “ahem… do they have salads?”

Over the din of your coworkers’ derisive laughter, you think, “man, if only I drank awesome kale smoothies every morning, I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not I was getting a correct amount of vegetables in my diet the rest of the day, because I’d be covered already!”

7. They cleanse you, daily
A lot of people are into periodically doing a cleanse. This often involves fasting for a period of days – or even weeks – combined with drinking only water, or some heinous mixture of cayenne pepper-flavored lemon water with chunks of clay floating in it, just for example. If you drink kale smoothies every day, however, you are already cleansing your intestinal tract daily with wonderful leafy greens, so you don’t have to interrupt your life with lengthy endeavors such as this.

8. The human body likes digesting plants
You don’t have to be some weird vegan (all due respect to weird vegans) to appreciate the benefits of integrating some plants into your foodstream. Believe it or not, you probably already eat plants, all the time! You just ALSO eat too much meat and processed food in addition to them, and maybe it’s time to cut some of that out, because feeling better feels good. So eat some plants!

9. Blending the ingredients begins the digestion process, like chewing
When you take a bite of food – any food – you chew it. In addition to your teeth grinding and crushing the food into smaller bits, the enzymes in your saliva are acting on the food, beginning to break it down for what’s about to go down in your stomach. If you don’t chew your food well enough, and you swallow it before it’s been broken down properly, it can cause gas, discomfort, and numerous potential digestive problems later. When you drink a kale smoothie, however, much of the “chewing” has already been done for you, and oftentimes your blender will “chew” the ingredients in your smoothie better than you ever could!

Therefore, when the fresh, healthy ingredients in your smoothie get to your stomach, you are getting the maximum benefit from them, because all their fibrous little cell walls have been broken down to itty bitty bits, allowing your digestive fluids to go crazy on them.

10. They’re delicious!
I know, I know. Kale tastes nasty. But no it doesn’t. See the thing is, kale has a reputation for being bitter, because people often include the stem when they eat it or use it in recipes. It is my personal opinion that if you simply remove the stem, you open up a whole world of flavor because you’re removing the main source of kale’s bitterness.

When you combine other ingredients with kale – especially the vibrant, tangy flavors of fruits and fruit juices, etc – it becomes very easy to mask the flavor of the kale.

11. Sense of accomplishment
You built that! You made that delicious, energizing concoction, right there in your kitchen, without committing too much effort! That’s one undeniable thing about making a kale smoothie, is that you feel smart, capable and responsible afterwards.

12. You can be creative
Kale is just the first item on the ingredients list of a kale smoothie recipe. What happens next is up to you! There are SO MANY, distinctly-different types of flavor profiles possible with a kale smoothie, the mind just boggles. You can do tart and tangy, sweet and creamy, nutty and subtle, play with texture, color, presentation… Trust me, your inner (or outer) artist will be feeling very creatively satisfied.

13. It’s a meal replacement
Smoothies aren’t just for dessert. They are straight-up, legitimate replacements for meals. In fact, breakfast isn’t the only meal you could replace! In fact in fact, kale smoothies I’m pretty sure would do better than that meal you were planning to eat, on nutritional value alone.

14. It’s not some stupid diet
OMG, diets. People are always talking about this diet or that. “I tried that diet, but it was gross,” or, “I tried that diet, but couldn’t stick to it.” Kale smoothies aren’t here to displace your entire diet, they’re more like a cool new accessory for your diet, which is actually going to bring insight to you, about how you could tighten up the rest of your diet.

Hey, if you enjoyed any of the information in this post, please pass it along, or tell me what you thought of it in the comments below. All comments welcome, even if you’re a hateful spambot. Just trying to justify my existence, here.

Thanks!
-Paul