Help with Greens

[Kristi]

I know I need to eat more greens. I eat salads with romain, red leaf lettuce, spinach and some mixed greens. I occassionaly have arrugula but only when I accidently pick it up instead of spinach....it's a little strong but ok.

Any ideas? I've tried some green drinks but they are usually too strong for me.

[smasty]

I've never tried it, mainly because I like to chew my food, but what about blended salads? You just throw your salad in the blender and you have salad smoothie. Looks gross to me, but I used to think mushrooms were gross before I went raw. Heck, you should see the juice concoctions I come up with...I guess I should try a blended salad sometime myself.

[Kristi]

That sounds disgusting.

[Rawkinlocs]

I tried my first blended salad yesterday and it was not appealing to me at all. In fact, veggie juicing, period is kind of yucky to me.

But, to incorporate more greens, sometimes I add a little kale or spinach to my fruit smoothies! I used to add spirulina powder, then a friend mentioned adding kale.

So, I blended up some bananas, strawberries, a pear (or apple) and about 3 to 4 dates with apprx. 3 to 4 leaves of kale (or a small handful of spinach). It must be blended WELL, until you don't see any green specks, but rather the whole smoothie is kinda greenish/brownish (I know, sounds gross) but it's actually quite good. Now, if you taste a little of it (before pouring a glass) and it still tastes kinda "greensy", then you may need to add a little more fruit and/or dates.

You can also do kale or lettuce leaf wraps where you spread some kind of nut pate' or other mixture in the leaves, roll and eat!

[smasty]

Did you see the 48 hours special on raw food recently? That's about all they showed was people drinking blended salads. Not a great representation of raw!! That's for sure! They had other things on too, don't get me wrong, Juliano and Carol Alt, but they spend way too much footage on blended salads.

[Kristi]

No I did not see that special. They really needed Alissa on to show them how to really eat raw!

[PaganChick]

I juice TONS of spinach (it's 65% protein, higher than chicken breast) and toss in carrots, tomato and a couple apples. Depending on the "strength" of the juice, I'll add a bit of water. It's a green juice, no doubt about that, but I've learned to actually like it.

[Kristi]

I'm willing to try. Thanks!

[suebee]

try the marinated greens, the collard rolls or the spinach dip.
That will help get more into ya!
Suebee

[Kristi]

Suebee,

Are those recipes from Alissa's book?

[suebee]

yes, they are all from her book!
Suebee

[Kristi]

Ok. I made a green drink. It's one of my micromovements towards my big goal and a goal for this week. I used carrots, one apple and about 1/3 bag of spinach. Not bad (that's licking my lips not sticking out the tonque.)

Here come the questions:

How much juice should I consume? Is 8 oz a day enough? That's about what I made today.

Paganchick said that spinach was 65% protein & more than a chicken breast. Well, how much spinach equals one chicken breast?

I exercise a lot and always run anemic. My doc keeps pushing for animal protein but I can't go there.......I want to make sure I'm doing what he ultimately intends without animal meat. Is a juic with spinach what I should be doing?

[thunderdancer]

Hiya Kristi!

Sounds like you need lots more iron rather than protein.. but I dunno. Maybe your Doc is pushing animal iron as they say it is more easy to absorb, but that's debatable (as it all seems to be!). What IS for sure is that cooking lowers the useability of iron so woohoo the raw greens!

Anyway, dark leafies YES for iron, more than 1/3 of a bag i'd say (unless your bags are bigger than mine which are 500g). Broccoli is great too. I eat 1/3 of a bag a day blended up with extra lettuce too.

Dried apricots are really good for iron too. And prune juice (!) and raisins.

What's good to do it make sure you have a good source of vit C as you eat your iron - it aids absorbtion. So juicing your greens with a high vit C fruit is great.

Have you put your intake into fitday? It can give you a heads up as to how much iron you are actually getting.

For protein you will get a good amount if you eat nuts and seeds.
I get mine from sprouted beans coz I can't digest nuts and seeds right now.

Again, try fitday to get an idea of how much you are getting?

I never heard of the protein in spinach/chicken thing but either there's way less useable protein in chicken than I realised or this is not true in some way. If I didn't eat some nuts/seeds/sprouts in a day fitday (ok, I know they aren't god ;) but they are good) won't recognise much protein at all, and I eat a LOT of spinach. I never tried putting chicken in tho as I don't eat it.

[Kristi]

My bag of spinach is 142g. Isn't spinach high in iron, too? I get plenty of C. I tried to do that fitday but I had trouble figuring out quantities. That's part of why I love raw.....no counting, no measuring. I would get a little OCD with that kind of stuff. I always have about 1/2 my salad as spinach. Yuck on the brocolli. I eat nuts and seeds....I make almond milk and use it to make something every day it is available. My doc pushes animal protein because he believes it is needed by humans. He is familiar with the raw food diet.

[thunderdancer]

Hi Kristi - yeah spinach is high in iron absolutely!

Sounds to me like you are doing great, are you still anaemic on this amount of spinach etc?

What about just entering in the greens then to see how much iron it gives you (ok, i'll stop plugging fitday now, honest I promise I don't work for them... or own shares hehe).

I agree on the raw broc = yuck too btw.

Unsulphured apricots... yum

Your doc should look at Alissa ripped muscles then hehe