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Green for Life
In search of the perfect human diet, Victoria Boutenko compares the standard American diet with the diet of wild chimpanzees. Chimpanzees share an estimated 99.4% of genes with humans, but their diet is dramatically different from ours. The most glaring difference is that chimpanzees consume significantly more green leaves than humans. Victoria developed a series of greens smoothies that enable anyone to consume the necessary amount of greens in a very palatable way.
186 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
122 people are currently reading
1396 people want to read
About the author
Victoria Boutenko
39 books41 followersVictoria Boutenko is an author, teacher, inventor, researcher, artist and mother of three. She teaches classes on healthy living and raw food all over the world. As a result of her research and teachings, thousands of people are drinking and sharing green smoothies.
Source: http://greensmoothiesblog.com/who-is-...
Source: http://greensmoothiesblog.com/who-is-...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 228 reviews
February 23, 2009
I like green smoothies. They are indeed tasty as this book states and definitely a health benefit. I did learn quite a bit about just how beneficial they are from this book, which I was glad to know.
But...Victoria Boutenko is kind of a weirdo. After three months of drinking green smoothies, she claims to salivate over green weeds she sees outside while taking walks with her husband and she mimicks chimpanzees she watches at the zoo by pulling the leaves off of nearly plants to eat them.
She tends to make out these smoothies to be a miracle drug, curing everything from diabetes to arthritis to grey hair within just a few months. I won't deny that your health would improve from adding these to your diet daily--I've been drinking them myself nearly every morning for several weeks now. I feel better, but I'm not about to go out and run a 10k.
There are great recipes and fun stats in this book. It's an interesting blend of fact and craziness.
But...Victoria Boutenko is kind of a weirdo. After three months of drinking green smoothies, she claims to salivate over green weeds she sees outside while taking walks with her husband and she mimicks chimpanzees she watches at the zoo by pulling the leaves off of nearly plants to eat them.
She tends to make out these smoothies to be a miracle drug, curing everything from diabetes to arthritis to grey hair within just a few months. I won't deny that your health would improve from adding these to your diet daily--I've been drinking them myself nearly every morning for several weeks now. I feel better, but I'm not about to go out and run a 10k.
There are great recipes and fun stats in this book. It's an interesting blend of fact and craziness.
August 31, 2007
I'm turning into such a weirdo raw food geek.
April 21, 2016
Not too happy with this book. Green smoothies are good, and they are a great & simple way to add more vegetables and fruit to your diet - I highly recommend them. But this book is not good. Full of pseudo-science nonsense. If you are going to try green smoothies then for equipment all you need is a regular blender - not the very expensive version the author tries to sell you by directing you to her website. Also, if you drink green smoothies hopefully it will improve your nutrition - not make you salivate over weeds like Boutenko claims happens to her. Finally, the book only contains 16 pages of recipes at the back, the other 173 pages are nonsense & kooky testimonials, and after all that the recipes are not so varied or interesting to have made it all worthwhile. My recommendations are: if you must read this book, borrow it from the library. Look on the internet for green smoothie recipes. Many people share more creative ideas than Boutenko. Or just get started: rip up some raw kale add it to the blender, add fruit of your choice nectarine, or mango, banana, any fruit you like. Add some water & whirl. Push down the solids & whirl again. Add some ice cubes & voila. If it's too thick add some more water. The amazing thing is the fruit masks the taste of the vegetable, enjoy, they are tasty & nutritious.
March 11, 2012
*Go green and go, go, go!*
Whether you're new (or, uh, should I say green?) to the green smoothie bandwagon or have been riding the revolution for some time, Victoria's updated classic is well worth the read. We've all heard the repeated urgings to "eat your greens" which makes sense in nutritional theory, but may not always be so practical in lifestyle reality. Luckily, as Victoria's book hammers home, drinking your greens can not only be an easier way to get them in your diet, but pulverizing them into their liquid form makes the green goodness even more biologically available to our bodies. In the smoothy drinkable form, greens serve as: valuable sources of protein (in the form of usable essential amino acids), sponges to soak up accumulated toxins, homeostasis regulators (to boost the body's natural ability and tendency to heal itself), body alkalizers (to tip the body's pH level away from the acid zone where cancers thrive), and deliverers of the infinite healing powers of chlorophyll. Plus, these green smoothies make the most delicious, convenient, easy, and highly energizing meal.
Warning--side effects of regular green smoothie consumption include: huge spikes in energy levels (you may want to get another hobby, as advised in one of the book's testimonials), decreased cravings for sugars and other not-so-green foods, countless improvements in overall health and body functioning, and a general sense of oh-my-life-is-good-ness. (Can you tell I'm on the green bandwagon now?)
Drink up (both the book and the smoothies) and live more!
Whether you're new (or, uh, should I say green?) to the green smoothie bandwagon or have been riding the revolution for some time, Victoria's updated classic is well worth the read. We've all heard the repeated urgings to "eat your greens" which makes sense in nutritional theory, but may not always be so practical in lifestyle reality. Luckily, as Victoria's book hammers home, drinking your greens can not only be an easier way to get them in your diet, but pulverizing them into their liquid form makes the green goodness even more biologically available to our bodies. In the smoothy drinkable form, greens serve as: valuable sources of protein (in the form of usable essential amino acids), sponges to soak up accumulated toxins, homeostasis regulators (to boost the body's natural ability and tendency to heal itself), body alkalizers (to tip the body's pH level away from the acid zone where cancers thrive), and deliverers of the infinite healing powers of chlorophyll. Plus, these green smoothies make the most delicious, convenient, easy, and highly energizing meal.
Warning--side effects of regular green smoothie consumption include: huge spikes in energy levels (you may want to get another hobby, as advised in one of the book's testimonials), decreased cravings for sugars and other not-so-green foods, countless improvements in overall health and body functioning, and a general sense of oh-my-life-is-good-ness. (Can you tell I'm on the green bandwagon now?)
Drink up (both the book and the smoothies) and live more!
October 6, 2011
Good recipes, horrible writing.
I'm sold on the idea of green smoothies but unfortunately Mrs. Boutenko's writing and research completely ruined this for me. This book is full of poor writing coupled with wild assertions and hackneyed personal "research". Apparently in Mrs. Boutenko's eyes the only qualifications needed to make nutritional and dietary claims are to have at one time been grossly overweight and to have then lost that weight through a certain dietary program. Her opening diatribe against modern medical research and medicine makes this point perfectly clear. She then follows up her excoriation of modern dietary science with claims that since we share over 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees that we should essentially eat just like chimps. She also argues for chimpanzees to be considered human rather than apes. Shenanigans I say!
The only redeeming attribute of this book is the recipes at the back. Unfortunately, you have to wade through a whole bunch of pseudo-science literature and personal testimonials before you get to anything useful.
My recommendation would be to look up green smoothies online, try out some basic recipes for a month, and see if you don't feel better. You can certainly skip this book and the snake oil nonsense that Mrs. Boutenko peddles as fact.
I'm sold on the idea of green smoothies but unfortunately Mrs. Boutenko's writing and research completely ruined this for me. This book is full of poor writing coupled with wild assertions and hackneyed personal "research". Apparently in Mrs. Boutenko's eyes the only qualifications needed to make nutritional and dietary claims are to have at one time been grossly overweight and to have then lost that weight through a certain dietary program. Her opening diatribe against modern medical research and medicine makes this point perfectly clear. She then follows up her excoriation of modern dietary science with claims that since we share over 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees that we should essentially eat just like chimps. She also argues for chimpanzees to be considered human rather than apes. Shenanigans I say!
The only redeeming attribute of this book is the recipes at the back. Unfortunately, you have to wade through a whole bunch of pseudo-science literature and personal testimonials before you get to anything useful.
My recommendation would be to look up green smoothies online, try out some basic recipes for a month, and see if you don't feel better. You can certainly skip this book and the snake oil nonsense that Mrs. Boutenko peddles as fact.
October 29, 2012
I once got pleasantly, energetically "high" drinking about a quarter of a cup of some beautiful emerald-colored parsley juice, so I am definitely open to Boutenko's claims that green smoothies can help us feel much better. But the author's recommendation to buy a Vitamix, and her comment that she'd burned up several blenders making green smoothies, was a turn-off for me. I'd love to get in the habit of drinking green smoothies, but I cannot afford to buy a Vitamix.
For those who have or can procure a Vitamix, here are my thoughts on "Green for Life": The book is light on science (what little documentation there is is buried in the Notes at the end of the book) and heavy on "cured my X" testimonials and the author's own subjectivity. However, I found the book to be a good, basic, hopeful introduction to why and how to eat more greens. The idea that "greens" should be considered a food group in and of itself makes a great deal of sense. Finding out how much protein is in various greens was an exciting discovery for me--a gardener who planted way too many greens this summer and wound up letting most of them ruin. Having a method for quickly processing a bounty of greens is appealing. But in the garden it's often feast or famine. I would have liked information on freezing green smoothies: Can you do it without loss of taste or quality? Do some of the recipes lend themselves to freezing more than others? What are some good tricks for making up larger batches of the recipes? Would it be doable to blend-to-freeze portions of these recipes for combining later? Which greens are most interchangeable in the recipes?
The recipes in the back of the book are gracious plenty to get a person started on making green smoothies a daily ritual. I was expecting lots of recipes for "green glop," but many of these smoothies have relatively few greens in relation to the fruit. I don't like the imprecision of ingredients like "two handfuls spinach leaves" or "1/2 bunch fresh Basil" if the goal is to make an exact amount (e.g., two quarts) of smoothie. On the flip side, this may be a way of encouraging readers to be more experimental with their green smoothies.
I appreciate Boutenko's reference to permaculture (a sustainable perennial gardening method that we all should become familiar with) as well as her emphasis on the quality of the soil our food is grown in. Exploring permaculture principles is a great way to learn how to grow highly nutritious fruits and vegetables (and greens!) with minimal effort and drain on environmental resources. Boutenko makes a stab at explaining how different plants grow and adapt and how their strategies affect their ability to nourish us, but in such a lightweight way that a reader new to these concepts could entirely miss the significance.
I was glad to see that others have had the same initial reaction I had to wheat grass juice and also glad to know that my tolerance and fondness for less-sweet green smoothies will likely increase with time...after I save up for a Vitamix, which could take years.
For those who have or can procure a Vitamix, here are my thoughts on "Green for Life": The book is light on science (what little documentation there is is buried in the Notes at the end of the book) and heavy on "cured my X" testimonials and the author's own subjectivity. However, I found the book to be a good, basic, hopeful introduction to why and how to eat more greens. The idea that "greens" should be considered a food group in and of itself makes a great deal of sense. Finding out how much protein is in various greens was an exciting discovery for me--a gardener who planted way too many greens this summer and wound up letting most of them ruin. Having a method for quickly processing a bounty of greens is appealing. But in the garden it's often feast or famine. I would have liked information on freezing green smoothies: Can you do it without loss of taste or quality? Do some of the recipes lend themselves to freezing more than others? What are some good tricks for making up larger batches of the recipes? Would it be doable to blend-to-freeze portions of these recipes for combining later? Which greens are most interchangeable in the recipes?
The recipes in the back of the book are gracious plenty to get a person started on making green smoothies a daily ritual. I was expecting lots of recipes for "green glop," but many of these smoothies have relatively few greens in relation to the fruit. I don't like the imprecision of ingredients like "two handfuls spinach leaves" or "1/2 bunch fresh Basil" if the goal is to make an exact amount (e.g., two quarts) of smoothie. On the flip side, this may be a way of encouraging readers to be more experimental with their green smoothies.
I appreciate Boutenko's reference to permaculture (a sustainable perennial gardening method that we all should become familiar with) as well as her emphasis on the quality of the soil our food is grown in. Exploring permaculture principles is a great way to learn how to grow highly nutritious fruits and vegetables (and greens!) with minimal effort and drain on environmental resources. Boutenko makes a stab at explaining how different plants grow and adapt and how their strategies affect their ability to nourish us, but in such a lightweight way that a reader new to these concepts could entirely miss the significance.
I was glad to see that others have had the same initial reaction I had to wheat grass juice and also glad to know that my tolerance and fondness for less-sweet green smoothies will likely increase with time...after I save up for a Vitamix, which could take years.
November 16, 2013
This is a book you can read in a couple of hours. Its author, Victoria Boutenko, is extremely enthusiastic about greens and has done her homework. Take some of her claims with a grain of salt. She is a raw foodist and a bit eccentric (ie. she thinks her Russian mother who swam in the river by Chernobyl and died of cancer could have been cured by green smoothies). I decided that she crossed those boundaries because of her enthusiasm for her subject matter.
I encourage everyone to give the green smoothie a try. Don't be nervous about the taste - you mix greens with plenty of fruit. This makes the drink very palatable. My children even gave it the thumbs up - amazing.
If you want to feel better and have more energy but you don't necessarily want to go on a diet, just add a green smoothie to your day. To learn more, read the book. It does a good job explaining everything you need to know about greens and why greens are absorbed better by your body when blended. She also gives you plenty of simple recipes for sweet and savory green smoothies. Just try not to roll your eyes when she goes off on her tirades about craving wild weeds.
I encourage everyone to give the green smoothie a try. Don't be nervous about the taste - you mix greens with plenty of fruit. This makes the drink very palatable. My children even gave it the thumbs up - amazing.
If you want to feel better and have more energy but you don't necessarily want to go on a diet, just add a green smoothie to your day. To learn more, read the book. It does a good job explaining everything you need to know about greens and why greens are absorbed better by your body when blended. She also gives you plenty of simple recipes for sweet and savory green smoothies. Just try not to roll your eyes when she goes off on her tirades about craving wild weeds.
February 24, 2009
Not especially well-written, but easy for anyone to understand. Her enthusiasm shines through, which is nice. There's some useful info here, especially if you're having a health crisis and want an option other than pathological medicine.
I strongly recommend reading some of the books in her bibliography, which she explains is where she got her knowledge. It's important to have a broader nutritional picture than is given in this book, so you can avoid possible nutritional deficiencies and understand how the various nutrients are used by your body.
May 14, 2020
But you say, why does this get a review when Omnivore's Dilemma doesn't? Well because I pretty much agreed with Pollan who did his homework, Omnivore's Dilemma is great, and you should read it, but it's not nearly as fun to interact with as this.
So I came for the recipes (Those look good, I'll have to mix up my daily smoothie recipes), but stayed for the pseudo-scinece and raw food hype.
There's just so much I lost track, but as sample:
"Why doesn't everyone know what Ph is?" - Well I do and pretty sure you're using it wrong, but hey.
There's also the bizzare claim that soil yeast can turn sodium into potassium, so stop the presses apparently we have tiny nuclear reactors everywhere!
For context, I grow ever increasingly more of my own veg in a no-till organic system driven by local compost, but there's only 2 ways to increase the mineral content of the soil, 1. Wait for bacteria and weather to liberate from the bedrock and subsoil 2. Apply it from a source; either directly via rock dust, or from minerals already collected by previous generations of plants, compost (plant wastes) or kelp (ocean collected).
Chimps and humans share 98% of their DNA so our diets should be 98% the same!
Well you also share 30% of you DNA with coral, so maybe 30% of your diet should be by hosting algae in our cells!
That being said, we should eat more fruits and veggies so I guess whatever gets that ball rolling.
I consider smoothies very useful to this end as I have a strict [not really I'm just lazy] 1 salad a day max policy (unless it's winter lettuce or winter spinach) so that means finding more ways to work greens in.
I still don't get the whole raw food ideal, the calorie density of fruits and vegetables is so low that you'd have to just eat pounds of food, and you better have a blender or spend all day chewing like gorillas. Plus there's the whole cooking made us human, renders plant toxins harmless, etc.
Also from an ecological standpoint, I'm not sure how it makes sense to eat fruit all year long given it would have to be shipped in most of the year and very few humans live in an environment where that is possible/desirable?.
A positive point where I do agree with the author is the division of vegetables into categories. Non-sweet fruits (cukes, tomatoes, squashes), flowers (broccoli), roots (beet, radish), and greens (any leaf). This a much more informative way to talk about food and nutrition even if it leaves leeks in a odd spot.
Oh, and for those of you in the Midwest, sweet corn is still not a vegetable.
So I came for the recipes (Those look good, I'll have to mix up my daily smoothie recipes), but stayed for the pseudo-scinece and raw food hype.
There's just so much I lost track, but as sample:
"Why doesn't everyone know what Ph is?" - Well I do and pretty sure you're using it wrong, but hey.
There's also the bizzare claim that soil yeast can turn sodium into potassium, so stop the presses apparently we have tiny nuclear reactors everywhere!
For context, I grow ever increasingly more of my own veg in a no-till organic system driven by local compost, but there's only 2 ways to increase the mineral content of the soil, 1. Wait for bacteria and weather to liberate from the bedrock and subsoil 2. Apply it from a source; either directly via rock dust, or from minerals already collected by previous generations of plants, compost (plant wastes) or kelp (ocean collected).
Chimps and humans share 98% of their DNA so our diets should be 98% the same!
Well you also share 30% of you DNA with coral, so maybe 30% of your diet should be by hosting algae in our cells!
That being said, we should eat more fruits and veggies so I guess whatever gets that ball rolling.
I consider smoothies very useful to this end as I have a strict [not really I'm just lazy] 1 salad a day max policy (unless it's winter lettuce or winter spinach) so that means finding more ways to work greens in.
I still don't get the whole raw food ideal, the calorie density of fruits and vegetables is so low that you'd have to just eat pounds of food, and you better have a blender or spend all day chewing like gorillas. Plus there's the whole cooking made us human, renders plant toxins harmless, etc.
Also from an ecological standpoint, I'm not sure how it makes sense to eat fruit all year long given it would have to be shipped in most of the year and very few humans live in an environment where that is possible/desirable?.
A positive point where I do agree with the author is the division of vegetables into categories. Non-sweet fruits (cukes, tomatoes, squashes), flowers (broccoli), roots (beet, radish), and greens (any leaf). This a much more informative way to talk about food and nutrition even if it leaves leeks in a odd spot.
Oh, and for those of you in the Midwest, sweet corn is still not a vegetable.
August 5, 2016
What I liked about this book was the concept of making green drinks - giving you a choice in-between just eating greens as they are and juicing them.
I found this idea useful and have adapted some of the recipes in the book for use in my daily diet, as although I'm a big fan of green juices, you do need some fibre each day as well and just chewing mountains of spinach gets a bit much after a while.
Juicing vegetables is best as it means you absorb far more nutrients from them than when you're just blending them, and juiced vegetables (and cooked vegetables) are hugely easier to digest than merely blended up ones, but whizzed up veggies can be very tasty as well.
(My favourite veggie side dish is a recipe I made up that has huge cooked bunches of spinach in, lemon juice, an avocado, some unrefined sea salt and a good drizzle of olive oil - all whizzed up in the food processor - just delicious!)
I would have felt very ill and hypoglycemic eating the 4 serves of fruit in many of the smoothie recipes in this book, they were beyond sugary. But you can easily adapt the recipes to have more greens and less fruit in them.
If people come away from this book determined to add more greens to their diet then that is wonderful. I wish this book had stopped just at making this very important point.
I hope the very extreme vegan diet the author follows doesn't catch on in the same way. To advocate and follow a diet with little or no salt in it, and very little fat, that is made up of 80% green smoothies plus some flax crackers, fruit, salads and occasional nuts is not just very unhealthy but dangerous.
We need decent amounts of healthy fats to live, probably at least 30% of our daily calories. We also need salt to live, and all the minerals in unrefined sea salt are a good addition to the diet and not unhealthy at all. What is healthy for a chimp is NOT what is healthy for a human! We are evolved to need for more protein and fat and to need animal products. We have evolved in different ways to chimps and have different digestive systems and so on.
For more information on the diet we are evolved to eat, see 'Eat Fat, Lose Fat' or the Weston A. Price Foundation website. This site explains that no traditional cultures were totally vegan.
The books 'Know Your Fats' and 'Deep Nutrition' explain why we need good fats to live and to be healthy and the problems that can be caused by poor quality fats in the diet or insufficient fats.
The book 'Deep Nutrition' explains how a vegan diet may make a small minority of people feel okay in the here and now, but this could be due in large part to the healthier non-vegan diet followed by your parents and grandparents, and why eating a strict vegan diet very low in protein and fat could be very detrimental to your offspring and their offspring, as your genes need real food.
The book 'Catching Fire' explains why cooking food and eating meat and eggs made us who we are and why cooked veggies are easier to digest than raw ones.
I realise that if I wrote up my own diet here, or just about any of us did, it would be very easy to criticise by each of those groups with different beliefs, but this really was an extreme diet plan that goes against a lot of good science and really isn't ideal or healthy or even safe for lots of us, at the very least.
Each to their own, truly, but I just wanted to put a warning out there for anyone being pressured to eat all raw and all vegan and feeling terrible while doing it. I hope the author remains in good health on this diet too. I couldn't help but worry about her health as I read this book. Her writing style was engaging and it was hard not to like her by the end of the book.
I found this idea useful and have adapted some of the recipes in the book for use in my daily diet, as although I'm a big fan of green juices, you do need some fibre each day as well and just chewing mountains of spinach gets a bit much after a while.
Juicing vegetables is best as it means you absorb far more nutrients from them than when you're just blending them, and juiced vegetables (and cooked vegetables) are hugely easier to digest than merely blended up ones, but whizzed up veggies can be very tasty as well.
(My favourite veggie side dish is a recipe I made up that has huge cooked bunches of spinach in, lemon juice, an avocado, some unrefined sea salt and a good drizzle of olive oil - all whizzed up in the food processor - just delicious!)
I would have felt very ill and hypoglycemic eating the 4 serves of fruit in many of the smoothie recipes in this book, they were beyond sugary. But you can easily adapt the recipes to have more greens and less fruit in them.
If people come away from this book determined to add more greens to their diet then that is wonderful. I wish this book had stopped just at making this very important point.
I hope the very extreme vegan diet the author follows doesn't catch on in the same way. To advocate and follow a diet with little or no salt in it, and very little fat, that is made up of 80% green smoothies plus some flax crackers, fruit, salads and occasional nuts is not just very unhealthy but dangerous.
We need decent amounts of healthy fats to live, probably at least 30% of our daily calories. We also need salt to live, and all the minerals in unrefined sea salt are a good addition to the diet and not unhealthy at all. What is healthy for a chimp is NOT what is healthy for a human! We are evolved to need for more protein and fat and to need animal products. We have evolved in different ways to chimps and have different digestive systems and so on.
For more information on the diet we are evolved to eat, see 'Eat Fat, Lose Fat' or the Weston A. Price Foundation website. This site explains that no traditional cultures were totally vegan.
The books 'Know Your Fats' and 'Deep Nutrition' explain why we need good fats to live and to be healthy and the problems that can be caused by poor quality fats in the diet or insufficient fats.
The book 'Deep Nutrition' explains how a vegan diet may make a small minority of people feel okay in the here and now, but this could be due in large part to the healthier non-vegan diet followed by your parents and grandparents, and why eating a strict vegan diet very low in protein and fat could be very detrimental to your offspring and their offspring, as your genes need real food.
The book 'Catching Fire' explains why cooking food and eating meat and eggs made us who we are and why cooked veggies are easier to digest than raw ones.
I realise that if I wrote up my own diet here, or just about any of us did, it would be very easy to criticise by each of those groups with different beliefs, but this really was an extreme diet plan that goes against a lot of good science and really isn't ideal or healthy or even safe for lots of us, at the very least.
Each to their own, truly, but I just wanted to put a warning out there for anyone being pressured to eat all raw and all vegan and feeling terrible while doing it. I hope the author remains in good health on this diet too. I couldn't help but worry about her health as I read this book. Her writing style was engaging and it was hard not to like her by the end of the book.
February 26, 2010
I wanted to read The Green Smoothie Revolution, because that's what I think it will be, but there were no copies available through my library. Fortunately, I have a feeling that this earlier documentation of Victoria's enthusiasm for the green smoothie lifestyle is just as inspiring a read.
Green for Life is not a scientific book on nutrition, nor is it particularly well written, but it makes some sound scientific points, and it does so enthusiastically. The book's main idea is that humans evolved to live on a diet of fruits and greens but modern humans have lost the ability to chew that diet properly, to great detriment. Interestingly, Victoria's somewhat intuitive interpretation of human evolution was backed up by science in 2007, when a new measuring technique used on preserved teeth showed that early human, long known as Nutcracker Man, was not actually cracking nuts with his massive jaw but rather chewing the young green leaves that accompanied his fruit-based diet into a readily digestible paste.
Victoria's description of the healthfulness that can be derived from hiring a Vitamix to do the chewing of Nutcracker Man's diet might sound hyperbolic to those who haven't experienced it, but I highly suggest you try it before coming to that conclusion. If she's right - and my own experience suggests that she is - what and how we eat is vastly out of alignment with what our bodies need, and that has major repercussions for how our bodies function.
Sadly, I know of no other nutrition book that suggests such a wide gulf between what humans were meant to eat and what we eat. Fortunately, however, this nutrition book, more so than any other, prescribes incredible ease in traversing that gulf. I suggest you try some of the recipes in the back of the book, doubling or tripling the greens to fruit ratio if you feel so inclined (I do). They may just be the key to the world's simplest revolution in health.
Green for Life is not a scientific book on nutrition, nor is it particularly well written, but it makes some sound scientific points, and it does so enthusiastically. The book's main idea is that humans evolved to live on a diet of fruits and greens but modern humans have lost the ability to chew that diet properly, to great detriment. Interestingly, Victoria's somewhat intuitive interpretation of human evolution was backed up by science in 2007, when a new measuring technique used on preserved teeth showed that early human, long known as Nutcracker Man, was not actually cracking nuts with his massive jaw but rather chewing the young green leaves that accompanied his fruit-based diet into a readily digestible paste.
Victoria's description of the healthfulness that can be derived from hiring a Vitamix to do the chewing of Nutcracker Man's diet might sound hyperbolic to those who haven't experienced it, but I highly suggest you try it before coming to that conclusion. If she's right - and my own experience suggests that she is - what and how we eat is vastly out of alignment with what our bodies need, and that has major repercussions for how our bodies function.
Sadly, I know of no other nutrition book that suggests such a wide gulf between what humans were meant to eat and what we eat. Fortunately, however, this nutrition book, more so than any other, prescribes incredible ease in traversing that gulf. I suggest you try some of the recipes in the back of the book, doubling or tripling the greens to fruit ratio if you feel so inclined (I do). They may just be the key to the world's simplest revolution in health.
October 24, 2010
Victoria Boutenko exhaustively researched scientific studies regarding the healthiest diet for humans, as well as the diet of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, to discover the healthiest diet for us. I was intrigued to learn that the diet of chimpanzees consists of 45% greens, 50% fruits, and the other 5% is bugs, nuts and maybe some small animals. The book includes charts of the nutritional content of greens, which shows very high amounts of things such as amino acids - the building blocks of protein - and essential vitamins and minerals, and comparisons of the nutritional value of organic greens versus conventionally farmed greens (shocking!), other parts of the plant (such as roots), and meats. She then did a study of people who were all diagnosed with low stomach acid, giving them one quart of greens in smoothie form per day for a month, with the hypothesis that there would be an improvement in their digestion, as well as overall health. Testimonials of the people who took part in the study, as well as others who had attended Boutenko's workshops, and Boutenko herself, were overwhelmingly positive. I like her guiding hypothesis that the healthiest lifestyle is the most natural. I found this book very inspiring and intend to try out daily green smoothies for myself.
April 28, 2015
Victoria Boutenko; Igor Boutenko; Sergei Boutenko; Valya Boutenko make a good case for not just "going green", but for green smoothies.
I found the making of these smoothies labor intensive. But that is probably because I don’t have the appropriate equipment and a miniscule kitchen. Chopping and grinding greens and fruits to a pulp, in mass quantities, really requires a powerful processor and a large capacity blending bowl and lots of elbow room.
Never-the-less, the taste is actually pleasant. I am going to try this for at least two weeks with a small food processor and a weak blender. If after that time I am convinced that I could actually change my eating habits to include Green Smoothies, I will have to invest in a much better appliance.
I found the making of these smoothies labor intensive. But that is probably because I don’t have the appropriate equipment and a miniscule kitchen. Chopping and grinding greens and fruits to a pulp, in mass quantities, really requires a powerful processor and a large capacity blending bowl and lots of elbow room.
Never-the-less, the taste is actually pleasant. I am going to try this for at least two weeks with a small food processor and a weak blender. If after that time I am convinced that I could actually change my eating habits to include Green Smoothies, I will have to invest in a much better appliance.
June 6, 2015
Green smoothies?!
Take your basic delicious smoothie and add some greens. Voila! Green smoothie!
Still tastes great (if you take it easy) and it packs a whole lotta nutritional goodness.
This shows up on my creativity shelf because of the description of how Victoria Boutenko brought about this book and this health practice. Whether she was the first person to come up with this idea or not, she did go through an interesting creative process. It rings of other innovators I have read about.
By the way, I met her and her husband at a potluck years ago. Two words: vibrant energy!
Take your basic delicious smoothie and add some greens. Voila! Green smoothie!
Still tastes great (if you take it easy) and it packs a whole lotta nutritional goodness.
This shows up on my creativity shelf because of the description of how Victoria Boutenko brought about this book and this health practice. Whether she was the first person to come up with this idea or not, she did go through an interesting creative process. It rings of other innovators I have read about.
By the way, I met her and her husband at a potluck years ago. Two words: vibrant energy!
February 1, 2016
Read it in Swedish, but it wasn't available here in the Swedish version...
Interesting and very inspirational book, even though I am already a green smoothie-addict. :-)
On the importance of leafy greens, on fat and proteins and enzymes, on the fact that the soil is actually the most important, and at that a few great recipes.
Strongly recommend both the book and the addition of a daily shot of green smoothies to anyone!
Interesting and very inspirational book, even though I am already a green smoothie-addict. :-)
On the importance of leafy greens, on fat and proteins and enzymes, on the fact that the soil is actually the most important, and at that a few great recipes.
Strongly recommend both the book and the addition of a daily shot of green smoothies to anyone!
June 10, 2014
I'm giving this one a 5 just because I think it's a book everyone should read for better health. I have been drinking smoothies for a while now but this book has motivated me to up my intake. It has great info on why you should be drinking your greens and it also has a nice selection of smoothies to get you on your way to glowing health!
August 1, 2012
Definitely inspired me to try out green smoothies. My sister and I are working out a plan to try a quart every day for 2 weeks to see how we feel. Looking forward to getting more fiber in my diet and to get the benefits of going green!
January 2, 2023
Reading this book, I began thinking about ways to make my diet healthier. I am interested in the recipes for smoothies and intend to try several. I want to start drinking smoothies everyday to make my diet healthier. This book is an excellent source of information on healthy smoothies.
March 19, 2014
Gleaned some fun nutrition-related facts, but unprofessional writing style and contradictory ideas made me skeptical of her philosophy. "I believe" used a lot, not very scientific, perhaps mistaking correlation for causation.
May 3, 2015
Despite the pseudo-science, there are some good suggestions in here about getting more greens into your diet. I wouldn't try curing cancer with green smoothies, but maybe in conjunction with eating more healthily and exercising, you'll be less likely to get ill.
March 13, 2012
Best takeaways were: getting a wide variety of greens, balancing omega 3's w/ 6's & alkaline balance in stomach acid. Good book
December 8, 2019
What an adventure this book was to read! I am a believer that greens are great for humans. But I’ve never had that idea led in with diet comparison charts between the chimpanzee and the human. Based on what she said half the chimpanzee diet is fruit. And she believed we should mirror their diet. But in the latter part of the book she talked about the concept of pH, with the alkalinity and acidity imbalance being the cause of cancer (acidity being the culprit). It should be noted most pH diets put fruit on the restricted list because the sugars directly contribute to the pH imbalance.
She also placed emphasis on fiber. Nothing wrong with that.
A little over the top with the benefits from fixing gray hair to suicidal ideation with the green diet.
Having said that, she included some very tasty-looking smoothie recipes and I’m going to give them a try.
She also placed emphasis on fiber. Nothing wrong with that.
A little over the top with the benefits from fixing gray hair to suicidal ideation with the green diet.
Having said that, she included some very tasty-looking smoothie recipes and I’m going to give them a try.
December 27, 2019
I'm first week on my green smoothie plan eating 1-2 cooked meals a day and I already feel positive changes. Sleep better, no drowsiness after lunch, cravings for sugar are gone. None of this would be possible if not for the book.
Victoria makes a compelling argument that the best food for us is green dark leaf vegetables. The amount of nutrition in them is astonishing. What I liked is that you can continue eating your usual food simply increasing the intake of green smoothies ( I do that) and you will feel your body asking for more.
If her 12 steps to raw food was a revolution this book is taking it a step further.
Victoria makes a compelling argument that the best food for us is green dark leaf vegetables. The amount of nutrition in them is astonishing. What I liked is that you can continue eating your usual food simply increasing the intake of green smoothies ( I do that) and you will feel your body asking for more.
If her 12 steps to raw food was a revolution this book is taking it a step further.
March 3, 2022
The book content is consistent with sunfood diet of David. For raw vegan diet, it requires fruits, green leafs (chlorophyll), and fat (nuts, seeds, oil). If raw vegan people just consume only fruits for long time, some problems will occur.
Beside, since we need a lot of chlorophyll everyday (around 1-2 kg of vegetables), so making smooth will help us digest it better and enough amount than eating raw. Author prefers vegetables smooth to juice because in smooth, it still contains fiber and help clean colon naturally.
For beginner, it might be difficult to taste vegetables smooth, so mixing it with fruits like banana, apple, strawberries will help.
Beside, since we need a lot of chlorophyll everyday (around 1-2 kg of vegetables), so making smooth will help us digest it better and enough amount than eating raw. Author prefers vegetables smooth to juice because in smooth, it still contains fiber and help clean colon naturally.
For beginner, it might be difficult to taste vegetables smooth, so mixing it with fruits like banana, apple, strawberries will help.
May 21, 2022
This lady is a bit wacky but I respect her health journey and her sharing her unique story. She def offers hope to people who have never considered the benefits of greens and a plant based diet for healing chronic health concerns. Her writing style is just very wacky- be forewarned. But I do appreciate her passion for helping and giving hope to sick people who have been failed by the conventional medicine system. This could have been a series of informative blog posts…it is filled with more anecdotal stories than scientific facts. Maybe the book is 75/25.
December 31, 2017
Good material
Much needed information on nutrition! Thanks for your commitment on educating us! I'm hooked on these green smoothies. I make one every morning.
Much needed information on nutrition! Thanks for your commitment on educating us! I'm hooked on these green smoothies. I make one every morning.
March 24, 2018
Life changing.
November 5, 2018
Интересно про зелень написано.
November 14, 2019
Refreshing read
Sometimes it takes another person’s outlook on raw foods to point out what you have been doing wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Sometimes it takes another person’s outlook on raw foods to point out what you have been doing wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
March 2, 2023
Good info to get started in a new way of eating/living
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