The thing about Ayurveda is that it sometimes forces you to look a little too closely at things that you don’t want to look closely at all. Like the quality of your poop. The amount of time you spend sitting still. The subtle ways that you do and don’t honor your relationships. And even that smoothie that you love having in the morning.
But then, the other thing about Ayurveda is that once you SEE these things a little closer, you can’t unsee them. And while peeking at first can make you a little squeamish, if you’re like me you’re really glad that you looked because feeling better, performing better, living a more vibrant life is what you wanted all along and, once you know the roots of yourself, of your biology, it’s easier to do all of that.
Which is why I’m ruining smoothies for you this week. I know. I’m so sorry. But this is important.
Everywhere I look, there’s a smoothie just waiting to be sipped on, and now that I’ve seen them through the Ayurveda lens I want to rip them out of the hands of strangers and tell them at the top of my lungs “you’ve been told a lie! I know you feel like you’re doing something really good for your body but actually, you’re missing the point! Stop being sold to!”
Smoothies have been popular, as far as I can tell, since convenience became popular. And since we fell under the spell of believing that we could just cut the food our of our food and consume only the nutrients. (This is an actual moment in time. And if you’re the type of person who doesn’t like it when Instagram sells you things, you might want to read this because food companies have been selling you hard on a vision of health for far longer, and in a far more intimate place.) Because then, and only then, were we able to ignore the intrinsic values of each food that we eat, instead of assuming we could just hack the eating process, toss all the stuff we need into a blender, and forget about the inconvenience of cooking, or even chewing! Sipping is SO much easier and faster! We can do it while we multitask on other things!!!
Hidden in all of this are reasons that smoothies are not the wellsprings of health that we have long believed them to be. There ARE benefits to sipping on something smooth and simple, but the way that the ingredients combine matters. And so do a few other things.
When we forgot about the individual benefits and qualities of the foods we started throwing in the blender, we forgot about all of the REALLY important things that those neat little nature-designed packages do for us. The ways that the NATURAL PACKAGES come in are important. Foods (not nutrients) have properties, qualities, seasons, and biological alignments that are critical to our bodies. These smaller factors, (which are completely separate from the gorgeous nutritional building blocks but equally as important,) are more difficult to measure, but we can feel them. They’re giving us queues all the time…we’ve just been too busy sipping our foods to pay attention or value them.
Like all things in life and the world, each ingredient, or component, adds something to the whole. When a cocktail of harmonious ingredients swirls together, great things happen. When toxic formulations mix, quite the opposite happens.
We can see evidence of this in literally every other area of life. The ingredients that make up the cleaning supplies under your countertop do a great job of shining up the house unless you add just one or two different ingredients….and then they make a powerful explosive device. (Truly.)
Mixing a bunch of excellent and powerful things doesn’t necessarily make an even more powerful thing. Think about what would happen if we put all of the very smart, very successful CEOs of the world in a single room. Do you think it would be a practical festival of ideas, innovation, and cultural upleveling? Perhaps. But also, perhaps not. These incredibly powerful people all have unique qualities that need room to breathe and take effect. They don’t always mix well with others.
And the same is true of your smoothie.
Proteins and fruits don’t play well together in the gut. The fruit digests faster, fermenting and causing a host of digestive issues (gas, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation depending on your constitution) that are both short and long-term. Smoothies that contain both protein and fruit will result in low-level gut rot, and eventually, diminish the strength and health of the digestive system if consumed regularly.
Using protein powders to “boost” smoothie meals is tricky because the proteins have been separated from all of the other beneficial elements of the food they belong to. Fiber, minerals, nutrients, and more. Proteins are best eaten as whole foods, not proteins.
The body reads nutritional benefits through the flavor, and when we combine too many opposing flavors, digestion gets complicated. Imagine it like all of your friends in one room, screaming about what restaurant they want to order dinner from at one time, over one another. The order will get all mixed up. The same thing happens to the gut. The easier we can keep the messages we sent the microbiome, the better off we are. The more simple our smoothies are, the better our absorption and benefit from them will be.
And lastly, cold foods shut down digestion, until our bodies can heat our foods to 98.6°F to process them. Unless it is VERY hot outside, cooling off your digestion is rendering it unproductive, which means that this smoothie you just onboarded will take a long time to offload. You’re likely to experience bloating, gas, and discomfort in the meantime, and to start having buildup in the digestive tract. (Which is a little bit like your body not being able to take out the trash…) Steer clear of smoothie recipes that use ice; you’re putting your health and wellbeing in the freezer.
There’s a pretty in-depth way that Ayurveda looks at digestion, and food combining – a conversation best had with a practitioner. But we can nutshell this wisdom like so: if you look at a list of ingredients, and you wouldn’t eat them together in a bowl with a spoon in their raw forms, your body would probably appreciate your not eating them in a smoothie, or a packaged product either.
Spinach, almond butter, collagen, blueberries, whey powder, and ice? Would you eat that with a bowl and spoon, if it weren’t mixed up into a pretty smoothie? Me neither. Avoid. There’s a better way to build a smoothie.
Not only do all of the typical smoothie ingredients not necessarily play well together, but they also don’t all necessarily align with our biology.
Each of us is different, we know this, and each of us needs individually aligned meals. There is no one size fits all blueprint for health or wellbeing. This is genetic, indeed, but in Ayurveda, we also attribute our bio-individuality to our constitutions – called our dosha. (This is a great tool for discovering yours!) Our doshas are related to the earth elements that are most present in our bodies; there are five of these and we all have all of them, but some of us have more – say – air or fire or earth than another. If I have more fire in my being and eat only spicy foods, I’m going to have firey digestion more so than say, someone who has a lot of water in their being. The coconut milk that cools me off, may cool off someone with lots of earth and water too much, stagnating their digestion and impeding their wellbeing, which this ingredient will do just the opposite for me.
Presumably, we’re drinking a smoothie because we feel it’s healthy for us. We want that – that health. Well, if we want to live well, feel good and perform at our best, we have to consider how each ingredient impacts us individually. The magic smoothie that works for your favorite influencer may be absolute hell for your body.
Before we set about talking about how to create a recipe that avoids the sabotaging swirl of most blenders, and one that honors your bio-individuality, let’s talk about what’s good about a smoothie, and what we want to avoid:
Smoothie “goods”:
Smoothie “not-goods”:
So, we’re looking to keep this meal convenient, enjoyable, and geared towards digestive health, something that feels like doing your body GOOD! (Because, when you consider your ingredients, you will be!)
Ok – let’s make a smoothie!
Like all foods, this meal is MEDICINE, not just a list of macros we’re “packing in.” And so, each ingredient in the smoothies below has been chosen to serve a purpose, specifically in the summer season, for each dosha.
To know which one to make, here are a few things to consider:
The recipes below use fresh fruits and vegetables (where appropriate,) nuts, milks, spices, and herbs to boost, soothe and settle your system, ensuring optimal uptake of your nutrients and a deeper, highly impactful play on your wellbeing.
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