April's shine - day 12/30 - green smoothie vs. green juice

green smoothie or green juice, that is the question :-)

Green smoothie or green juice, that is the question.
This is a classic one and by no means an already debated and done with question.

1. What is the difference between green smoothies and green juices?
and 
2. what to best use?

I have read an listened extensively to everything I could find on the subject and I could not find a good "fit for all" answer for number 2.

So I will first answer to number 1 and at the end I will also give you my "call" on number 2. :-)

---

Green Smoothie vs. Green Juice

resemblance: 

• the color; in that way they are both very healthy because by drinking any of them we get some green stuff inside that we otherwise do not get:-)
• the original materials: you can use the same recipes for both smoothies and juices because it is the combination of taste that makes or breaks a recipe.

differences: 

• consistency:    a (green) smoothie uses the whole fruit/leave and includes in the end result the whole thing, pulp and   

                                          juice of the materials in your smoothie, together with water;
                                   a (green) juice uses only the juice of the fruit and vegetables and any liquid present in the leaves; the end 
                                           result is pure juice on one side and on the other side the pulp;

• making of + machinery: for a (green) smoothie you use a blender and it blends (mixes); you need water, fruit, vegetables, 

                                                            leaves and any other stuff that you want to mix in your smoothie
                                                     for a (green) juice you use a juicer that separates the juice present in your materials from pulp, 
                                                          You do not mix anything with water, you just extract the "water" from your materials;
                                                          There are two general kinds of juicer:  the centrifuge, that extracts juice by the means of a very 
                                                          quickly turning  centrifugal mesh (thus the name); and the slow juicers that extract the juicer 
                                                          by means of pressure against the mesh (more technical stuff here)
                                                          Generally speaking a slow juicer extracts more nutrients and more juice than a centrifuge and 
                                                          the pulp left is less wet;

I use a Hurom slow juicer and a Vitamix blender and am in love with both but lately I make more smoothies because of the:

• material quantities: in my experience I'd need around 3-4 times more basic materials for the same quantity of juice (which is of course quite logical) as for the same quantity of smoothie. For logistical reasons I chose to use green smoothies for the time being. In the time that I (green) juiced every day (around 10 month last year) I was buying materials twice a week as we were close by to the farmers market and the shops and my fridge is quite small:-).. Not anymore could I buy stuff twice a week as we moved to another town:-) Also, if you want to juice, consider your budget... I can now buy materials for my (and V.'s when he wants to drink some) smoothies for around 50 eur per week and for the juices.. I let you do the math:-)

Also consider your:

• digestion:     a (green) juice is digested almost instantly (around 10 minutes);  because it's green and hopefully not extremely sweet it will not mess up with your sugar levels - so it's a good idea to think about that a bit if you know that it might be an issue; that also means that the nutrition is readily available to you and instantly taken in as you drink;

                                a (green) smoothie takes more time to digest because it also contains pulp; the pulp stays  
        moist and starts rearranging the "furniture" in your digestive system; it moistures you from the inside out during a 
        longer period of time; something else interesting is that it starts moisturizing your old "crap" (excuse my French), thus 
        giving it an "incentive" to also take the highway, if you know what I mean (and we all have that inside, I can assure you)..

• nutrition: the same "quantity" of green juice contains 3-4 times nutrients than a green smoothie.. That is of course because a green juice is the essence of what you use. Also, the juice is made only from the perfect distilled water inside the fruit, vegetables and leaves, while for the smoothie you need water to blend with - and, as I already discusses a few days ago, very clean water is harder  to come by.. 

And a last point I want to make is:

• time: I consider that if you want to do the juicing well you would need to use a slow juicer (or a masticator), eventual coupled with a press; you'd have to help a bit this kind of machine  by cutting everything to small pieces and that take enormous time to do. For 2l of juice I used to be busy the whole morning.. I do not have that time any more at the moment, as much as I loved my juices. 

From the time point of view If you want to buy a centrifuge, it's better to have a big "professional" one and than you can throw everything inside, like big apples and a celery stem bush :-) That would save you some time. With a small centrifuge (I used to use and still have a great lil Phillips), you still have to cut everything and you even need more time to juice everything. 
Also, a juicer of any kind takes more time to clean than any blender.

Bottom line of time: to make a smoothie you need much less time than to make a juice. If you use a system and get used to it, you can make 2 l of smoothie in 10 minutes or less per day - plus maybe 30 min one time a week to organize your system. 

In the end (for question number 2 at the beginning of this article), there is in the "health world" a whole controversy about what is good "for you", the smoothie or the juice.
Some will say juice, others will say smoothie. 

In my opinion and with all the respect, the only way to measure what is "good for me" is trying it myself for a longer period of time (a few weeks or more) so that I feel precisely what it does to me. The same goes for you, I believe.
I had long periods of and I loved both. To me it was and is very important to have the machines that are good for making juice and respectively smoothie from the leafy greens. 

Both the Hurom and Vitamix have their advantages and I love using them and they are both good for the leafy greens.

At the moment I drink green smoothies (so you get to see those recipes) and in the future I may go back to juices if it fits my possibilities. 

I'll let you know:-)

If you decide to juice, you can still use my recipes and multiply your quantities accordingly :-)