Creamy, Sweet Green Smoothie

Adding something like almond milk (or another non-dairy milk, though I do not recommend soy milk for health reasons) to make a creamier smoothie can be a nice depart from smoothies with a liquid base of filtered water. While green smoothies made with higher proportions of fruit and with almond milk are less cleansing for the body, they are still highly nutritious, providing many vitamins and minerals and a high dose of fiber. Anything that helps you to increase your intake of leafy greens, especially kale, is great. If the vehicle by which you want to do so is a creamy green smoothie, that is perfectly fine.

The below smoothie is great for introducing people to green smoothies, kids included. The kale is virtually undetectable, and it tastes very much like a creamy fruit smoothie. Note that this smoothie is high in fruit sugar (fructose), so is not appropriate for people with diabetes, candidiasis, etc. For people who are sensitive to sugar, mango, banana, and other high glycemic index fruits should be avoided. Instead, in the below recipe you can substitute the mango with a low glycemic fruit (e.g. berries, green apple, cherries) and omit the optional banana.

Creamy, Sweet Green Smoothie

Ingredients:
1/2 cup kale
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 cup frozen mango
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
optional: 1/2 banana (if you want to increase sweetness, though the mango already makes it quite sweet)

Directions:
Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth (about 45 seconds in a high-speed blender).
Note: If you do not have a high-speed blender like the Vitamix or Blendtec, you should de-stem the kale, which you can do by grabbing hold of the bottom of the stem and pulling the leafy part off with your other hand in one fell swoop.

Enjoy!