Green for Life by Victoria BoutenkoMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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.
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