Basic Orange Smoothie (or "What's wrong with juice?")

One of the HiFi "rules" is to not drink pressed juice. This principle is often met with surprise. "What's wrong with juice?", I am often asked. Well, think about it in the following way:

How healthy a specific food is for you, is relative to what else you eat. If you consume mostly white wheat bread, pasta, meat, coffee, beer, and orange juice, then the juice is clearly the healthiest thing in your diet and stopping to drink juice would be a silly thing for you to do. In particular if juice is the only way you consume fruit. However, if you are a sugar-free, gluten-free vegan, who eats tons of fruit and vegetables and doesn't consume any psychoactive substances then juice might well be the most unhealthy thing in your diet.


The thing with juice and fresh whole fruit is not that juice is bad, but that eating fresh whole fruit is just so much BETTER. Why? Because pressing juice results in an end product that has lost not only most of its fiber, but many other good ingredients.

Let's take a glass of (raw) orange juice (250g). It has a caloric value of 112 and a calcium content of 27g and 0.5g of dietary fiber.

In comparison: 1 cup of orange (sections, 180g, from about 2 oranges) has a caloric value of 85 with 4g of dietary fiber and 72mg of calcium. If you calculate the nutritional value of the fruit with the same caloric value as a glass of juice, you get:  5.3g of fiber and 94mg of calcium, so that's more than 3 times as much calcium and more than 10 times as much fiber for the same caloric value. This holds for almost any other nutrient as well.

However, there is another factor to take into account. Orange juice is so much easier to consume: while people can easily drink a glass of orange juice a day, sadly, not many people are willing to eat 3 oranges a day. But there is an easy solution to that "problem": make an orange smoothie - you don't lose any nutritional value and you still have a refreshing drink. Just throw 3 oranges in the blender and add as much water as you want. Enjoy!

Michael

P.S. Also check out NutritionFacts' latest video on the topic.

Avocado Walnut Dressing for Carrots

You think you are not eating enough carrots? Well, some more surely wouldn't hurt. Eating carrots always seems like a good idea to me, but apart from the occasional one that I just snack without any preparation, I don't eat that many to be honest. I don't like cooked carrots, so my only option is carrot salad. As part of my new "eat more carrots"-project, I have created a nice dressing, that is fully HiFi, so you can drown your carrots in it without control.


(Takes about 10 min)

You need:
- a hand blender
- a mandoline
- about 4 medium-size carrots
- 1 avocado
- 1/4 cup of walnuts
- 1/8 cup of sesame seeds and a seed grinder or 2 tblsp of tahini
- 1 orange
- 1 lemon
- 1 piece of garlic
- 1 piece of ginger
- 1 piece of chilli
- no salt (seriously, you don't need any)

You do:
Cut the carrots into small sticks using the mandoline. Grind the sesame seeds into a paste with a seed grinder. Put the sesame paste and the other ingredients into a tall container and blend until smooth. Mix the dressing with the carrots. Enjoy.

Michael

Omega Thrice-Cream

Walnuts are one of the foods richest in omega-three fatty acids. Why not combine them with some frozen fruits and make some HiFi sugar-free vegan ice-cream?

You need:
- 1 cup of walnuts
- 4 frozen bananas
- 3 oranges
- 500g of frozen mango pieces

You do:
Peel the oranges and blend them until smooth. Add the bananas and blend again.  Stir in the frozen mango pieces and let it sit for a few minutes so that the mango can defrost and doesn't ruin your blender. Add the walnuts. If you like some walnut chunks, blend it only for a moment. If you want smooth ice-cream blend longer.

If you eat a quarter of the ice cream you just made, you have your daily requirement of essential omega 3 fatty acids, so dig in - it's good for you!

By the way: the powder used for decoration is carob powder and ginger powder.

Michael

P.S. This ice cream hasn't been engineered to be smooth right out of the freezer, so if you keep it in the freezer, you need to take it out about 10min before you eat it.

"Drinking the Green" - Orange Banana Rocket Smoothie

Most smoothies have a juice as a base ingredient. Juicing is a process that removes most and sometimes even all of the fiber. Hence, these smoothies are not 100% HiFi - they contain the fruit sugar, but not the fiber that regulates and slows down its uptake.

In this recipe, I create a 100% HiFi smoothie by blending the whole (peeled) oranges, instead of pressing or juicing them. Hifi orange smoothies, which are already nice refreshing drinks on their own contain (in contrast to pre-packed or even freshly pressed orange juice) all the insoluble fiber of the orange. Insoluble fiber regulates your blood-sugar level, and cleanses your colon.

As a side note: For leafy greens, it is particularly important to buy organic ones (if you can afford it), because they have a very high surface to weight ratio, so the non-organic ones are likely to be loaded with pesticides.

You need:
- a blender
- 400ml of water (or more if you want your smoothie to be more liquid)
- 3 (medium-size) oranges, peeled.
- 70g organic wild rocket
- 5 ripe bananas

You do:
If you have a high powered blender, you can just throw all ingredients in there and blend them. If you have a cheaper blender, I recommend the following procedure:
Put the oranges into the blender with about 200ml of the water and blend until smooth. Add the organic rocket and blend until smooth. Add the bananas and the rest of the water and blend until smooth. I usually add my daily dose of B12 in the end and blend it in for like a second.

Green smoothies are so much a part of my daily life that I dedicated a series of artworks to them.

Enjoy,
Michael