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You may be here reading this because you want to lose weight or trim some shape. The vitamins you need in your whole diet are water and fat soluble. You need fats in your diet. They are essential for your hormonal (and other) systems to thrive. There are 4 fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E and K. So feel confident that inclusion of obviously more fatty ingredients are as valuable to you as the other ones! Besides most foods have some amount of fats in them.
It’s the quality of fat that you’re looking to include by adding nuts and seeds. Have you ever noticed how a bowl of almonds can stay on your table for literally weeks or months and they can still taste fresh? Well, that’s the ‘enzyme inhibitors’ at work. Those little miracles will keep the nut from sprouting until the conditions are right.
Why you need fat in your diet
In eating a balanced diet, you need a good range of fats. You need them for nerve function, for vitamin absorption, to keep creating healthy cells and a healthy immune system. The right fats will help lower cholesterol and decrease risk of heart attacks.There are fats in your fruit and vegetables but you may not get all the fatty acids (particularly omega-3) you need without getting them from sources such as nuts, seeds, legumes and good quality non-hydrogenated plant oils. For example, you’ll find monounsaturated fats (they’re good) in almonds, hazelnuts, macadamias and brazils.
You’ll find omega 3 in chia seeds, flaxseeds, flaxseed oil, walnuts and walnut oil, pumpkin seeds and oil. Good all-rounder candidates which provide poly and monounsaturated fats are brazil nuts, sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds (and their oils of course). While you can find omega-3 fats in fish, you are probably not going to make any fish smoothies!
Some people recommend starting very low on the green scale (by maybe throwing in just a tiny amount of greens) and work their way up. If you have a smoothie skeptic in the house then this may or may NOT be necessary. Just make sure you start with something that you’re SURE they’ll love. That’s why I gave my daughter raspberry, blueberries and banana. The blueberries health benefits are perfect for her diet.
I didn’t need to start on low greens. It was so yummy she’s been happy to try anything ever since. I have friends who will drink a smoothie regardless of the taste because they just KNOW that it’s good for them. If a smoothie is just halfway palatable, that’s good enough for them. I can get through a not-so-delicious smoothie once in a while. Taste with nutrition is the ultimate aim.
In this way, you keep ALL the nutrition and you improve the consistency. By the way, you can soak those nuts first if you wish. If you have a really good blender, you may not even need to make the milk first prior to adding the other ingredients. In any case, for the sake of simplicity, I will often split recipes into stages so that you can get a smooth finish.
James is a professional blogger that loves to write about health and fitness.
