At Chef V, we make a wide range of products designed to help you through to your juice cleanse diet success. However, if there is one product that is a signature of ours, it’s our green drink. Every green drink is expertly designed and blended in such a way to give you a wide array of green goodness, from veggies such as chard and dandelion greens.
However, an impressively green ingredient list might not mean much to you unless you are fully aware of all the nutritional and health benefits they bring. With that in mind, let’s dive into everything that makes our green drink, well… green!
The Kales
Our first ingredient needs no introduction. Kale is a well-regarded superfood. You’ve had it in salads, you’ve grilled it as a side – maybe you’ve even put it on your pizzas and burgers. This flexible veggie is perfect for those looking to get some of the ultimate leafy greens into their diet.
So what exactly makes Kale so great? Quite frankly, it’s got a nutritional profile that kicks butt. A single serving of kale will give you more than enough of your daily dose of Vitamin A, K, and C, along with a little touch of B6 for added effect. Vitamin A helps with your immune system and eyesight. Vitamin K, meanwhile, helps you make the proteins that your body needs to clot blood and build up bones, protecting you from injury. Vitamin C helps create collagen (what you need to get firm skin and full lips) and helps promote your immune system and your resistance to damage to your cells. Vitamin C is especially important because it’s linked to lowered risk for cardiovascular diseases and cancers, but it isn’t easy for humans to naturally produce in their bodies.
Kale also includes some other important nutrients and minerals, such as manganese, calcium, copper, potassium, and iron. That calcium is of particular note since it’s not always easy to find it outside of animal products like dairy.
Fun fact – Chef V’s green drink actually contains two kinds of Kale, Green Kale, and Black Kale. Green Kale is also known as Curly Kale, and is probably the vegetable you are thinking of when you think of “kale”. However, Black Kale (also known as Lacinato Kale or Tuscan Kale), also needed some extra love. This leafy veggie gets its name from the darker color of its flatter leaves. It’s nutritionally similar to curly kale, but really brings its A-Game to the amount of Vitamin A, thanks to its high levels of Beta Carotene. The two kales also have different but complementary tastes that help define the taste of our green drink.
Collard Greens
To our readers from the south, collard greens are a home cooking staple. To the rest of us, they might be a little less familiar. This leafy green features dark green, fanlike leaves with strong stems. They’re actually a relative of the kales we mentioned above, with a very similar nutritional profile. If you ever cook with kale, feel free to try swapping in the collard greens once in a while.
That explains why collard greens are filled with so much of the A, C, and K Vitamins, as well as many of the same minerals. Collard greens are, in particular, a good source of antioxidants. These compounds are great for helping reduce inflammation and repair cells, being the secret ingredient that allows so many leafy greens to be such great cancer fighters.
Green Leaf Lettuce
When it comes to lettuce, it can be difficult to differentiate the wide variety of types. For clarification, green leaf lettuce is a medium to large variety. The leaves tend to be tender, smooth and broad, with lots of curls and frills. Like the greens we mentioned before, it’s a great way to get that holy trinity of A, C, K vitamins.
Green Leaf Lettuce is also a great source of folate, which is the naturally occurring form of Vitamin B9 – you’ll often hear Vitamin B9 referred to as “folic acid”. All of the B vitamins are important for creating healthy fats and proteins in your body, to enable you to maintain great-looking skin, hair, and nails. B9 in particular is good at creating the proteins you need in your brain, leading to better mental and emotional health. Pretty good for some lettuce, huh?
Curly Parsley
Often, when you garnish your food with parsley, you’ll be using flat-leaf parsley, also known as Italian parsley. At Chef V, we’ve added Curly Parsley into our green drink recipe as part of our juice cleanse diet. Curly Parsley is easily recognizable by its ruffled (curly) leaves and brighter shade of green.
However, you shouldn’t think of this parsley as just a garnish. Like its bigger green cousins above, Curly Parsley is an amazing source of Vitamin K and A, which as you’ve learned means that it’s great for pretty much every part of your body. Parsley has a special power all its own, however. It’s particularly good at promoting the health of your kidneys, making them work better at filtering toxins from your body. This helps keep things like bloating and blood pressure under control. In a juice cleanse diet, parsley is often an unsung detox hero.
Green Chard
Green Chard is often known as “Swiss Chard” – but this is a bit of a misleading nickname, given the plant is native to the sunny shores of Sicily, not the snowy slopes of Switzerland. The Swiss do love to cook with it though, which is probably where the name comes from.
We followed Switzerland’s lead here by making Green Chard part of our Green Juice recipe. This leafy green is a veritable Swiss Army Knife of nutrition. You have the expected set of Vitamins A, C, and K. But you can toss Vitamin E in there as well, as well as calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, sodium, and zinc – all without much in the way of calories.
Green chard is loaded with fiber as well, which makes it great for your digestive system. It’s also been linked to helping regulate blood sugar levels. Combined with its immune-boosting antioxidant properties, Green Chard is a great green to have on board when it comes to losing weight.
Dandelion Greens
Today, many of us think of dandelions simply as weeds. However, historically, dandelions were considered to have the much more noble title of “herb”. In fact, dandelions used to be considered medicinal, before the garden care industry set out to ruin the poor little plant’s reputation.
However, considering that it’s a great source of Vitamins A, C, K, and B2, as well as iron, protein and calcium, we feel that dandelion greens deserve to stand proud along with the rest of the fruits and vegetables in our juice cleanse diet. You just need to look at dandelions in a different light. For example, there’s an old wives’ tale that eating dandelions make you wet the bed. However, there is a grain of truth here – like parsley, dandelion greens are super good for your kidneys, keeping your bathroom breaks regular and helping remove toxins from your body.
Leafy Greens, Assemble!
And there you have it, a tour of all the leafy greens that make our green drink such an awesome part of our juice cleanse diet. As you can see, we didn’t just select these greens to help out with weight loss – rather, they’re there to give you the full nutritional package while you’re on your juice fast.
Of course, our green drink is just one part of our juice cleanse diet, all designed to help protect you against weight gain. If you’re interested in how to do a juice cleanse, or more information on our products, just shoot us a message. We’re always happy to talk shop on juice cleanse diets and green drinks!