Green Smoothie Girl

On Wednesday I went to the GreenSmoothieGirl presentation at South Towne Exposition Center. There were 350 people at the meeting. Clearly, there is a hunger for quality health information (and green smoothies) in our society.

My mother won the Green Smoothie Diet book in a raffle; so I've been reading the life adventure of Janet Openshaw (aka GreenSmoothieGirl)

The transformative event in Ms. Openshaw's life took place in her pediatrician's office. Shew was overweight and her son had a potentially fatal chronic condition. The doctor was prescribing steroids with known side effects. Ms. Openshaw had the epiphany that she, not her doctor, was the one charged with the health of her child.

In that epiphanic moment, Robyn Openshaw transformed into GreenSmoothieGirl. Realizing that we are what we eat, GreenSmoothieGirl began researching a whole food diet rich in leafy greens and vegetables.

It is really hard to get kids to eat massive salads (with no dressing). GreenSmoothieGirl discovered that if she threw all the leafy greens, carrots and whatnot into a blender with some fruit, both she and her children would be willing to eat the concoction.

The value of a whole food diet is not new. Doctors have known since antiquity that food is medicine and a proper diet is the best way to handle chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, etc..

For that matter, the standing joke in early sitcoms was one in which doctors put the comic on "rabbit food diets" while the comic wanted to live the good life of fatty foods, sweets, meat and smokes.

Convincing people to modify their diet is extremely difficult; so doctors in our mechanized age simply gave up on nutrition and started prescribing extremely potent pharmaceuticals instead.

GreenSmoothieGirl stumbled on an important discovery. She found that if you put a salad into a Blendtec blender (normal blenders have a hard time blending carrots and beets), she could created a meal that her kids would eat. A smoothie is just a vehicle for delivering whole foods. The smoothie is like a gel capsule at the pharmacy. You can put whatever you need for your medicinal needs in a smoothie. With just a little tweaking of the recipe, it will come out palatable.

The basic green smoothie diet is massive amount of leafy greens and veggies thrown into a blender. GreenSmoothieGirl advocates drinking a quart of smoothies a day. A person with a chronic condition should really research the foods.

So, the meeting begs the question about how one would go about researching and disseminating the information to figure out what to put in the smoothies?

Wait a second, I just remembered, I happen to be writing a post in a blog called "The Medical Savings and Loan." The theme of this blog is that "You own your body, You own your health. You (not some third party) should own your health care resources."

Oh, and I just remembered. The center piece of the Medical Saivngs and Loan is a position called a Health Care Advocate. The HCA is a clerical position that helps you record information about your health and the health of your family. The advocate would be the ideal vehicle for communicating with people about health and nutrition.

I love what GreenSmoothieGirl is doing. She has a traveling presentation that goes from town to town with information on how a good diet reduces health costs.

This presentation I have on The Medical Savings and Loan might work with this format. But, I have zero resources; so I need to find a group willing to host the first event.