For Father’s Day, my boyfriend’s son is planning on giving his father a juicer. (Don’t worry, we won’t spoil the surprise as he already asked if it would be used before purchasing it!) His son made us a “green” drink this past summer and it tasted surprisingly delicious. See picture. I hadn’t given it much thought since, but then my “butts and guts” class instructor who is also my yoga teacher mentioned we should Google Green Smoothie Girl. This is how the story continues.

I’ve always been a good student, so if my teacher asks me to do something, I do it. I learned that Green Smoothie Girl is a website developed by a woman, who while currently a best-selling author, used to weigh over 200 pounds and had over 21 chronic health problems. Through her green smoothies diet and switching to whole foods, she is now a 135 pound athlete with no health problems. That was of interest, so I kept reading.

Her website has a lot of good information including local seminars where they teach you about their smoothies and raw foods programs. This all sounded helpful and I encourage you to visit her site, but I am good with my diet and already eat a lot of raw vegetables. Since I knew we would soon be using a juicer for smoothies, what I really wanted was smoothie recipes. So, I searched online and found a website called incrediblesmoothies.com. There were many good recipes there as well as on one of my favorite recipe websites – allrecipes.com. So, recipes were going to be easy.

For those of you not familiar with the benefits of smoothies, let me give you some information as to why you may want to consider adding smoothies to your diet.

One of the major benefits of smoothies is that it allows you to get your servings of fruit AND vegetables while only tasting the fruit. Smoothies give you more fiber and nutrients than juice. The best way to get your daily vitamins is from food, not supplements. Other health benefits of smoothies are that they can help improve digestion and elimination; can assist in weight loss; they are a healthy substitute for empty calorie drinks and snacks. With protein and grains added to a veggie smoothie, it can be a high-nutrient meal replacement option.

So, there are resources for smoothie recipes and the benefits of smoothies are evident. Now, we need a juicer. According to the Good Housekeeping Research Institute best juicer picks for 2013, the Breville juicer is a good pick. It is also a best seller on Amazon.com. If you want to really get technical on juicers, then visit bestjuicer.biz. Their approach on which juicer is best depends on what you plan to do with the juicer.

Take a look and tell me what you think.