Healthy Broccoli Smoothie

Broccoli is one of the best foods that mother nature makes. Just how good for you is broccoli? See a snippet from CNN I posted below this recipe. I frequently add broccoli to many of my fruit smoothie recipes so just about any smoothie can become a broccoli smoothie.

Ingredients

1 Carrot (chopped)
4 Florets of Broccoli
2 Handfuls of Spinach
1 Apple (chopped)
2 Oranges (peeled and quartered)
Orange Juice to dilute

You can change the fruit and vegetables to your requirements but this is one way of ensuring you get the portions of fruit and vegetables your body requires.

Thanks to C’s Development Page

From CNN report on the health benefits of broccoli

When it comes to basic nutrients, broccoli is a mother lode. Ounce for ounce, boiled broccoli has more vitamin C than an orange and as much calcium as a glass of milk, according to the USDAs nutrient database. One medium spear has three times more fiber than a slice of wheat bran bread. Broccoli is also one of the richest sources of vitamin A in the produce section.

But the real surprise is this vegetables potent cancerfighting components.

At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, food chemist Dr. Paul Talalay has gone so far as to name his lab after Brassica, the genus that includes broccoli and cauliflower. Talalay and his team at the Brassica Chemoprotection Laboratory have discovered that broccoli is rich in substances called isothiocyanates chemicals shown to stimulate the bodys production of its own cancer-fighting substances, called phase two enzymes. According to Talalay, these enzymes, in turn, neutralize potential cancercausing substances before they have a chance to damage the DNA of healthy cells.

To test broccolis cancer-fighting power, Talalay fed rats hearty servings of the vegetable for a few days and then exposed them to a potent carcinogen known to trigger a form of breast cancer in the animals. Broccoli-munching rats were half as likely to develop tumors as animals on standard chow, according to results published in the April 1994 Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Even those rats that did develop cancer ended up with fewer and smaller tumors, which is an important advantage in itself, says Talalay.