Immune Boosting Smoothie

This Immune Boosting Smoothie is as delicious as it is beautiful.  The yellow-orange color is so enticing, and wait until you try its amazing taste. The citrus and ginger give it a fresh, rejuvenating, and healthy flavor.  It is delicious enough to be a comfort drink, but the best thing of all is that it is packed full of wonderful immune-boosting ingredients.  

When I need an extra boost of protection, I make this smoothie.  This morning, in fact, we replaced our traditional green smoothie (Click Here for Recipe) with this wonderfully rich and creamy Immune Boosting Smoothie.  

Have you heard the saying, “you are what you eat”?  There is a lot of truth to this simple statement.  Fruits, vegetables, and herbs have healing properties, and we can take full advantage of those properties by adding them into our diet.  And what better way to incorporate them than a wonderfully delicious and creamy smoothie.  

What Are the Best Fruits and Vegetables for Smoothies?

Personally, I love adding orange and grapefruit to my smoothies because these two flavors work so well together and it is a fantastic guilt-free treat that is chock full of deliciously tartand-sweet antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties that the body benefits from. While this recipe doesn’t call for vegetables, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have them. Vegetables are great in smoothies because they integrate seamlessly with other ingredients so you can boost the nutritional content of the drink quickly. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can always use this smoothie recipe as a baseline for other ingredients that you enjoy in a smoothie, such as chia seeds, kale, baby spinach, or other healthy veggies.

Are Smoothies Good for the common cold or flu?

A healthy smoothie recipe is great for colds because your body needs extra help to combat whatever it is fighting. This smoothie recipe has easily digestible nutrients, an additional boost of vitamin c, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory ingredients that will help your body focus on healing.

Personally, I find that whenever I have good, healthy smoothies on a regular basis, I don’t get sick as often, and when I get sick, I seem to recover quicker. That’s quite the feat when you live in New England with our cold weather and other seasonal challenges.

Like any immune boosting food, it’s ideal to start consuming these ingredients before you get sick. After all, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of the cure; but most of us don’t think about it until we’re already feeling under the weather. If you’re already sick, it’s not too late to give your immune system the help it needs to fight off whatever virus it is combatting.

Let’s Talk About this Immune Boosting Smoothies Ingredients:

One of my favorite things about immune boosting smoothies is that there are endless possibilities when it comes to the ingredients that you can add. With the right base and main ingredients, you can add a wide variety of delicious and healthy add-ins without ever sacrificing the taste or consistency of your smoothie. This makes it an excellent choice for a healthy and nutritious breakfast or lunch, especially if you are in a hurry and don’t have time to sit down and eat a full variety meal.

Citrus – Vitamin C

We start with a grapefruit for immunity. This fruit is rich in antioxidants, high in vitamin C, and loaded with potassium. It cleanses and restores. Next, we add in an orange, also high in vitamin C, but has such a sweet and comforting flavor; it’s a delight to add to smoothies. If you choose, you can replace the orange with tangerines, also great immune boosters. Lemons are a must when you aim to stimulate the immune system.  In our home, lemons are among the first line of defense when a cold is coming on.  

Ginger

Ginger has a sweet flavor and is intensely aromatic. Better than that, it has been used in several cultures to boost the immune system and provide overall improved wellness. Not only is it widely used in seasoning various dishes for its delicious flavor, but it also has an anti-inflammatory property and is full of antioxidants. These restorative properties are just what we need when we are trying to restore health during times when our immune systems are compromised and need a little boost.  

Banana

The banana is a fruit with which we are all familiar.  It is one of the most consumed fruits in the world.  It also happens to be one of the most nutritious and medicinal fruits that exist.  But the best quality for our immune-boosting smoothie is that it provides the creaminess that makes this smoothie so amazing.  So yes, we will take its wonderful medicinal properties along with its flavor and fantastic creaminess.  

When I was a toddler and visited my grandma in Norway, she would mash a banana, add a splash of orange juice and a pinch of wheat germ, mix it and feed us this wonderful concoction.  It was delicious and so good for us. I still have fond memories of those mashed banana treats.  

Cayenne

Cayenne is an herb that has significant healing properties.  But I need to remind you that cayenne is also very hot, which means you must use it cautiously.  A little goes a long way.   Rich in vitamin C, cayenne can aid and support the immune system.  

Turmeric

Turmeric is one of the most antioxidant-rich, anti-inflammatory, and immune-boosting herbs available, which is why we had to add it to our immune-boosting smoothie. Plus, it adds color that can help make your smoothie experience a little more fun. If you want to boost the absorption of Turmeric, consider adding a pinch of black pepper. This will increase the absorption of a vital compounds known as curcumin. There is some discussion on black pepper being harmful to the lining of the stomach, so be cautious.  

The missing ingredient in our smoothie that you may consider:

One ingredient I need to mention that we chose to leave out of this immune-boosting smoothie is the garlic.  More often than not, we add fresh garlic to this smoothie, but it changes the smoothie’s flavor.  Garlic is arguably the best treatment for colds, flues, and sore throats in existence.  So, if you feel a sore throat coming on, add in a clove of garlic or two.  

So, there you have it, our immune-boosting smoothie recipe.  It is quite delicious, filled with powerful immune-boosting ingredients, and I hope that it will help you keep your immune system strong during cold and flu season.  

What Should You Not Mix in a Health Boosting Smoothie?

In general, a health boosting smoothie recipe should include a lot of good antioxidants and anti-inflammatory foods so your immune system can rely on the nutrition it is getting and not have to expend unnecessary energy keeping inflammation down across the body. This means that you should avoid inflammatory foods, which is luckily something that a vegan diet is low in. Aside from that, you should avoid putting additional ice or sugar into the blender to sweeten or cool your smoothie. Your body will be getting enough sugar with the fruit juice and you don’t want to overload it. Furthermore, you want to make sure that your body doesn’t have to work too hard to process the nutrition, so it should be only slightly cool, but not frozen cold which is why we like to avoid ice.

Are Immune System Smoothies OK to Drink Every Day?

Yes, in most cases, immune system smoothies are OK to drink every day, but keep in mind that fruits contain a lot of natural sugars. If you are especially sensitive to sugar, then keep this in mind when you are adding fruits. For the most part, my smoothies are low in natural sugars, with the main source being the large orange and medium grapefruit. If you need to modify it to lower the sugar content, simply blend with just the banana, optionally squeeze a dash of grapefruit and orange into the mix to give it a little flavor. You won’t have as much sweetness or flavor to this smoothie, but it works as a great low-sugar alternative, allowing you to still have the smoothie every day to give your immune system a little extra boost, but not overloading it with sugar at the same time.

What is the Best Base for a Health Boosting Smoothie?

All smoothies need liquid to blend. A lot of people will reach for cashew milk, almond milk, coconut milk, and a lot of other vegan milks to supplement the creamy texture in their smoothies, but I find that this weighs down the smoothie. If you are trying to boost your immune system, then your body is already stressed and doesn’t need to spare energy burning Destination URL: https://chefani.com/immune-boosting-smoothie/ and storing extra calories. Instead, what it really needs is some hydration, which is why I prefer to use plain water as a base for this smoothie. Plus, your body is going to especially love the water when it’s mixed with all these delicious antioxidant-rich fruits. The banana gives the smoothie just enough of a creamy texture and sweetness to make it a guilt-free treat, and the orange and grapefruit flavors really come out with water, rather than being masked with alt-milk. You’ll be surprised at how light and refreshing this smoothie is when you try it this way!

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Looking for more Smoothie Recipes?

• Energy Boosting Smoothie
• Green Smoothie
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