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Login Here Signup Here Signup using FacebookMaybe a strange question, I realize. But I’m eating an enormous amount of kale, dandelion greens, beet greens, Swiss chard, mustard greens, bok choy, arugula, collard greens, on and on, every bit of it organic, much of it local, all of it wonderfully delicious and odd… I’m blending a lot of greens, especially the kale, which I’m averaging like five or six cups of raw a day. Day in, day out.
And I’ve gotta say my ingestion of vitamins A and C is pretty astounding, with averages of 2,000 and 3,000 IU of vitamin A per day, and 1,200 to 2,500-percent of vitamin C over the RDA… And my potassium levels…sheesh… off the charts with all these GREENS!!!
So, can it all be too much of a good thing? What’s your take on quantities? When is enough enough, what is too much, can we “over-nutrient” ourselves? lol…
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the very best advice i could give you, and yes i realize how commonly this is said, but listen to your body. there’s very little, or no actually, pretty much no substantial “scientific” research pertaining to the raw vegan diet, and therefore no doctor will be able to accurately tell you, utilizing blood tests and what not, if you are having too much greens. if you feel good, your energy levels are stable, you’re regular, etc. then i wouldn’t worry about it. if you start to feel off, try cutting back on the greens a bit, although i doubt too many greens will ever be a concern for anyone, you’d have to eat a LOT i think. but anyway if cutting back helps, then do it, if not, do something else… unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) the raw food lifestyle is quite trial and error at the moment, but i’d say its a pretty safe game of trial and error, especially compared to the way most people live their lives today. i believe the best tool for determining what you need and don’t need is your own body/mind, not an IU measure of vitamins or anything else=) hope this helps, good luck
Hi Shane, based on the current understanding of rda values I think you could over do it as far as vitamin A goes. They say you start turning orange if yo eat too many carrots. And too much vitamin a can cause birth defects to a fetus.
That is pretty impressive as far as I’m concerned. Some of those vitamins need fat to be absorbed and are stored in the fat.
I’d be interested what others have to say about this too! I don’t know what toxic levels are.
I don’t think it would be a problem… If you like the taste and crave them, your body knows what it wants :c) Victoria Butenko says everyone must have a whole pound of greens every day. How much are 6 cups? I think it should be about that much… I could be wrong though. Either way, if you were having too much, you’d know it. My guess is you might have a bit of a mineral deficiency and your body is craving the extra minerals it gets from the greens. Enjoy it, and if you every stop wanting them so much, maybe you’ve had enough.
we are most like chimps and 40% of their food is greens…which is alot. If you feel great then be happy, like Morninf Theft says, your body knows what is right. I wish I ate as many greens as you do!
Thanks for the great responses. I’ve heard that you can overdo it with supplements and vitamin A, but can you overdo it with the over-consumption raw greens, too?
The idea of listening to your body is interesting, and an idea I don’t really understand. When we say “listen to your body,” what exactly do we mean? How reliable is “taste”? How do we know when it’s our mind telling us we want something, and not our bodies?
I’m not really sure I have cravings for any type of food. I don’t know if my body is craving greens, or anything else for that matter. Basically, I’m just trying to eat well and be healthy, to age well and to avoid many of the modern diseases that I’ve read may be caused by poor nutrition. (I just finished Colin Campbell’s “The China Study”—an amazing book.)
I realize these questions about listening to the body are deeply personal, and each of us must find our own way through the thickets. But I wonder how different it is for men and women. I mean, do you think it may be easier for women to hear what the body is “telling” than it is for men? To be honest, as a guy, I don’t really know what my body is “telling” me when it comes to the issue of food and greens and what I’m eating and why. I mean, my body feels all sorts of things at different times throughout the days and nights—sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes peaceful, sometimes tense…
I don’t know if my body wants a lot of green smoothies or if my mind now wants me to eat green smoothies because there’s so much compelling science indicating that greens are for our health. Know what I mean?
From what I have read, the vitamin A in raw foods is not the same as the vitamin A in pills. It’s not possible to eat too many carrots or greens.
I had a friend who drank carrot juice for cancer. He was orange looking for a couple of months. Then he looked normal.
He was over 60 years old but his face looked like it was in his twenties after he started the juicing. That’s what started my initial interest in juicing eight years ago. But I didn’t get around to it until my father had cancer. So my initial interest was for its “youthifying” effects. But I really got serious about it from fear of cancer.
My friend is still around juicing is carrots, beets and other veggies.
Shane – ask yourself this, how do you feel? If greens smoothies make you salivate, you enjoy them, and you’re bouncing off the walls with energy, then I think that’s an intuitive attraction to greens. Your body may have been deprived of it in the past. If you’re forcing yourself to drink them, then you should rethink the amount.
As far as the vitamin A thing, greens have carotine, which your body turns into vitamin A according to how much it actually needs, the rest is flushed out of your body. That is my understanding of it.
Anything in excess gets flushed out in our urine, that’s why urine is so “nutritious” (for lack of better word.)
I have to agree with itourist, pills and supplements are a “concentrated” version of what is found in nature. When I was studying to be a nurse they stressed that you could over dose on as little as 5 Vit. C tables but you could eat nothing but oranges all day and never over dose… I think that it’s very unlikely that you could ever over-do-it with natural vitamins in food. Simply because your body will only take what it needs and pass the rest on and out (I could be wrong). If you start to feel unwell try a water fast for a day and see if it helps, if you feel better I would start to cut back a bit on the greens. I’m not sure how long you’ve been raw but it also could be your body’s way of detoxing, you know all the fiber and stuff in the greens is helping get rid of the junk that’s been stored for a while. Other than that Bon apetite!
I think it’s a personal thing. When I first went raw I had alot of greens in my smoothie to deal with all the acids that were coming out into the bloodstream. Then, after 3 years I cut back on them and this last year I’ve not been enjoying the colour green in a smoothie. Sometimes you can get too alkaline. If you’re drawn to them and feel you need them for a certain amount of ‘grounding’ in the diet without eating too many fats, then it’s good to use them.
One thing I’ve heard is that you don’t want to consume the same KIND of greens on a constant basis… something about building up a toxicity from it, I think. It was a passing comment in a presentation I saw Sergei Boutenko give recently, and I didn’t think to ask him to clarify. Wish I had, now. Also, you’d probably get burnout and wind up disliking a particular green if it was the only kind you ever ate. From your first post, shane, it seems like you eat/drink a really varied, wide selection of different greens, which is recommended. And adventurous! If you’re not having any adverse side effects or physical reactions, I’d say do what makes you happy and feel good. :o)
I’ve been averaging about two green smoothies a day for a while now, about a quart each, and I love how I feel. I’m still kind of struggling and yo-yoing (heh, is that a word?) between raw and cooked (vegan) foods, but the green smoothies have been a constant for about the last six months. I haven’t had any adverse reactions to all those greens yet. Mostly spinach, kale and parsely, been experimenting with basil a bit lately. It’s all good!
Well, I feel fantastic drinking all of these wild green smoothies. Frankly, I don’t know if it’s placebo or if I’m really onto something. But I do salivate before drinking some really weird stuff. I can drink straight up ground greens with water, no fruit. And I’m really enjoying some peculiar tastes other people might find repulsive, lol… Currently I love really bitter stuff. Dandelion greens just straight up with water, watercress, broccoli sprouts… I’ve been experimenting with how weird I can make a smoothie, and I’ve really expanded my ideas about taste.
Thanks for the suggestion to keep drinking a variety. Luckily I live near a huge farmer’s market and can get some very unusual types of greens that I’ve never tried before embarking on this little food adventure I’m evidently drifting along on.
I’ve been a vegetarian for much of my life. And recently I read Victoria Boutenko’s “Green for Life” and my experiences seemed close to her’s and her family’s. Namely, although I thought I was eating healthy and well, I just didn’t feel all that great energy-wise. I was completed bored with eating. So when I analyzed my diet, I found that I consumed nearly no greens. I bought a Vitamix and started trying stuff, and it really is quite astounding the changes I’ve been experiencing in just a short time. On the upside, I have loads of strong energy, my sleep is better, I need less sleep, I feel happier, lighter, freer. The hair on my legs, formerly patchy, is growing back thick and long, lol…. Can that be placebo? On the downside, I’ve lost a lot of weight, and I didn’t need to do that. I’m quite tall and I’ve always been lean. Now my weight is down to 150, and I’m 6’2”... can’t seem to put on any weight.
I never have eaten much meat, but after reading “The China Study” I’ve stopped eating all fish (salmon, sardines, anchovies), all dairy (kefir, yogurt), and I’ve been 100% raw for 17-days now. I plan to do it till I don’t feel like doing this anymore, then I’ll stop.
Thanks again for all the great responses and advice! Any ideas how to gain weight on this raw green smoothie kick?
Oils are a good way to add calories to a veggie diet!
Well you’ve been raw for a very short period of time, and were eating mostly greens that are very cleansing… I would imagine you’re losing a lot of toxins accumulated in your body. You can’t really expect to gain much weight at this time. If this problem persists over a long period of time, try to watch your caloric intake more. Generally, for weight gain, fats and protein (greens) are the way to go. Do you excercise at all? I personally find I can’t put on weight unless I excercise a lot, mostly things that would add muscle.
Shane, there are only a couple of things I want to add. First, even though many raw fooders say they are great, the truth is that kale, chard, and collards are very difficult to digest, nature has made them with a tough coating and this tells us something about them. They also taste bitter compared to romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce and similar greens. Second, using these greens (and others) in a blender is defeating nature’s intentions. What I mean by that is that nature is as close to perfect as possible, we humans are far from perfect. All foods that are here for our use have built-in protection so that we can not abuse them. Be it their taste, their bulk, their texture, etc…these are there for a reason. Once you change all that by using a mechanical device (blender) you lose the natural protection. In other words if you wouldn’t have eaten let’s say 20 pounds of lettuce because it was too filling and stuffed your stomach, but after blending you had no problem drinking the 20 pounds of lettuce, this can be a problem. To summarize, try to limit your intake of kale, collards, chards, (also the mustard greens and other toxic plants have strong toxins in them), and it is much better not to use a mechanical device to drink the greens, try to eat them as they are. A little blending is fine though.
Interesting, SocaL. I understand that kale, chard and many of the greens are difficult to digest, and this is why I thought blending such greens might be a good solution. I wonder what you think about Victoria Boutenko’s ideas in “Green for Life” where she writes:
“One day, while reading a book on biology, I became intrigued by the amazingly hardy composition of plants. Apparently, cellulose, the main constituent of plants, has one of the strongest molecular structures on the planet. Greens possess more valuable nutrients than any other food group, but all these nutrients are stored inside the cells of plants. These cells are made of tough material, probably as a means of survival for the plant, making it difficult for animals to eat. To release all the valuable nutrients from within the cells, the cell walls need to be ruptured. To rupture the sturdy cells is not easy. This is why eating greens without chewing them thoroughly would not satisfy our nutritional needs. In simple words, we need to chew our greens to a creamy consistency in order to get the benefits.” (P. 22)
I understand your concern about over-consumption of greens, and I share it. Basically, I’m drinking a lot of these plants, then entering the amounts I’m drinking into a program that lists nutrition numbers. The numbers are high for potassium, vitamins a and c, fiber. Kale and chard and dandelion greens in particular are high in all kinds of nutrients. I’m just not clear on how much is too much, and when the idea of moderation should kick in, eg, too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing, etc.
ahi Shane, I’m about 1/4th the way into 12 steps to raw and just finished Living on Live Foods so I am certainly a newbie. One of the books talked about wt. loss in already thin people and it said that after the body had rid itself of what it needed to that healthy weight was regained, although it could take around a year at 100% raw (I believe this was in LOLF). Boutenko talks about the removal of the thick mucus buildup in the body and that after this has been dissolved and the body is used to 100% raw then much more of your food is assimilated so you will need to eat less. I would imagine that when this happens you will build lean tissue and stabilize. I am on day 4 of 100% and decided to go straight to 100% after reading these 2 books. I cannot control my appetite on cooked foods, have severe cravings and binge frequently. I never really believed that I would be able to control myself on raw food either, but it is happening. I believe the craving theory is true so go with what you body seems to want. I am going for walnuts,really raw oats, cucumbers and dream about large salads of thick romaine with some veggies and walnuts and raisins!
Shane,
is there any way you’d feel like posting a general example of a day or two of your intake? I’m currently getting more greens in than i was, but I know it’s not enough yet, as I find myself craving GREENS. I’d love for more ideas as to how to get more greens.
THanks in advance!
Oh yes, obviously anyone who gets lots of greens could do this too! thanks very much!
hi shane.. as stated above no one has all the answers re ‘raw’ at this moment in time. A lot of good info in Green for Life- been ‘doing it’ for almost a year now. My understanding is that Victoria has found that 60% fruit vs 40% greens in the smoothie seems to work best for most folks. Without lots of fruit its hard to get enough calories on a daily basis, and there seems to be mounting evidence that too much of any kind of fat doesn’t lead to balance- which seems to be the bottom line for us humans. Our bodies ‘do’ health when alkaline- acid seems to be the culprit. Re your weight – many studies over the years-tho mostly with lab rats- show significant added time to life cycles with reductions re calories. Try eating lots of fruit in between the green stuff- and a big salad daily to ‘chew’ some greens- and see how that works.
It is my opinion that the inference of “too many” is just that, an excess. You can eat too many if you exclude other foods because of it.
alright i’m trying again!
Who out there eats a lot of greens daily?
...How do you do it? smoothies and salads all the time?
Is there a certain amount I should be trying to get in daily?
Thaaaaanks!