Just wanted to summarise the key points in the
Green Smoothies Diet which I've been using to guide me. These are just the major points but I hope they're helpful.
Rationale
Basically, the point of it is to smash the fruit & veg up in a blender to break down the plant cell walls and get the goodies out. This would normally involve hours of chewing and that chewing would be fairly ineffective. Gorillas and whatnot still have large teeth that can grind greens to a cream so that the nutrients are available; we don't. The author recommends you chew a piece of spinach until you're ready to swallow it and then take it out and see how unlike a cream it is (TMI! TMI! But convincing).
A daily quart of this stuff is about 15 of your standard servings of fruit/veg a day (the RDA is a mere 5). You get shedloads of phytonutrients.
Being raw, all this blended stuff still has its enzymes intact. Enzymes are proteins (molecular machines) that do all sorts of stuff in the body and are very important.
Because the blender is doing some of the work of digestion for you, the nutrients are easier to digest.
Unlike juicing, the smoothie has fibre which helps your digestive system, keeps you feeling full and helps keep your blood sugar steady.
Food prep is loads easier than juicing - you don't have to stand for ages at the counter feeding the stuff in (particularly time-consuming with spinach, etc.) or for ages at the sink cleaning the thing. Just chuck the ingredients in, blend for a minute, stick in a jug and rinse the blender jug out.
Method
She recommends a quart (= 2 pints = 1 litre) of green smoothie a day, using a basic template of 1 part water : 1 part fruit : 2 part veg, mainly leafy greens.
You can work up slowly (I'm starting off with a pint a day). You can also start with a higher proportion of fruit at first while your tastes are adjusting.
She favours Vita-Mix and Blendtek blenders (v. expensive) but I'm doing fine with my 70 kmix.
She recommends putting the water and veg in first, blending those, then adding the other stuff and blending that.
Putting some lemon in helps prevent oxidation.
Putting ginger or stevia helps sweeten the smoothie.
You can make the full quantity in one go and put it in the fridge, drinking it throughout the day.