Krista’s Sports Corner – The Green Drink

So if you’re on Pinterest, or don’t live under a rock, you’ve recently heard a lot about a new health fad called juicing. It’s been around for awhile but recently boomed within the last year. The most commonly seen juice is “the green drink”. I can almost guarantee that you won’t be able to scroll through your Pinterest timeline without seeing one of its varied recipes. I feel like such a hipster for saying this, but I was making the green drink before it became a juicing fad (I’m super cool, I know).

So, last summer I went to Mexico on a family vacation, and while we were there my mom insisted we all try new things. This included the sketchy looking green drink at the smoothie bar at breakfast. By the end of our first glasses we were headed right back to that bar to get more and ask what the ingredients were! A concoction of baby spinach, fruits and yogurt were making up this delicious drink! Turns out you can’t actually taste the baby spinach, the color simply derives from it. We were drinking it daily and it’s safe to say that we became addicted because our first stop after returning to New York was the grocery store to pick up the ingredients!

I began making the green drink every day at home and it became a staple in my diet. A few weeks later I’m browsing Pinterest and all of a sudden the green drink appears! To be honest when I clicked on it I expected some Mexican health website to appear, but that wasn’t the case. The website swore by the drink as a detox trick which aided weight loss and increased metabolism. As a dedicated fitness and health girl I was absolutely ecstatic to see these added bonuses to my new favorite drink! Within the next month that’s all I saw on Pinterest and I could barely believe it!

In recent months I’ve seen various brands of green drink appear in my local grocery store, but they’re quite expensive, and I still prefer to make my own at home. I’m now patiently waiting for a healthy smoothie shop to appear in my area with this infamous green drink at the top of the menu, but I think I may be setting my sights a bit high. So if you haven’t heard of or tried this green drink I urge you to do so, you certainly will not regret it! And if you see Krista’s Green Drink Smoothie Shop pop up in your area within the next few years, you can tell people you saw it here first!

Want to try out my latest green drink recipe? 1 cup almond milk, 1 cup vanilla yogurt, ¼ cup cold water, 2 cups baby spinach, ½ cup kale, 2 cups mixed fruit of your preference, 1 banana, a handful of flax seed and 1-2 scoops vanilla soy protein powder. Try it out or let me know of your favorite green drink recipe!

Krista is the writing intern at NextStepU Magazine. She currently plays Division III soccer at Saint John Fisher College in Rochester, NY.