5 Ayurvedic Smoothie Recipes For Optimal Digestion – Vegetarian Recipes for Mindful Cooking (2024)

Ayurvedic smoothie recipes are optimized for ease of digestion, and they follow traditional knowledge about food combining, and seasonal eating. They are also incredibly tasty and satisfying to mind and body.

Ayurveda is an ancient science of life from India. It sees a balanced diet and lifestyle as the key to optimizing digestion, and digestion as the key to optimizing health.

Unfortunately, many of the foods most people consume cause imbalances, and can harm digestion, whether they are aware of it or not.

Smoothies are enormously popular because people believe they are really healthy. They are healthy, but only when consumed in the proper way.

Ayurveda offers very critical wisdom around the healthiest way to make smoothies, and the correct way is different based on a person's unique body type.

To learn the Ayurvedic way of making smoothies, read on, or check out my ULTIMATE GUIDE TO AYURVEDIC SMOOTHIES.

How to Enjoy These Ayurvedic Smoothie Recipes

Summer is the best season for smoothies. Spring is also okay to a lesser extent. The reason we enjoy smoothies so much in warm weather is because they have a cooling effect on the body.

Did you know there are optimal times of day to enjoy smoothies?

Breakfast is always a good time, on an empty stomach.

I enjoy mine as a pre-lunch after skipping breakfast. I have it at least 30 minutes before lunch, so the fruit has time to fully digest. I also enjoy mine as a pre-dinner if I am cooking, but I am feeling really hungry.

Having a smoothie as a lunch replacement on a hot day is also a good time.

Although smoothies are light, they are made from raw food, and Ayurveda sees raw food as more difficult to digest. This is why Ayurveda recommends enjoying smoothies when the digestive strength is strongest around midday, or at least early in the day.

Fruit And The Principle Of Food Combining

According to Ayurveda, fruit is best enjoyed on its own an on an empty stomach. I encourage you to try this simple food combining principle and see if it changes how you feel.

For certain people with very strong digestion, food combining doesn’t matter, but for most people it can make all the difference.

The reason for this principle of taking fruit alone is that fruit digests quite quickly (30 minutes for most).

Mixing fruit with other foods that take longer to digest can actually impede the body’s ability to digest the fruit at all, since different types of food require different digestive enzymes.

The danger is that mixing fruit with other food can confuse your body, and lead to putrefaction, and the production of toxins. This will not affect everyone. For people with very strong digestion, this is not as much of an issue.

Ayurvedic smoothie recipes make exceptions to the fruit-only rule, but its’s done with awareness, and in a smart way.

I love that Ayurveda’s rules aren’t really rules. They are more like guidelines that you can intentionally break when you know what you are doing.

What Is An Ayurvedic Smoothie?

The Ayurvedic smoothie recipes below combines fruit with simple vegetables and digestion-stimulating herbs and spices.

They also use room temperature water, and fresh (rather than frozen) fruit to temper the powerful cooling qualities inherent in a smoothie.

The combination of Ayurvedic smoothie recipes below maximize everything that is wonderfully sweet about smoothies, while minimizing any potential harm to health.

With these recipes we are aiming for a balanced cooling effect, so we stay balanced all day long and avoid the ups and downs.

These recipes are simple, super tasty, and easy to prepare. For optimal benefits, emphasize fruit that’s fresh and in season. Take a scroll of the recipes, see what you have in your fridge or garden, and go for it!

Enjoy Seasonal Fruit In Your Smoothies

Sometimes it can be hard to let go of a favorite fruit when its season is done, but it will never be as good as it was when it was locally grown.

What I am learning to do is: once a season has passed, I try to cherish what I have experienced with that fruit, and set an intention to enjoy it again even more next year.

You can even try planning out how to obtain more of your favorite fruits, like at farmer’s markets, farm share programs, or from visiting farms directly.

Here’s a preview of my Ayurvedic smoothie recipes. Which one will you try first?

Apples, Pineapple, and Kale Smoothie
Apricots, Cherries, Basil Leaf Smoothie
Blueberries, Strawberries, Banana, and Cardamom Smoothie
Apple, Lime, and Arugula Smoothie
Watermelon, Lime, and Cardamom Smoothie

And don't forget to check out this helpful post, "Smoothies and Your Health: 14 Tips and Tricks for Healthier Smoothies."