My personal experience. For the past 4 years, my 5-year old boy drank chickpea smoothie every day – and he is doing great! Let me start by saying I have no “new” data to backup any claims of health benefits associated with drinking chickpea smoothies. But I believe it is a very healthy alternative to normal meals.
And here’s why. My boy is a very picky eater. He almost never asks for food, and rejects 80% of the stuff we try to feed him. Imagine your kid saying no to chocolate. Imagine mealtimes that take up to 2 ½ hours to finish. Super frustrating! In all honesty, my wife dealt with the majority of mealtime issues, and I am forever grateful for that. She quickly realized it did not make sense to “force feed” healthy foods to our son, and instead tried combining the food items he did enjoy with something very healthy and invisible (ground chickpeas).
To be fair, there are a handful of chickpea smoothie recipes out there; but my wife invented this chickpea smoothie recipe for kids – I swear 🙂
Now onto the results: Four years after starting this daily regimen, my son is perfectly healthy. His weight is normal, and he is quite tall for his age, reaching the 97th percentile for height among 5-year olds in the US. By the way, my wife and I are not tall, and as far as we know, nobody in either of our families stands taller than 5’10’’. Our pediatrician gave him a thumbs up across all dimensions of pediatric health. Now, I cannot say with certainty that chickpea smoothies proved beneficial for our little guy, but he is growing strong despite a spotty eating record, and this smoothie is the only thing he will consistently consume.
There’s plenty of data on the health benefits associated with chickpeas, but here is my favorite article that lays out the supporting evidence across multiple studies, and even includes a cool recipe for Chana Masala.
What is it really? By simply hearing the name “chickpea smoothie” you might think the taste is awful. In actuality, it tastes great. We named it the chickpea smoothie because the chickpea is an unusual ingredient; not because the smoothie is predominantly made of chickpeas. Without further ado: here is our chickpea smoothie for kids – we take the ingredients listed below and blend in a Vitamix blender (seriously, it’s the best blender out there).
- 1/4th cup water soaked black chickpeas (bengal grams)
- 1/3rd cup of mixed berries (Buy frozen organic mix from Costco)
- 1 strawberry
- 4-5 frozen cherries
- 1 date
- 1 small piece of fresh/frozen beet
- 10-15 leaves of baby spinach
- 1 bananas
- 5 almonds
- 1/2 cup of plain yogurt
- add water as required to adjust consistency
Chickpea smoothies are great for kids and adults, but if you’re a “green juice” kind of person, then I recommend you check out the health benefits of celery juice.
Enjoy!
~ James
