 This is Dr. Gregor in the kitchen where I take the science and put it into practice. Today I'm going to share with you my new favorite beverage, a vegetable smoothie. I know that sounds kind of gross, but bear with me. The idea for this came out of my research into nitrate-rich vegetables like beetroot and spinach, shown to improve both oxygen delivery to our tissues by opening up blood vessels and, amazingly, oxygen efficiency, boosting the amount of power we can extract from each breath. That leads to all sorts of attic performance and enhancing benefits, but most importantly, improves lung function and emphysema brings down high blood pressure, improves peripheral artery disease, boosts cognitive function may even enhance longevity by slowing our basal metabolic rate, but something like beet juice is perishable. Hard to define. I was thinking maybe something like V8 would work, which lists both beet and spinach in the ingredients list, but evidently so little you'd have to drink 19 quarts a day to get the daily nitrate-target dose that I recommend. So I figured I'll just make my own. In my new cookbook, it's called my V12 vegetable blast, which is more involved, starts completely from scratch from fresh tomatoes and is tweaked to fit more of a beginner's palette. I want to show this version that I've actually been using whenever I happen to be in my favorite exotic locale, home, and not stuck some airport food court somewhere. It starts with five reusable bags and a stock of celery goes into each. All these vegetables are pre-washed. Then one carrot in each bag. No need to peel them. You can just use kind of the back of a knife and just kind of scrape off some of the kind of outermost bitter layer. Then a half of a red, orange, or yellow bell pepper in each. What do you do with the half you have left over? Dip it in some hummus, of course. Next, one scallion in each with the frilly little tips cut off. Then one-fifth of a small beet in each anymore. It tastes really beady. And then a fifth of a raw jalapeno pepper, which is totally optional, but I love things spicy. A quarter inch of fresh turmeric roots in each. If you can't find it fresh locally, get it on eBay. It kind of looks like a little turd, but then you snap it open and the color and size just gorgeous. Then saving the best for last, the healthiest food on the planet, greens. Now as you probably guessed, what I'm doing is pre-preparing five days of smoothies here to make it as convenient as possible, to eat as healthfully as possible. So even though something like arugula has even more nitrates, in fact I think the most nitrate-packed food there is, and I think is even tastier, there's no way it would last five days, starts to turn yellow, gets slimy. So what I've been using is really hardy greens like kale and curly parsley. Plus kale has something spinach doesn't have, it's cruciferous. So I'm going to put a cup of each one in each bag. Then all the bags go into the fridge and wait their turn. Then when you're ready to rock and roll, here's what you do. In a high-speed blender, pour one cup of a no-salt-added vegetable juice blend or no-salt-added tomato juice. Then one cup of ice cubes, an eighth teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, then a half teaspoon of horseradish. Now I'm actually using prepared horseradish here, but I'm realizing you can probably grate it yourself. I actually get horseradish root, I've never actually tried fresh, or you could actually chop up little pieces and put them in all the bags. If anyone tries that, let me know how it comes up. And then finally, the juice from half of a lemon. For a bonus, you can actually zest that lemon, then cut and juice that half and save the other half for tomorrow. That's what you have to do day-to-day. Just a couple of minutes, and this last step is to just throw in one of your bags of veggies. Now to save even more time, what you can actually do is kind of pre-prepare all those wet ingredients. This is about four cups, so you could juice two lemons into here, two teaspoons of the horseradish, add enough of the black pepper. Then there's really only three things, three steps every day. A cup of the juice mixture, a cup of ice, and then one of the bags of veggies, and then you're all set for the day. Okay, final step is to just blend for 10 burpees. It fits into about one perfect mation jar. Yep, look at that. Then you pop in a reusable straw and cold, refreshing zesty. Woo zesty! And think what's in this thing, right? It's just all vegetables. It's like a mountain of nutrition, right? It's hard to imagine a healthier beverage. Ideally, I drink it while munching on some walnuts, pumpkin seeds, maybe a little avocado in there or something. Some form of fat. I hope you maximize your absorption of all those fat soluble carotenoid nutrients in there. If you want more recipes like this, incorporating some of the healthiest foods on the planet, check out my new cookbook, The How Not To Die Cookbook, now available for pre-order. It'll be out this December, right in front of the holidays. I would say it's a good stocking stuffer, but it's actually kind of big, so your friends and family have to have really big feet. But it makes it great. New year, new U-type precedent as well, all the proceeds. I receive from all my books. DVD, speaking engagements, all goes to charity. I just want you to be healthier.