Are Smoothies Better for You than Juices and Whole Fruits?
Generally speaking, smoothies are much healthier than sodas and juices. And consuming smoothies makes you include more of fruits and vegetables to your diet, which are often high in healthy nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. But if you have too much of them they can be bad for your health, mainly because of the high fructose and calorie intake.
Colourful, fruity, healthy, tasty and with a huge variety, with hundreds of recipes coming up on the internet every day, smoothies have been very popular for quite some time. They are delicious and it is very easy to consume lots of them without worrying about or counting calories. But when you look at the smoothie consumption of an average adult, smoothies are not as harmless as they appear.
First of all, drinking a glass of smoothie is not as filling as eating a whole fruit. Because even though everything is kept in the glass unlike in juicing, dietary fiber is shredded into pieces. It is good that a lot of consumers are replacing sodas with juices and smoothies as they are better for your health. And because they have the impression that they are not drinking something bad, they end up drinking in large quantities, taking in too many calories from fructose- the natural sugar found in fruits.
If you make your smoothie with say four oranges your sugar intake will be equal to that of a glass of Coke. Very sweet drinks must be consumed in moderation. It is true that having a glass of smoothie will make it easier for you to have your five fruits and veggies per day, but will not be as filling as eating a whole fruit. Because the fiber structure will be changed and the filling factor decreased but is certainly more filling than a glass of juice.
It is always better to make your own smoothie with the ingredients of your choice as the store-bought smoothies are often loaded with sugar and calories to make them tastier. You need to use a certain amount of liquid in your smoothie to be able to make the smoothie blender blend the mixture better. And that liquid should better be water, milk or coconut water rather than fruit juice.
When you make your breakfast smoothie right it will give you plenty of minerals, vitamins, dietary fiber, antioxidants, protein, and water. And this will be a great way to start your day. A diet that includes fruits are linked to reduced risks of strokes and other cardiovascular complications as fruits include nutrients like folate, vitamin C, potassium and dietary fiber that are known to protect heart health.
Smoothies are not just about fruits either, they are also a way to eat raw vegetables like carrots and spinach, Omega-3 fatty acids from chia, flax and hemp seeds, calcium and protein from yogurt and milk and also protein powder. Liquid meals get out of your stomach faster than solid foods and leaving you hungry much sooner and your energy levels and concentration might be gone well before lunchtime.
You will always drink a big glass of smoothie much faster than eating an equal calorie breakfast, like porridge with seeds and dried fruits. And this can be a bit of a problem as your brain takes some time to register satiety. Please do not assume that the smoothies you get at the stores are made with whole fruits only, their major ingredients are fruits juices and puree concentrates.
A standard breakfast smoothie of fruits, milk, seeds, protein powder can give you more than 5-600 calories, which is equal to that of a large burger. And it is probably more nutritious than a burger, but if you see it as a drink to have with your meal or a snack to have in-between meals snack you’d be quickly piling up on calories. Like with anything in life and in nutrition, moderation is the key here. If you eat or drink too much of the good thing, you will put on weight.
Return to Glycemic Index home page
