Smoothies Certainly Pack a Punch. Just Maybe Not the One You Thought!

A Bite-Size Read for Your Health and Your Waistline

When you picture healthy foods, are smoothies one of the first things to pop into your mind? Ever choose a smoothie as a snack or meal replacement to get your fruits and veggies in? Fundamentally, smoothies can be great. It’s true they can help us get a lot of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals into our systems. But smoothies can also be a giant trap!

Spoiler Alert: Smoothies aren’t inherently healthy or nutritious; some pack more sugar than an ice cream sundae. Yikes!

Many of the restaurants and smoothie shops use a lot of sugary ingredients, such as frozen yogurt, sherbet, or premade mixes.?Jamba Juice’s 22-ounce medium Watermelon Breeze smoothie, for example, has (drum roll please…) 85 grams of sugar. The 8-ounce Evolution brand smoothies available at Starbucks aren’t much better with the?fresh organic superfruit greens drink packing 26 grams of sugar. Ever seen Bolthouse Farms on grocery store shelves? Their?breakfast smoothie mixed berry parfait?has 42 grams of sugar. And for those of you thinking your expensive, specialty smoothie couldn’t be on par with those…the?Daily Harvest strawberry and peach smoothie?has 18 grams of sugar. I could keep going!

The issue with sugar is that our metabolic health is directly connected to our blood sugar. In fact,?blood sugar dictates if we’re burning or storing fat. Not only that, what goes up must come down. When we drink these super sugary smoothies that spike our blood sugar, we eventually crash…which results in a lack of energy and a craving for food, particularly sugar. Staying mindful about how we maintain our blood sugar throughout the day can help us avoid bad moods and the cravings for sugary snacks.

The other half of the challenge with the sugar in a smoothie is the lack of fiber. Even when the ingredients are stellar, the more work the machine does, the less our body does. Our body, with the time it takes to break down fiber and protein, slowly releases the fuel (and sugar), preventing those spikes and drops of blood sugar. In the case of smoothies, the machine does the work of our GI tract; the machine breaks down the fiber and essentially concentrates sugar. Still better than a green juice… but better yet is to eat the whole vegetable.

This doesn’t mean we never enjoy a smoothie, though! It means we want to be particular about what goes in and use them to complement our nutrition of eating the whole fruits and veggies. To build your best and most healthful smoothie, start with a base of greens. Use fruit for flavoring a little sweetness (instead of fruit being the main ingredient). Opt for lower glycemic fruits with more fiber such as berries, and use less of the mangoes, pineapples, and bananas.

For the liquid in your smoothie, consider water, coconut water, or an unsweetened plant-based milk alternative. Avoid sherbet, frozen yogurt, and other sweeteners. Adding protein powder or Greek yogurt helps bulk up the protein factor and can help blunt the effect of the sugar. The protein you add might be a source of unexpected sweetness, however, so check those nutrition labels! A favorite smoothie hack is adding avocado. The flavor disappears, it makes the smoothie creamy like a milkshake, and adds quality fat which helps blunt the impact of the sugar and keep us satisfied! If you want the creaminess but don’t have an avocado at home, try using frozen fruit, raw nuts, or a half of a banana. A squeeze of lemon or lime can also go a long way in brightening those flavors.

Building a healthful smoothie starts with greens, uses low-glycemic fruit, has some protein and maybe even quality fat! This way, we can avoid blood sugar spikes and falls to reap the rewards of our efforts to improve our nutrition intake.