For the past few years I have stayed well away from fruit smoothies. Why? Well you only have to look at the sugar contents to realise that fruit smoothies are absolutely full of sugar. However as I have become more interested in veganism (is that a word?) and plant-based-diets, I have noticed that a huge proportion of a plant-based diet is made up of fruit, and very sweet foods such as dates. At first I was quick to turn my nose up at this, thinking “god I can’t believe they would eat all this sugar”. Meanwhile I was more than happy to sip on my pint of Diet Coke, which whilst being calorie and sugar free, contained more chemicals than I would even attempt to name. So…all this got me thinking and I decided to have a proper look into fruit and fruit smoothies and see if they really were as bad for me as I thought.
*THE SCIENCY BIT:
- Fructose is the name of the main carbohydrate in fruit. Humans don’t actually produce fructose and the liver is the only organ that can metabolize fructose in significant amounts.
- When people start to eat a diet that is high in calories and high in fructose, the liver gets overloaded and starts turning the fructose into fat.
- Although some fructose is derived from fruit, a lot of fructose consumed in the diet is derived from sucrose, which we know as sugar.
- This is because sucrose consists of 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
- Sweet foods such as desserts, cakes, chocolate and other confectionery, and sweetened beverages such as carbonated soft drinks, sports drinks, fruit juice and so on, contain large quantities of added fructose
*THE BAD BIT:
- A lot of shop bought smoothies, whilst containing whole foods, also contain other things to sweeten them up and make them taste nicer.
- You may often see that they use a fruit juice, normally apple, or use other ‘natural ingredients’ such as honey.
- This is where it all goes wrong, the ‘fruit juice’ they are using, is basically glorified sugary water, not the juice of an actual fruit; and due to the nature of mass production, the honey they are using will most likely be cheap and contain added sweeteners and sugars.
- THIS is what makes the smoothie unhealthy, NOT the naturally occurring fructose from the fruit.
However….
- If you are trying to loose weight or don’t lead a very active lifestyle, if you don’t use up the fructose you are consuming in fruit through exercise, it will be stored as fat and you will gain weight.
- Fruit is reasonably calorific compared to vegetables, so if you are trying to loose weight I would recommend you consume 1-2 servings of fruit and 4-5 servings of vegetables.
- Some smoothies can contain up to 5 servings of fruit, so I would stay away from them if I was trying to loose weight.
THE GOOD BIT:
- As I explained earlier it’s not the fruit itself that makes smoothies unhealthy, it’s all the other crap.
- So if you are making your own smoothies and are only including fruit, or other natural bases such as almond milk, they are a really healthy and convenient way to get in your fruit!
- In very simple terms you would have to eat a hell of a lot of fruit to even get close to a level of fructose that is dangerous. You would literally have to overdose on bananas.
CONCLUSION (TLDR):
- Smoothies consisting of fruit ONLY, mixed with an unsweetened liquid or ice, are perfectly healthy.
- Saying that, if you are on a calorie controlled diet you do get a long more bang for your buck through eating vegetables.
- By this I mean for 100 calories you can eat one small banana, or over 300g of broccoli (not sure why anyone would want to eat that much broccoli).
- I tend to veer towards smoothies containing vegetables such as spinach or kale, as they normally contain more fibre and nutrients!
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