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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!
