Someone said fruit smoothies are bad for you. Is this true?

Question

Wow! What a response. I was mainly thinking of pure fruit ones and if the concentrated fruit sugars out weigh the benefits.

Answer 1

If they contain alot of sugar, then yes.

Answer 2

Nutritional Content fruit only of one fruit smoothie 12ozs

Total Fat 0.9 g
Sat. Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 0 mg
Sodium 0 mg
Total Carbs. 43.6 g
Dietary Fiber 1.8 g
Sugars 40.0 g
Protein 2.7 g
Calcium 35.6 mg

EXERCISE REQUIRED
To burn the calories in this food listed above 1(fruit smoothie)you could do any of the following:

49 mins of walking
20 mins of jogging
15 mins of swimming
27 mins of cycling
# Based off a 35 year old female that's 5.74ft tall and weighs
144lbs (65kg)

Fat 8 cals Carbs. 174 cals Protein 11 cals Total 193 calories

You can also see that there is a very high level of Calcium 35.6 mg in just one fresh smoothie. Need vitamin " D" to process mineral in your body.

Now you can imaging how many calories there are in even a small serving.

Processed smoothies:
As a nutritionists I have warned that the benefits of smoothies, some of which contain high levels of sugar, should not be overstated. Despite containing high levels of nutrients, a smoothie counts for only one of the five fruit-and-veg portions a day recommended by the government, because it doesn't have the benefit of the natural fibre of the original fruit ingredients.

Therfore it is best to make your own fruit smoothies, there are plenty of recieps for natural smoothies on the net.

Like all good foods, there is a drawback, if you eat too many and this is the high number of calories found in just one serving.

There is also a high fibre content which could promt an increase in bowl movements

Answer 3

I doubt there is a food that exists that doesn't have some bad consequences in some cases.

In the case of fruit smoothies, if someone has issues with sugar in food, the fruit smoothie has a lot of natural sugar. If the person has problems with dairy, a smoothie has yogurt in it typically. If the person is allergic to ice, there's typically ice in the smoothie (:grin:).

Seriously, it would depend on what was going into the smoothy and who was drinking it. I have heard that some doctors recommend that very young children not eat yogurt or honey - both of which I've seen people put into smoothies.

Answer 4

I think the someone who said that was thinking that the kind that you get in stores are "bad for you". They may contain a high amount of sugars (from frozen yogurt, e.g., which may be "non-fat" but still have tons of sugar). However, if you (or they) are making your smoothies from fruit and ice and not from ice cream, then the sugars are natural and are not bad for you. When I was in college, a lot of girls "lived" on smoothies. This is also bad, because they obviously weren't including other types of food groups in their diet. I think you'll be fine if you have a smoothy once in a while. Hope this helps.

Answer 5

fruit is filled with a lot of calories and sugar, but the calories are filled with a lot of nutrients. The mistake that people make is drinking fruit smoothies as a side to their lunch or other meal. The fruit smoothie IS a meal. the best times to have fruist smoothies is before exercise, like going to the gym

Answer 6

Simple. just eat fruit on its own without the blending bit, reason for this is, the sugars in fruit are natural and when eaten break down slowly in your system, but when put into a blender they are already broken down by the blender causing that sugar overload to go straight to the hips, in other words its like having a cup of tea with 20 sugars, eat fresh fruit naturally its so much better for you.

Answer 7

fruit has a lot of sugar - meaning a lot of simple carbs. They could curb weight loss if that is a main goal. I think it would be best to enjoy them sparingly. There can also be A LOT of calories and fat in the blender base used from local smoothie chains. I'd recommend making your own smoothies so that you can monitor the calorie, sugar, and fat content if you want to enjoy them daily.

Just to put the smoothie thing in perspective, if you go to smoothie king, one smoothie could have up to 400-500 calories, or 40-70g of carbs. That is quite a bit.

Answer 8

If the only ingredient in the fruit smoothies is fruit, then no, they're not bad for you. In fact, they're very good for you. Smoothies are more nutritious than just plain juice (even if freshly squeezed) as they contain the pulp of the fruit too.

Enjoy them, especially strawberry and banana ones - yum!

Answer 9

everyone says fruit is good for you...smoothies or otherwise - but it's not..fruit is FULL of sugar, natural it maybe..but it is not good for the human system...and the body has a hard time breaking that sugar down. hence - the dramatic rise in type 2 diabetes throughout the world.

shoot me down & thumbs down me..but if you look at the world wide statistics...you will know what i am talking about.

Answer 10

The answer of course depends on you of course. You'd have to put the smoothie in perspective of your daily dietary intake.

For your reading pleasure here's a list of smoothies Yahoo! Food did a small survey of:

http://food.yahoo.com/blog/beautyeats/13681/juice-bar-smoothies-the-best-and-worst

Also, you may find this article interesting that I came across last month on MSNBC about Smoothies:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20246269/

I'll let you read these for yourself and decide. I hope this helps.

Answer 11

Many good answers, but I make mine with a variety of fresh or frozen fruit (cheaper and better, usually) - a little orange juice (a little high in calories) a little skim milk and some lemonade Cristal light. You can add any healthy stuff that you like to it, like low fat Yogurt. Too much of a good thing can be fattening. Check out http://appliancequickfix.com/WEIGHTCONTROL.html