Smoothie 101 | What You Need to Know Before Sipping Another Smoothie

 

A common goal for New Year is eating healthy. A super easy way to reach that goal is through SMOOTHIES! But they can also be detrimental to your goal if the wrong ingredients go in. Here’s what ‘wrong ingredients’ mean:

• frozen yogurt
• excess sugar and simple sugars (cane sugar, granulated white sugar, brown sugar)
• dairy
• fruit juice

Some smoothie joints will use juice and frozen yogurt (which is essentially ice cream). Be sure to read carefully before ordering. Also, keep an eye out for dairy if you are sensitive to it. Dairy sensitivities can cause bloat and inflammation and potentially damage gut health in the long term. To get a better idea of what how much sugar you are getting, measure out the fruit for your usual smoothie. Most times than not, we are heavy handed with it and that can lead to too much sugar.

When building your smoothie, use whole foods and nutrient dense foods. Try including:

• nuts (cashews, peanut butter, cashew butter)
• seeds (hemp hearts, chia, sunflower)
• greens (spinach, kale, chard, celery, carrots)
• natural sweeteners such as banana, dates
• superfood such as acai, cranberries, tumeric, tart cherry
• antioxidant rich matcha powder or coffee grounds
• high quality protein powders (I like Vega and Genuine Health Fermented Vegan)

TRY THIS….INSTEAD OF:

Try a couple of dates instead of sugar or maple syrup.
Try plant based protein instead of whey.
Try tumeric or tart cherry for inflammation.
Try to cut your fruit by 1/4 instead of your usual amount.
Try to switch yogurt for frozen yogurt.
Try to use coconut milk instead of cow’s milk.

Even if you don’t like some of these ingredients, you may be surprised by the fact that you can’t taste it once it is blended with fruit.

The type of ingredients you use may also depend on what you want to get out of it. For example, if you just finished an intense strength workout, you may want to pump up the protein and tart cherry or tumeric to reduce inflammation. If you are having a smoothie for breakfast, you may want to add extra greens and a little zing with matcha powder. Check out my 4 favourite smoothie recipes here.