Dear Reader,
You may think smoothies are a healthy alternative to soda. After all, smoothies are just fruit in a blender… What could be wrong with that?
A lot, it turns out.
First, there’s the size. Smoothies can range from 16 ounces all the way up to 40 ounces. To put that in perspective, an 8-ounce smoothie is equal to about three pieces of fruit. Do you regularly eat fifteen pieces of fruit in one sitting?
Second, there’s the processing. Many of the beneficial ingredients contained in whole fruits and vegetables, including fiber, anti-oxidants and vitamins, are destroyed in the process of making a smoothie.
With their growing popularity, you can buy smoothies anywhere – including your local grocery store. And that means most of them are highly processed. What’s more, if the fruits and vegetables aren’t certified organic, chances are you’re ingesting a cocktail of pesticides and other environmental toxins.
Third, there’s the carbs. A report published overseas found that a single serving of a popular smoothie contained over five teaspoons of sugar, beating out a can of Coke.1
Remember, smoothies may come from natural ingredients, but those ingredients are packed into unnaturally concentrated amounts. Some smoothie makers even add artificial sweeteners – high-fructose corn syrup in particular – further reducing the health benefit.
And high-carb smoothies pack on the pounds. When you blend fruits you very much increase the rate that your body can absorb the sugar. Even a healthy carrot takes on the fast sugar characteristics of a soda when you pulverize it.
Diets high in fast release carbohydrate are linked to higher rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Sugary high-carb foods produce a spike in your blood sugar level. This in turn triggers an insulin response.
Higher insulin levels tell your body to start storing fat. And the more fat you’re signally to store, the greater your eventual obesity. And it only gets worse from there… Obesity leads to heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure, even joint pain from the additional weight.
And the reverse is true; that is that low-carb intake equates to lower heart risk. The New England Journal of Medicine reported results from Harvard researchers involving 80,000 women over the course of two decades. Those who followed a low-carb diet reduced their risk of heart disease by 30 percent.2
Results of another study by U.S. and New Zealand scientists, also released last year, showed that about 3 million heart disease, stroke and diabetes-related deaths are caused by high blood sugar levels each year worldwide.3
One of the authors noted that the only way to raise blood sugar is by consuming sugars and refined carbohydrates. So packing a single beverage with a high concentration of sugar, regardless of that sugar’s source, isn’t a great idea.
If you’re looking for a cool, refreshing drink that won’t add inches to your waistline, combine freshly squeezed lemons, oranges or grapefruit to ice water. If you need to sweeten it up, try Stevia extract. It’s the only sugar substitute that’s not toxic or linked to side effects.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 “The smoothies that have more sugar than Coke,” Daily Mail, January 12, 2007.
2 Halton et al, “Low-Carbohydrate-Diet Score and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in Women,” New England Journal of Medicine 2006; 355(19):1991-2002.
3 Danaei G, Lawes CMM et al, “Global and regional ischemic heart disease and stroke mortality attributable to higher-than-optimal blood glucose” Lancet, 368(9548):1651-1659, 2006.