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What about smoothies? Most homemade smoothies retain the fiber by blending the fruit whole. Are those just as good as eating the fruits themselves? Genuine que

What about smoothies? Most homemade smoothies retain the fiber by blending the fruit whole. Are those just as good as eating the fruits themselves? Genuine question, trying to cut out non-fruit based sugars.

bunderbunder 7y ago
The information I've seen would seem to suggest that smoothies are somewhere in between fruit juice and whole foods. Yes, you do start with whole fruit. But then you stick it into a piece of food processing equipment and process the bajeezus out of it. That seems to have an effect on how your body digests it. One of the noteworthy differences is that it makes it a lot easier for your digestive system to extract the calories from it. So your body's going to see it as a more sugary food than if you hadn't used a machine to pre-digest your food a bit before eating it. I've also heard tell that liquids just aren't as filling as solids. Meaning that liquefying your food before eating it makes it easier to over-consume.
- lixtra 7y ago
  If you’re chewing the fruit as throughly as advised I doubt your stomach sees much difference between a smoothy and a fruit. Except that enzymes from salvia already started digestion.
  - ebg13 7y ago
    > as throughly as advised Advised by whom? You could always chew less. > I doubt Why bother doubting or not doubting? People actually study this.
  - bunderbunder 7y ago
    One of the studies that struck me (don't have it at hand) involved taking exactly the same diet and feeding it whole to one group and pureed to the other. The pureed food group gained weight and the control group didn't. I've no idea how replicable that result is, but I'd still take that over a hypothesis that hasn't been tested at all.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      Just as a pedantic point, (nothing to do with the topic at hand), if a study has not been replicated, and you cannot lay your hands on the replicated data... then it's pretty much the same as a "...hypothesis that hasn't been tested at all...".
rezistik 7y ago
I think you can kind of approach it like "Would I eat these ingredients on their own if they weren't smashed up together?" The first recipe I find is 1 banana, 2 cups of strawberries and 1/2 cup of yogurt and a 1/2 cup of milk, resulting in two servings. I would definitely eat that unsmashed so I imagine the smoothie version is fine, and it's only 200 calories. Still definitely a dessert type snack though.
ebg13 7y ago
All other factors equal, the faster your body is able to absorb calories from what you consume, the worse it is for you.* Blending your food more can make it pass out of your stomach faster so your body will absorb calories from it faster, spike your insulin harder, and then you'll be hungry again sooner. Some people do study this if you want to dig through papers. Here's one I found after a few seconds of googling: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19110020 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19110020 * - Worse means different things in different contexts. If you drink a cup of oil, you'll probably get oily diarrhea instead of absorbing the calories. I'm not sure which is worse in that case.
josefresco 7y ago
The fiber is whole fruit makes it much safer to consume. There are dietary exceptions, but sugar alone has 0 nutrients and causes unhealthy spikes in blood sugar (this includes fruit juice). The fiber in whole fruit helps smooth things out. Studies have been completed to test very high whole fruit consumption. I'll let you look them up because I get flamed every time I post a source because .... The Internet. The funny anecdote from these "super high fruit consumption studies" were massive, massive poos. This is a good, overview on the concept: http://time.com/5301984/can-you-eat-too-much-fruit/ http://time.com/5301984/can-you-eat-too-much-fruit/ Edit: Other commentators posted great resources.
bilbo0s 7y ago
What does the smoothie have in it? I mean: >What about smoothies?... You can't expect us to just give a blanket answer to that question. Anyone who does give you a blanket answer is full of it. It's all going to depend on what you put in the smoothie. If you're just mashing together bananas and, say, spinach or blueberries, along with some crushed ice? Well, yeah, that's obviously no different than eating bananas and spinach or blueberries. That's what our teeth have done for millennia... mash up bananas. But if you're adding sugar filled vanilla milk? (Or vanilla soy milk, or vanilla almond milk, or etc etc etc, you get the picture.) Well, now the whole thing is not that good for you is it? But it's not the bananas, or the spinach, or the blueberries, or the blackberries, or what have you that all of a sudden become bad... it's the sugary vanilla milk and yogurt that you dumped into the smoothie that makes it bad.
- kyriakos 7y ago
  Blending breaks the fruit down much more than chewing so it probably it's a bit worse than just eating the fruit itself. Since it makes it quicker to absorb. It's obviously not as bad as juices and gives you the same nutritional value as fruit. I really can't understand why anyone would put sugar in a smoothie. Blending a banana and a couple of berries tastes already very sweet.
truefalsebanana 7y ago
Smoothies in general are Not Great (TM). When you eat food, it takes your body time to digest it all, so you get a slow and steady blood sugar flow. However, when you eat smoothies, all of that food is already nearly ready to be absorbed, so your blood sugar spikes and it's a tremendous burden on your liver to handle all of that food value all at once. Needless to say, smoothies are really not for diabetics or athletes! This is the number one issue with smoothies. A slow and steady blood sugar / nutrition delivery is better for everything. Outside of that is the sugar issue. Sugar and sweeteners are in everything and people naturally gravitate towards recipes with sugar in it, whether they realize it or not; maybe you aren't using fruit juice, but now you're sweetening with a ton of bananas, or now carrots, etc. We're just helplessly addicted to it. A third, less known issue is that fruit now adays has been so domesticated that it really has very little nutritional value (esp compared with its wild cousins). It's right up there with milk on "why are we telling people to eat this" type of FDA questions. If you google "healthy smoothie", all you will see are yummy fruit-based smoothies which really are hardly healthy. If you are after fiber, there are much better things to eat. So in general, fruit smoothies are just not healthy at all no matter what. The really gross-tasting cross-fit type smoothies full of wheatgrass, kale, and other vegetables are much better for you, but who's going to subject themselves to that kind of punishment; might as well eat a salad, at least there's some fat from the dressing. Regarding fiber specifically, flaxseed and chiaseed can be mixed into just about anything with very little taste effect. Beans and lentils are high in fiber. Honestly, even a no-sugar fiber drink mix would probably be better for your body as a whole than a smoothie.
- rsync 7y ago
  I concur with everything you've said. I will say that I drink a smoothie as a (post workout) meal 1-2x per week and the ingredient that really alters that composition is almond butter (and quite a bit of it - 1/3 cup or more). Nut butters, yogurt and oats should be primary ingredients and fruits should be sparingly added just for a bit of flavor (I throw in 8-10 blueberries which is plenty).
  - ebg13 7y ago
    > Nut butters, yogurt and oats should be primary ingredients Non-starchy non-sugary vegetables should be primary ingredients if you're not looking for a calorie bomb, though it sounds like you are. Let's say you're feeling generous and your almond butter edges up to half a cup. That's over 700 calories before any of your other ingredients.

bunderbunder 7y ago

The information I've seen would seem to suggest that smoothies are somewhere in between fruit juice and whole foods. Yes, you do start with whole fruit. But then you stick it into a piece of food processing equipment and process the bajeezus out of it. That seems to have an effect on how your body digests it. One of the noteworthy differences is that it makes it a lot easier for your digestive system to extract the calories from it. So your body's going to see it as a more sugary food than if you hadn't used a machine to pre-digest your food a bit before eating it. I've also heard tell that liquids just aren't as filling as solids. Meaning that liquefying your food before eating it makes it easier to over-consume.

lixtra 7y ago
If you’re chewing the fruit as throughly as advised I doubt your stomach sees much difference between a smoothy and a fruit. Except that enzymes from salvia already started digestion.
- ebg13 7y ago
  > as throughly as advised Advised by whom? You could always chew less. > I doubt Why bother doubting or not doubting? People actually study this.
- bunderbunder 7y ago
  One of the studies that struck me (don't have it at hand) involved taking exactly the same diet and feeding it whole to one group and pureed to the other. The pureed food group gained weight and the control group didn't. I've no idea how replicable that result is, but I'd still take that over a hypothesis that hasn't been tested at all.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Just as a pedantic point, (nothing to do with the topic at hand), if a study has not been replicated, and you cannot lay your hands on the replicated data... then it's pretty much the same as a "...hypothesis that hasn't been tested at all...".

rezistik 7y ago

I think you can kind of approach it like "Would I eat these ingredients on their own if they weren't smashed up together?" The first recipe I find is 1 banana, 2 cups of strawberries and 1/2 cup of yogurt and a 1/2 cup of milk, resulting in two servings. I would definitely eat that unsmashed so I imagine the smoothie version is fine, and it's only 200 calories. Still definitely a dessert type snack though.

ebg13 7y ago

All other factors equal, the faster your body is able to absorb calories from what you consume, the worse it is for you.* Blending your food more can make it pass out of your stomach faster so your body will absorb calories from it faster, spike your insulin harder, and then you'll be hungry again sooner. Some people do study this if you want to dig through papers. Here's one I found after a few seconds of googling: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19110020 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19110020 * - Worse means different things in different contexts. If you drink a cup of oil, you'll probably get oily diarrhea instead of absorbing the calories. I'm not sure which is worse in that case.

josefresco 7y ago

The fiber is whole fruit makes it much safer to consume. There are dietary exceptions, but sugar alone has 0 nutrients and causes unhealthy spikes in blood sugar (this includes fruit juice). The fiber in whole fruit helps smooth things out. Studies have been completed to test very high whole fruit consumption. I'll let you look them up because I get flamed every time I post a source because .... The Internet. The funny anecdote from these "super high fruit consumption studies" were massive, massive poos. This is a good, overview on the concept: http://time.com/5301984/can-you-eat-too-much-fruit/ http://time.com/5301984/can-you-eat-too-much-fruit/ Edit: Other commentators posted great resources.

bilbo0s 7y ago

What does the smoothie have in it? I mean: >What about smoothies?... You can't expect us to just give a blanket answer to that question. Anyone who does give you a blanket answer is full of it. It's all going to depend on what you put in the smoothie. If you're just mashing together bananas and, say, spinach or blueberries, along with some crushed ice? Well, yeah, that's obviously no different than eating bananas and spinach or blueberries. That's what our teeth have done for millennia... mash up bananas. But if you're adding sugar filled vanilla milk? (Or vanilla soy milk, or vanilla almond milk, or etc etc etc, you get the picture.) Well, now the whole thing is not that good for you is it? But it's not the bananas, or the spinach, or the blueberries, or the blackberries, or what have you that all of a sudden become bad... it's the sugary vanilla milk and yogurt that you dumped into the smoothie that makes it bad.

kyriakos 7y ago
Blending breaks the fruit down much more than chewing so it probably it's a bit worse than just eating the fruit itself. Since it makes it quicker to absorb. It's obviously not as bad as juices and gives you the same nutritional value as fruit. I really can't understand why anyone would put sugar in a smoothie. Blending a banana and a couple of berries tastes already very sweet.

truefalsebanana 7y ago

Smoothies in general are Not Great (TM). When you eat food, it takes your body time to digest it all, so you get a slow and steady blood sugar flow. However, when you eat smoothies, all of that food is already nearly ready to be absorbed, so your blood sugar spikes and it's a tremendous burden on your liver to handle all of that food value all at once. Needless to say, smoothies are really not for diabetics or athletes! This is the number one issue with smoothies. A slow and steady blood sugar / nutrition delivery is better for everything. Outside of that is the sugar issue. Sugar and sweeteners are in everything and people naturally gravitate towards recipes with sugar in it, whether they realize it or not; maybe you aren't using fruit juice, but now you're sweetening with a ton of bananas, or now carrots, etc. We're just helplessly addicted to it. A third, less known issue is that fruit now adays has been so domesticated that it really has very little nutritional value (esp compared with its wild cousins). It's right up there with milk on "why are we telling people to eat this" type of FDA questions. If you google "healthy smoothie", all you will see are yummy fruit-based smoothies which really are hardly healthy. If you are after fiber, there are much better things to eat. So in general, fruit smoothies are just not healthy at all no matter what. The really gross-tasting cross-fit type smoothies full of wheatgrass, kale, and other vegetables are much better for you, but who's going to subject themselves to that kind of punishment; might as well eat a salad, at least there's some fat from the dressing. Regarding fiber specifically, flaxseed and chiaseed can be mixed into just about anything with very little taste effect. Beans and lentils are high in fiber. Honestly, even a no-sugar fiber drink mix would probably be better for your body as a whole than a smoothie.

rsync 7y ago
I concur with everything you've said. I will say that I drink a smoothie as a (post workout) meal 1-2x per week and the ingredient that really alters that composition is almond butter (and quite a bit of it - 1/3 cup or more). Nut butters, yogurt and oats should be primary ingredients and fruits should be sparingly added just for a bit of flavor (I throw in 8-10 blueberries which is plenty).
- ebg13 7y ago
  > Nut butters, yogurt and oats should be primary ingredients Non-starchy non-sugary vegetables should be primary ingredients if you're not looking for a calorie bomb, though it sounds like you are. Let's say you're feeling generous and your almond butter edges up to half a cup. That's over 700 calories before any of your other ingredients.