Smoothies can be a good way to add more fruit and vegetables to your diet, and are quick and easy. But which is healthier – homemade or store bought?
Bought
Simply Squeezed Banana Blitz Smoothie
Ingredients: Banana purée, pressed apple juice, reconstituted pineapple juice, reconstituted apple paste, lime juice, coconut cream, stabiliser, preservative.
vs
Homemade
Healthy Food Guide Chia, raspberry and banana smoothie
Ingredients: Banana, raspberries, trim milk, low-fat Greek style yoghurt, chia seeds, honey
Nutrition information per serve
If smoothies contain milk, yoghurt or fortified nut, soy or rice milks, they can provide important calcium, as well as adding protein. Both the bought and homemade smoothies have a snack-sized amount of energy, but it’s the energy from sugar that is much higher in the Simply Squeezed smoothie. While this is all naturally occurring sugar from pureed fruit and fruit juices, and in the Healthy Food Guide smoothie we’ve used fruit as well as adding a little honey, both fruit juices and honey are free sugars that we need to limit.
With the amount of energy in smoothies, it helps to think of them as a snack or part of a meal, not just a drink. Bought smoothies are likely to give you plenty of sugars, but not a lot else.
The Healthy Food Guide Chia, raspberry and banana smoothie contains a good range of nutrients – protein and calcium from the yoghurt, and fibre from the chia seeds, along with the sugars from the fruits. This makes it a more rounded snack than the Simply Squeezed smoothie.
Tip: Choose smoothies that contain more than just fruit. Veges, fibre and a source of added calcium make these drinks a nutritionally balanced snack.
www.healthyfood.com
