Genuine question, trying to cut out non-fruit based sugars.
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.
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).
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.
It's not healthy to eat whole fruit (like bananas and apples) from the local grocery store?
source?
It's also perfectly healthy to eat a ripe banana if you are doing a physical activity, as the insulin spike will likely help your muscles use the sugar and you won't store it.
With the exception that eating high GI carbs/sugar before doing a high intensity activity is not problematic, because it will be consumed directly by the muscles as "fuel" and might even improve performance. But yes otherwise (ie the majority of the time) I agree.
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.
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.
This is a good, overview on the concept: http://time.com/5301984/can-you-eat-too-much-fruit/
Edit: Other commentators posted great resources.
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.
Except that enzymes from salvia already started digestion.
Advised by whom? You could always chew less.
> I doubt
Why bother doubting or not doubting? People actually study this.
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.
then it's pretty much the same as a "...hypothesis that hasn't been tested at all...".
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
* - 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.
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.
Sure a glass of orange juice may have "health" benefits like vitamin C or may be good for your heart, but only if we ignore the globs of sugar in it. The liquor industry has to get better PR people. They could be selling vodka and orange juice screwdrivers as a health drink.
It's the power of industry advertising and media. I bet most people today still think fruit juices are healthy and even encourage their children to drink "healthy" juices.
Fruit has sucrose. Sucrose splits into glucose and fructose. Calories and glycemic index aside: glucose good, fructose bad. The fiber in fruit helps block the metabolism of fructose, protecting the liver.
Dr Lustig's video was my intro to this stuff. It's hard to watch, but I haven't read anything yet that contradicts any of it.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Update: Downvoted for science. Yay! I need something to kick my HN addiction. Stop doing this to myself.
Only with champagne.
I mean if the context was “to deal with a crime we just shoot the accused” I’d get your point.
Not really seeing “put technical details of product on package in a way that is quick and easy to digest” as such a big deal.
So what if it costs Coke sales? Since when do I owe them fealty?
Ah, but from the other comments on fruit juices here we see that "easy to digest" is bad for you, so Coke cares about your brain health! :)
Then they would just make bottles with very wide bases ...
-Most nutritionists agree you shouldn't have more than 5g of sugar outside of fruit sources-
A can of coke have well over 25g
Do they? seems like a weird random number.
I can't find a specific source for a ceiling of 5 g/day, but it's pretty uncontroversial that more added sugar is never better. The lower you set your maximum intake, the harder it is to maintain, since sugar is added to so many foods.
5 g/day is a somewhat arbitrary cutoff that's lower than official recommended maximums, but this doesn't imply that there should be no limit. Pick one. Or start with "as little sugar as practical," log how much sugar you end up consuming under this plan (using a food diary, food scale, etc.), and adjust as needed.
[1] http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-growing-concern-of-overcons...
Gatorade for athletes.
> this doesn't imply that there should be no limit.
Who is even claiming these things. :/
I don't know what this means. Are you referring to the manual that came with human existence or are you referring to what the FDA says?
To address your analogy, researchers are in a sense writing the Missing Manual for Humans, as our species didn't come with one.
You're free to accept or refute these recommendations, but I personally am inclined to put at least some trust into their collective efforts. Or if you trust different recommendations more so than these, I'd love to see them.
This mentality coupled with incorrect recommendations helped the trend of "fat free" foods that would be high in sugar, not that long ago either.
I have to say I find your pushback at the term "official" perplexing. Why do you disagree with this descriptor? They're literally official. It doesn't get more official than this. Sure, they're sometimes wrong, as your fat-free reference suggests, but that's beside the point.
It’s an arbitrarily chosen number. Just like most thinking around food and diet, these things are highly influenced by current trends.
Obsessing over arbitrarily specific numbers in your diet is missing the point. Just make a conscious effort to consume sugar in moderation and you’ll be fine.
Sugar is bad for you? Fine. Any given unit of sugar will have worse outcomes than the absence of that sugar? Fair enough.
"Hey, we're reporting 5g as some special, significant threshold that suggests we have actual evidence of things really ramping up at that point that suggests no subjective gain could outweigh the damage to your health, when, in reality, it was just pulled out of thin air"? No. Forget that noise.
It's kind of like the difference between drinking a beer on a full stomach versus an empty stomach.
In this case, 25g of sugar entering your bloodstream quickly is quite unhealthy.
(Related: If you want to understand this better, stop consuming refined sugar for about a month. Then go eat a peep on an empty stomach. You'll feel an intense sugar rush.)
> Most nutritionists agree you shouldn't have more than 5g of sugar outside of fruit sources-
So nutritionists do or don’t agree that it should also include vegetable sources?
Related: I’m T1 diabetic and my partner had to call 911 last week because of hypoglycemia. If I hadn’t consumed 25g of sugar quickly the result would’ve been quite unhealthy.
Starchy vegetables like potato, corn, and peas are nutritionally distinct from non-starchy veggies. But their sugar is packaged with vegetable fibre, which results in slower absorption than if you drank the same amount of sugar in liquid form on an empty stomach.
It feels a bit redundant to point out to a T1D that fruits are far higher in sugar than non-starchy veggies, which is why OP specifically mentioned fruit sources of sugar.
We already have diet soda, yet people choose full sugar.
Edit, the downvotes + comments in reply really tell the story. People don't care if things are unhealthy, if it tastes good, they do it. This exactly reflects the original comment, even if people don't want to hear it.
I will also say that seeing the quantity of sugar in things represented as a pile was definitely a motivator for me to basically stop drinking soda, so there are people out there for whom it matters. At least one, anyway!
"Strange, my smoothie tastes like it has artificial sugar now" I thought, come to find out they're made with Splenda and I couldn't tell before that.
"May be worse" is hard to argue when one has direct, obvious negative effects and the other has a series of much more weakly linked possible results.
people should be encouraged to enjoy soda with real (cane) sugar sparingly, not just switch to slamming diet soda all day instead.
Suggests otherwise, diet soda results in obesity and diabetes at a rate approaching 2:1 when compared to regular.
It turns out that trying to fool our systems with "reduced fat" and "reduced sugar" results in our bodies not being fooled.
The old I am going to order a double quarter pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Diet Coke.
https://www.diabetesdaily.com/blog/2014/06/do-diet-sodas-cau...
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/diet-soda-weight-gain-metab...
I haven't heard anything about this. Do you have a source? The second item strikes me as the same health reactions non-celiac "gluten sensitives" get.
and for some evidence: https://www.drugs.com/sfx/sorbitol-side-effects.html
We already have science that shows diet sodas increase diabetes and obesity almost 2 for 1 (through calorie) craving and are in many ways worse (calcium malabsorption) than high fructose corn syrup.
Then we have you ignoring the science, and saying just choose diet soda.
A study analysing 36000 deaths and 3 million person-years (published by the American Heart Association) found a 21% increase in all cause mortality among those consuming 2 or more sugar sweetened beverages per day. Consuming 2 or more artificially sweetened beverages, on the other hand, was associated with only a 4% increase. And moderate consumtion of artificially sweetened beverages (< 2 per day) was actually, unlike sugar, associated with decreased mortality. [1]
[1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA....