Ingredients to Avoid When Making Smoothies
Making smoothies is a great way to cool off and feel refreshed, especially during the summer months. Unfortunately, you might not realize that what you’re adding to your smoothie is slowing down or preventing weight loss for you.
Smoothies can be a delicious AND nutritious daily drink. Just make sure you are avoiding these ingredients that could be sabotaging your health:
Sugar
If a smoothie recipe requires the addition of refined sugar, such as white sugar, agave nectar, or corn syrup, it’s time to try a more healthy recipe. Your smoothie should involve enough fruit to give you plenty of sweetness on its own. Anything extra is just empty calories that could easily be left out.
If you’re worried the smoothie won’t be sweet enough for your tasting, add in more fruits and ditch the refined sugar.
Fruit Juice
You might be wondering what’s wrong with fruit juice—it’s natural and from fruit, after all! But most fruit juice that’s been packaged into a smoothie is full of sugars to enhance the flavor.
If you’re making smoothies at home that call for fruit juice, you could squeeze your own fresh fruit juice, and that would be just fine since it will still contain all its vitamins. Or, you can use coconut water instead! Just make sure it’s 100% coconut water and doesn’t have added sugar or unhealthy flavorings.
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Yogurt
Now, this one depends on the type of yogurt you use. Making smoothies with yogurt can be very healthy if it’s organic, homemade, Greek yogurt, or made without any added sugars.
Any other yogurts should be off-limits in a healthy smoothie, as they will be stuffed with added flavors, colors, and sugars that aren’t helping you.
Ice Cream
This might seem silly, but some people assume that anything coming from a blender is a smoothie! But just for the record: if it contains ice cream scoops (and chocolate syrup, etc), it’s a milkshake—not a smoothie.
If someone else is making you a smoothie, be sure to ask what the ingredients are. You may have very different definitions around making smoothies!
Other Things to Consider
There are a few other areas to think about when making smoothies for your health. Keep these in mind:
Are you making smoothies that are green?
Don’t get me wrong: fruit smoothies are yummy and can be incredibly healthy. But you can benefit yourself even more by making that smoothie green.
Start adding veggies like spinach, kale, collard greens, and swiss chard to your smoothies. If you have a powerful blender, you can even try veggies like celery or broccoli. Have fun with it!
Are you making huge smoothies?
Remember to focus on mindful eating (or, in this case, drinking) and don’t make more than you need. Consuming the right portion sizes for your appetite and hunger is important for reaching your healthy weight.
Are you supplementing your smoothies?
If you’re doing a smoothie cleanse or just having mostly smoothies each day, you might want to add a high-quality omega 3 supplement like Mimi’s Omegas to your diet. Omega 3s are an essential fatty acid that you might not get a enough of if you’re having a lot of raw fruits and veggies.
Overall, smoothies can be an amazing way to add quick nutrition to your diet and eat more raw foods. Just make sure the ingredients are clean!
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