I just started working at a new job that’s next door to a Robeck’s smoothie shop. Now they’ve got veggie juices, which are fine to the best of my knowledge, but how healthy are their smoothies? Am I drinking delicious blended fruit (mixed in with fat free yogurt or sherbert) which goes towards my daily fruit requirement, or am I basically shoving liquified sugar into my system and undoing the benefits of giving up Cokes?
Without knowing the ingredients exactly, I can’t say, but one of the general dieting strategies is to never drink calories. It doesn’t sound like you’re keeping that.
If it’s sweet and doesn’t use artificial sweeteners, it’s fattening.
But… most fruits are sweet and don’t use artificial sweetners. Are sweet fruits really that fattening?
No, fruits aren’t fattening. Fructose takes as long to metabolise as some complex carbohydrates because it uses an unusual metabolic pathway.
The “sugar will make you fat” idea is oversimplified but not completely wrong.
Any food is fattening, eaten to excess, and that’s precisely the problem with fruit juices as opposed to real fruit: you can consume more calories without getting full. For example, a medium orange has about 50 calories, but sixteen ounces (~500 ml) of fresh-squeezed orange juice has about 200 calories. Most people probably wouldn’t eat four oranges in one sitting, but would think nothing of a 16-oz smoothie.
Another way of thinking about it is that fruit juices and smoothies have, in general, the same number of calories per volume as soft drinks. Granted, you’re getting vitamins (and, for smoothies, some fiber) that you’re not getting with soda, but the same number of calories are still going into your system.