That might be related to what I had heard. I had thought I was doing something good, by finding a way to eat more fruit (I’m generally not a huge fan of many fruits), and someone w/ some knowledge of nutrition suggested otherwise. Similar to how I used to think fruit juice was good for you.
Because I really, really, really hate the taste of yogurt.
Back in 2005, after a week of not being allowed to eat or drink for medical reasons - in other words, I was starving - a lot of stuff I normally didn’t like to eat or drink tasted FANTASTIC! for the two or three days they were reintroducing me to food. Except yogurt. I got about one and half spoonfuls down and it tasted VILE to me. Nauseating. Like eating rotting stuff.
That’s how much I dislike yogurt.
So, please, have my share of my the world’s yogurt. Please, take it. 
I’m trying to figure out what I can use as a thickener other than yogurt. Or ice cream. Because, while I could justify an ice-cream smoothie every couple of months as a Very Special Treat it’s not at all something I want to eat on a regular basis.
I’m going to try a banana next time.
Also wondering if unflavored gelatin would work…?
There is this thing called “brushing” that is good for your teeth…
The whole “digestion occurs at the wrong part of your intestine” sounds like woo to me.
A big problem with a lot (though not all) smoothies is ADDED sugars. Stuff like typical yogurt, ice cream, a lot of the commercial protein powders, all have added sugar that just adds, well, sugar and calories. They turn it into essentially a liquid candy bar.
Another problem is juicing/juice - that’s basically water and sugar (maybe some color and bits of other stuff). If, however, you include pulp - which is what you get when you blend/chop/etc. whole fruits/vegetables - then you get some of the fiber.
Another problem is this thing called “moderation”. The small smoothies at my local coffee shop are 12 ounces. I was making one about 6-8 ounces which, even if it was the same formula (it wasn’t) is still about half the calories.
What I’m sort of looking for is a sort of dessert/snack that isn’t wholly garbage. I mean, there’s really nothing stopping me (other than my naked will) from going into my pantry and consuming fistfuls of pure white sugar (or brown sugar, or honey, or molasses - I have all of those). I don’t usually eat dessert, but when I do a piece of fruit is often it. A piece of fruit, not the whole damn produce section at the grocery store.
So… a half cup of fruit and a half cup of milk and nothing else is a naturally sweet thing that yes, does have sugar in it but also fiber and protein and some fats and calcium and a bit of vitamins. That’s a serving of fruit and a serving of dairy. Which is reasonable. Add a banana and you have two servings of fruit. I could just eat the berries and banana and down a half a cup of milk instead… and some days I do. It’s just another way to get the same thing.
A giant smoothie made with four cups of fruit, with sugar-laden typical yogurt, sugar-laden protein powder, and bunch of other stuff… not so healthy because that’s a LOT of sugar.
It’s like people who down 16 ounces of orange juice. Um… that’s a lot of calories. When I was a kid a serving of orange juice was 4-6 ounces. Which is more of an actual serving and a reasonable amount in regards to benefits vs. liabilities.
Fruit juice is good for you. In small amounts. If you squeeze the juice out of a singe orange that’s about right. Pouring a pint of orange juice out of a bottle… not so much.
Eating fruit is good, but you need to balance it with everything else you should/need to eat. Like vegetables, protein, etc.
That’s one reason I want to use frozen fruit - I’m just one person, there is no way I could eat, say, a pound of fresh berries, a half dozen bananas, a couple peaches, and so on before they go bad. But if I have them frozen I can just take enough for a small portion while the rest remain tucked in the freezer NOT going bad until I get around to them.
Overeating fruit is as bad as overeating any other type of food.
Yeah - but eating the orange is MUCH better!
I’m not a big fan of yogurt. Not aware of even being able to taste it in smoothies.
Good luck finding what works for you.
I use a pinch of xanthan gum. Other than that, my smoothie recipe is the same: frozen berries+milk. Or banana+strawberries+milk. The xanthan gum isn’t really necessary, but it reduces separation in the end product. I bought a BlendTec and it works well.
Is the absence of a base the most common reason for smoothies being underwhelming? What other mistakes could a novice be making?
What are the best ways to clean the blender? Anything to keep the noise down?
Immediately rinse it in hot water. Like, right after you pour out. What I like about the Ninja is you don’t have to struggle to unscrew a base. The blades just come out for an easy rinse. 20 seconds and it’s clean and drying on the rack and you can slurp with an easy conscience. I also like the cylindrical vessel being full of blades as opposed to the conical blender with blades on the bottom. Moves the stuff around better, which is nice if you like a thick drink.
One problem that I ran into:
When I started making banana smoothies, I decided to buy a few bunches, slice all of them, and then freeze. Sounded like a good idea at the time, but what happened is that the slices froze together into a single huge blob (actually two, since I put them in two bags).
Anyone know of ways to avoid this problem? It seems like the issue that bananas are so moist that they “wept” at first, and then the excess water froze. They’re also so soft that the slices have a large point of contact between them (instead of a small point like you might have with a firm berry). So they ended up glued together pretty solidly.
They’re still good and I can basically pry off slices with a butter knife, but it’s annoying. I was thinking of pre-freezing the slices on waxed paper, but that sounds like a lot of work.
I doubt there’s a better way.
Lay a sheet of waxed paper onto a cookie sheet, slice banana onto it in a single layer, then gently set in freezer. You can “accordion” the waxed paper between the slices once they’re frozen, if that makes sense. (I freeze bacon sometimes, and similarly have to keep the pieces separated.)
I was looking into smoothie thickeners (other than ice cream and yogurt) and came up with:
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Bananas - already mentioned here
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Xantham gum - already mentioned here. No calories!
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Chia seeds - I think I might have an issue with those, unfortunately.
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Oatmeal - hey, I like oatmeal! And I have some in my pantry…
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Silken tofu - hey, I like tofu! And it’s protein!
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Unflavored gelatin - not sure how that’s going to work out, it can be tricky to use in some applications. But hey, no sugar and it’s also protein. And I have some in my pantry…
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Nut butters - hey, I’ve got cashew butter on hand…
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Avocado - er… not a fan, but may someone else would like them
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Flax seed
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Protein powder - although a lot of them have tons of sugar and stuff, and the unflavored stuff tends to be pricey
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Cottage cheese - hey, I like cottage cheese…
I foresee some experimenting in my near future.
Have also considered that an occasional shot of vodka might be a pleasing variant (only to be consumed in moderation, of course), then I thought, isn’t that sort of the margarita/daiquiri territory?
Well, okay, but blending anything with sugar is essentially liquefying a candy bar, because sugar is sugar is sugar. And that’s what’s in fruit–sugar. I mean, that’s why we like it.
I believe the point Quartz was getting at is the destruction of the natural fibrous delivery system of the fruit’s flesh in the blending process. So it’s kind of like pounding up your time-release opioid medication into a powder and snorting it to get the sudden high which you otherwise wouldn’t get.
I came into the thread to post this.
You can grind the oatmeal into powder before you add the other ingredients. It’s still the slightest bit gritty, but I can hardly taste it.
I like the tofu option if it’s silken tofu. It makes it more custardy. I’ve never tried firmer tofu. I wonder if that would work too.
You can reserve 1/2 cup - cup of your liquid and make a second smoothie by blending the leftovers in the carafe into something thinner and easier to pour out. If you have a habit of making thick smoothies, between what’s left over in the carafe and what’s left over in your cup, you can often make a second smoothie that’s maybe half the thickness of the first just from what’s left behind.
Ah right, so that’s why it gets digested at the wrong part of the intestine.
Cottage cheese is okay, but yogurt isn’t? Weird. (Not doubting you, but weird.)
For folks who don’t mind yogurt, I have a tip. No, not yogurt: whey.
I recently started making yogurt in our instant pot–my wife eats nearly a pint a day of yogurt, and it’s cheaper and less wasteful to make it ourselves. But she likes it strained, like Greek yogurt, which means a gallon of milk makes two quarts of yogurt and two quarts of whey.
We used to put yogurt in our smoothies, but it turns out that whey in smoothies is delicious. It doesn’t thicken the smoothie, but it imparts that delicious yogurty tang, and it’s pretty healthy, and it uses the whey up.
Raw egg. My gf made me a smoothie years ago and it was amazing. When she told me the texture was due to a raw egg I nearly puked and was a little pissed off she’d snuck it by me. Then I had another.
We have hens, so I don’t worry about eating eggs raw, but you could try pasteurized raw egg.
You might want to check the expiration date on your cottage cheese.
Every bite of cottage cheese I’ve tried expired before I tasted it, despite the lies on the listed expiration date.
OK, sure, fruit has sugar. But I’m talking about adding sugar to what’s already in the fruit. It’s sugar on top of sugar.
It seems sugar is now being demonized in the way fact used to be. Sugar in and of itself isn’t bad. Too much sugar is bad. The sugar you get from eating one orange (or drinking the juice of one orange) is not bad. The sugar from a dozen oranges all at once probably is, especially if it’s crowding out other nutrient.
Wow.
That’s just… what, you put the stuff in a blender for three hours or something? Or maybe you normally swallow fruit whole instead of chewing it, which also reduces it to mush? I don’t get this. Chopped/miniced/chewed/smoothie fruit fiber is still fiber, it’s not being reduced to the molecular level. That sounds like it’s edging into woo territory to me.
Reminds me of a guy I once heard of who wouldn’t eat raw, unadorned carrots because they had “too much sugar”. WTF? Really? Just plain carrots? How many are you eating at once?