to think smoothies are a bit pointless?

[AllMimsyWereTheBorogoves]

Inspired by goady thread which has just been deleted, but picking up on one point that's always puzzled me:

I don't understand why people have smoothies instead of eating fruit and vegetables in something more like their natural form.

Don't our jaws and teeth need the exercise, chomping away?

Does it affect the amount of fibre you're getting if you blitz fruit and veg to pulp before eating it? We need that fibre going through the gut to keep things moving at a brisk pace and to carry off all sorts of nasty stuff with it.

And surely it must be awfully easy to swallow a huge amount of fructose from the fruit and the sweeter vegetables (eg parsnip, carrot) if it's all in liquid form? Fructose is just sugar, you know. Sugar + acid (lots of that in fruit too) = disaster for the teeth.

Am I missing something?

I made a pretty horrific green one before though. Too much mint. It wasn't the best.

did the same with an avocado once - I love avocado, but this was quite disgusting (bleurgh)

I love eating fruit but smoothies mean that I can get more veg into my diet, as I usually have maybe one or two servings with dinner and possibly some at lunch if I have a salad instead of soup. I can easily eat five portions of fruit though, so the balance is way off.

Adding spinach doesn't change the taste but adds more nutrients.

If part of your problem is that it's not in its natural form, then doesn't that apply to so many foods? Pizza = dough + cheese + tomatoes + other toppings, yogurt = milk + fruit, chocolate = cocoa + sugar and etc, pie/tart/pastries = dough and fillings.

We have smoothies because we like them. It's not as if we don't have 'normal' fruit and veg either.

Also, I stick a scoop of protein powder into my smoothies after a hard workout, which tastes far nicer than a protein shake on its own.

What happened to that thread?
Did it go bad?

Yes - MNHQ thought it wasn't genuine

I sometimes have one instead of breakfast, I keep bags of fresh fruit mixes in the freezer so it's a case of emptying one in the blender with a handful of oats and a carton of natural yoghurt. It keeps me full for hours and is fairly gentle on my stomach and is was better for me than a large hazelnut latte and almond croissant from costa.

They are as good as a meal..... Unlike a can of coke, which doesn't fill you up at all!

What else am I supposed to do with my overripe bananas? Yes I know I could make banana cake, but every week?

I add a spoonful of organic flax powder to my smoothies, so to me they are a superfood and I won't hear a word said against them!

If you think about a smoothie as a drink, then clearly its not as optimal as water, but neither is any other drink (if the purpose of a drink is to hydrate). If you cannot abide whole fruit but want to consume some then they are better than a juice or nothing. If you are having one in addition to lots of fruit then they are unnecessary or if you are replacing whole fruit with them then that's less ideal if they are the over liquidized store bought variety. But they aren't going to hurt anyone are they?

as noted, commercial smoothies are sugar in a glass - biggest con in an industry full of cons.

mushing up good food always seems a bit sad to me for those with functioning teeth and jaws.

of course guzzling a smoothie made of a large amount of fruit means ingesting lots of sugar, so better do some exercise.

Oh I see Evans !

Obviously it had the potential to go tits up anyway!

There's a huge snobbishness on mumsnet about what other people eat and there's a belief that if you haven't freshly sourced your organic, unpronounceable raw, tasteless food an hour before then you aren't having a healthy diet. Arses to that. Judge me if you like but I'm happy as I am.

I like smoothie, I like pizza, I like fruit, I like chocolate and I even like faggots from the frozen section of the supermarket. I eat things in moderation and I try to make sure I exercise. I try to follow a healthy diet but I don't beat myself up if I have something 'bad', as a result I don't obsess over food and it never dominates my thoughts. I am a very healthy BMI normally (currently full term pregnant), I have never had a filling and I feel healthy.

I like smoothies OP, do I have to justify it anymore than that?

Isn't food mushed up for most meals though?

Chopped/puree tomatoes
Ground almonds
Scrambled eggs
Sauces
Grated cheese/cream cheese
Dough
Soups

I'm not actually asking anybody to justify liking/ingesting smoothies. My AIBU was 'to think smoothies are a bit pointless', which is about as mild as they come on AIBU.

Hey, I stated the fact that 250ml of Innocent strawberry/banana smoothie has about the same calories as 335ml of Coke. You drink less but get the same amount of calories. I also stated (perhaps you didn't get to this bit) that obviously the smoothie has more vitamins and minerals and also contains some fibre, which the Coke obviously doesn't. How does that make me clueless?

I'm not preaching. I was just a little puzzled about what the attraction was. Personally I'd rather have my vegetables in the form of soup, stews, salads etc, enjoy all the different tastes, colours and textures separately and not have all the faff of cleaning the blender/processor. Clearly many others feel differently.

specialsubject and I seem to be in agreement, so we can shuffle off to the non-smoothie-eating corner and gnaw on a raw carrot together.

Are you talking about smoothies or juices? Two different things. Anyway, I'll try to explain.

I suppose I don't understand the premise of your question. It makes as much sense to me as saying 'Aren't soups pointless when you could eat all the vegetables separately and drink a glass of warm water?'

The smoothie I make at home is usually: a banana, some blueberries, oats, cinnamon, natural yoghurt, ice, skim milk, LSA (linseed, sunflower & almond mix), sometimes a handful of rolled oats, whizzed in a blender.

I could eat all the solid bits separately and drink the milk on its own, but it wouldn't taste as good.

The calories in a can of Coke have nothing to do with it; I drink a smoothie as a meal (breakfast, usually), or a substantial post-workout snack. It's not supposed to be a drink.

I don't buy or drink Innocent smoothies, or any other commercial brand.

YABU to assume that smoothies are pointless to everybody.
YANBU to dislike them yourself.

I like coca cola. I like smoothies. I like fruit. I like veggies. None are mutually exclusive as dad as I'm aware.

And yes, soups are as pointless as smoothies by that logic!

I don't clean my blender I have a Kmix and a dishwasher.

We're all different, as this thread has made abundantly clear.

I love bananas. One of the things I love about them is the texture (which obviously many people loathe, my daughter included). So for me having a mashed banana is not nearly as enjoyable as eating a whole banana (peeled, obviously!).

As for soups, to destroy my own argument, I do like smooth soups sometimes - leek and potato, for example - and yes, of course, those are very like a smoothie. But I also absolutely love soups like broth or minestrone with lots of little bits of vegetable, pulses, barley, rice, meat/chicken and so on floating in a flavoursome stock.

I have a Nutribullet which barely needs cleaning and takes nanoseconds to whizz up a gorgeous homemade smoothie.

I put a banana, oats, chia seeds, linseed, milk, natural yoghurt and goji berries in together. I would possibly only eat the banana on its own.

I have also made some grim concoctions (hell just remembered one is still lurking in the fridge) with too much green stuff like celery, spinach, ginger -who knows what else in and that was just too much!

I will also eat a couple of bits of fruit during the day and some vegetables with dinner.

I don't think that they are pointless at all as even though they are not ideal you still probably get a lot more good from them than from not having them at all.

I'd also agree that there is quite a difference between a commercially produced, pure fruit smoothie and one made freshly at home with veg and 'extras' like chia, linseed etc

Smoothies will rot your teeth and are basically just sugar. Might as well have a can of fanta, just as healthy

Are the Nutribullets any good? Can they go in the dishwasher and can I literally put whole fruits in there core and all?

Ladygingina that is rubbish. Your teeth do rot if they're not brushed yes but nutritionally smoothies are far better than Fanta. That kind of attitude is so useful to have.

I think smoothies are great for enjoyment. They are also great for getting people who aren't keen on fruit/veg to get some fruit into them. Mumsnet seems to have a weird obsession with fruit and particularly juices etc being unhealthy - really unhelpful when you're a recovering anorexic who is currently pregnant and trying to concentrate on feeding the growing baby nutritious food.