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 always shove a spoonful of ground flaxseed in too :)

They're a staple around here. Add a teeny slosh of real vanilla paste to the milk and banana based ones. Delish.

They mean a lot more fruit is consumed in our house

They mean the fruit that is 'on the turn' still gets eaten

They are nice

3 reasons why they are not pointless.

It's confusing the argument though, as people are describing a 'smoothie' in different ways.
Here we just put bananas, natural yog., and whatever other soft fruit is hanging about in the blender, but clearly people do different things, or even buy it commercially, so it's a very different beast then.