To really not get the whole fruit/smoothie thing?

[FedupofbeingtoldIcantusemyname]

I always feel like I'm missing something in these conversations.

Obviously eating too much whole fruit or smoothies is not good as both contain lots of sugar.

However I really can't understand those people that assert that smoothies are soooo much worse for you than regular whole fruit.

Surely if you eat, say 1 apple (50 calories?), 1 banana (100 calories) and drink a 250ml glass of milk (100 calories) it is calorifically identical to drinking a smoothie made with 1 apple, 1 banana and 250ml milk. Isn't it?

I am assuming, in this example, that the smoothie is home made in a blendy thing (like I have) that just chops everything up to liquid rather than a juicer.

Aibu?? Why are they supposedly so bad for you? Surely the fibre etc in the fruit in the smoothie doesn't leak out or evaporate if you make it and drink it straight away? Am I completely wrong?

Yeah I'm with you on this. I don't really get why fruit generally has such a bad rep nowadays.

I guess you might have more smoothie than you would whole fruit? Plus I think they are worse for teeth.

Very few people make a smoothie with one apple and one banana. They use far more fruit than most could eat in a sitting. That's part of the problem.
The blender also breaks down a lot of the fibre.

I never understand people saying fruit is bad for you, full of sugar etc, nobody ever got fat eating too many strawberries

What PP said about eating more than you might normally. Plus generally you would feel hungry again sooner than if you'd had the whole fruit. Processing the fruit increases the GI factor too.

There was a good demonstration of this on TV a couple of years ago. The smoothies use way more fruit than you'd eat if you had it solid. So you consume masses more sugar if you have smoothies regularly than if you ate a couple of pieces of fruit.

I had a smoothie today for inch as I was wanting something on the go.

It had half a medium banana, half an apple, spinach, half a medium carrot and half a red pepper.

Dd (12) had one for breakfast as shevstruggles to eat early before school. Half a banana, half an apple, oats, milk and some spinach in it.

No different to porridge with fruit in (except for the spinach).

I think, as pps say, it's when you are consuming more that you usually would.

I don't get this "fruit is bad" crap either. What about "an apple a day keeps the doctor away?" And what the hell happened to the dictum "eat everything in moderation"??

Firstly it takes time to register that you're full, drinking is faster than eating, so you're not as full in the same time and will have more.

Secondly the work of chewing and digesting food is part of what fills you up, so again, not as full.

So you're more likely to drink more calories than you'd eat and you're more likely to eat something else sooner than you would if you'd eaten that portion.

And yes, some of the fibre has been destroyed by blending it.

Weight watchers describe it as when you eat fruit whole you are using approx the same energy to eat it as you get from it but when it's a smoothie then the hard work has been done for you so you use less energy

Me too sooper. I don't buy the whole 'sugar is evil and makes you fat' any more than demonising any other food group. Your body needs some sugar.

Anyways, what if you genuinely don't use tonnes of fruit and just have a normal amount in a smoothie? I make mine with maybe just 2/3 pieces of fruit e.g, an apple, a pear and a few raspberries etc or it works out too expensive! I sometimes add oats, chia seeds or nut butters and work it out, it never comes to more than 300 calories. I find it much easier drinking a smoothie for breakfast than eating early in the morning. But the idea of just eating 2/3 whole pieces of fruit is completely unappealing.

Broken down fruit cells release more sugar so sugar content is much higher than whole fruit. Its much better to eat whole fruit than blended fruit for this reason, you might eat one apple but you'd need to blend quite a few to get a glass of apple juice and all those 'loose sugars' increase the calorie intake substantially.

A diabetic explained to me that juicing fruit breaks down the fibre which the body needs to "buffer" the absorption of sugar. So it caused a spike in blood sugar and that's why he won't touch juices/smoothies but will eat the whole fruit.

I find smoothies incredibly filling. I agree that they contain more fruit than you would normally eat in one go.

However I know a couple of people who wouldn't touch fruit but do drink smoothies regularly... so they can be a good alternative I think!

I don't get the 'fruit is bad for you' argument but when I had GD I was told not to have smoothies as the broken down fruit releases the sugar in a much larger faster hit

But how can that be ducks?

If an apple had 25g of sugar, it will still have 25g when blended won't it? It can't magically multiply to 50g just because it's blended? The sugar in the cells will still be there whether it's your teeth breaking the cells down or a blender?

Morgan I'm fairly sure that's bollocks. You don't burn 50 calories (or whatever it is) eating an apple, surely?

And yes, some of the fibre has been destroyed by blending it

But how??!! I don't get it!!!! If you eat 20g of fibre from fruit in one sitting, then have the exact same fruit just puréed in a smoothie, surely you're still drinking 20g of fibre? If not, where does it go?! What happens to it!

I watched a programe where they were suggesting that having the same food in a liquid form (i.e, soup) actually kept you fuller for longer than eating it whole.

Personally, I don't find myself any hungrier having had a smoothie vs eating solid food but maybe it's just me

That does make sense penguin and username, I understand that much more

I work with dieticians and I asked about this. Apparently not all sugar is treated the same by your body. When you blend it the fructose becomes a 'free sugar' which makes you gain weight - more than if you ate the fruit in its natural state.
It's fine to have a small smoothy now and again, but you're better off eating fruit in its natural state apparently.

I don't really like fruit or smoothies but I think the fibre thing is that it's healthy for your gut because you have to work digesting it, rather than it being like a vitamin/mineral and just getting absorbed. so if you blend it then you don't get the benefit because it all goes straight through you... I think

And while digesting whole fruit your body uses the sugar as it's digested, which is comparatively slowly. If it's all shoved straight into your stomach in liquid form it's all sucked up into the blood straight away

is it not to do with you changing the natural state of fructose by blending the fruit so its like your adding sugar i have been on a health eating course recently [long story ] and i,m sure this was mentioned i could be wrong though.

"surely you're still drinking 20g of fibre? If not, where does it go?! What happens to it!"

You've destroyed the cells with great big blades...

"I watched a programe where they were suggesting that having the same food in a liquid form (i.e, soup) actually kept you fuller for longer than eating it whole."

Soup is different, it's warm, it's got added water and the quickest you can have it is still sipping, even if you don't use a spoon.

Am I being really thick? I might be. But ... aren't cells tiny? DP is a biology type who works on cells and when she shows me stuff from work, they're minute. Whereas smoothies are just sort of smushed-up fruit. So would you not find that only some cells were actually broken, and most were intact?

And if that's so, how different is it from chewed fruit, or a fruit puree?

Digesting food requires energy. You've partially digested it by damaging all of the cells so it takes less energy to digest.
The sugar is readily available rather than your digestive system having to work for it and if it hadn't already been partially digested by juicing, our bodies can't digest all vegetable matter.

Sweet corn is a good example. Liquidise it and make fritters, you won't see it again. Eat it whole and it's like a book mark in your digestion.

And as pp said, not all
Sugars are created equal. There are big differences between fructose, glucose, sucrose and lactose.

I don't understand why the majority of people can't just eat food instead of mush in a bottle but each to their own.

But you don't liquidise sweetcorn to make fritters?

The majority of people do just eat food - but most of us do things like chopping, seasoning, and cooking. All of which takes that 'food' away from its initial pristine state. I've yet to understand why exactly this is such a bad thing (unless you're making sweetcorn fritters from liquidised sweetcorn, in which case, yes, they will be bad!).

Completely with you op..

The majority of overweight people will have a carbs issue, not a drinking too many smoothies issue..