The Nutritional Value of a Daily Smoothie for My Child

A lot of kids are picky eaters, especially those on the spectrum. Our boy certainly falls under that category. When he was first eating solid foods, he would try just about anything. But by the age of 2 (around the time of his diagnosis) his dietary preferences gradually became more rigid. Ultimately, he stopped eating any whole fruits or vegetables except bananas and dehydrated apples.

This raised concerns about his nutrition, so we got him in the habit of eating a daily fruit and veggie smoothie. For the past few years, I have been making up a batch of the smoothie every few weeks, which includes:

1 Sweet Potato (364 g)

~15 baby carrots (100 g)

1 broccoli crown (342 g)

1 mango (180 g)

2 pears (319 g)

Oat fiber for regularity (25 g)

The sweet potato, carrots, and broccoli are steamed then blended with everything else into a puree. I divide the batch into daily aliquots sorted into small plastic cups (about 50 g of puree per cup) with lids that I store in the freezer. Then I thaw one out out every day and mix in a few teaspoons (~25 g) of coconut milk yogurt before spoon feeding it first thing in morning. And that’s our routine.

Sometimes I switch it up a bit, using kale or spinach instead of broccoli, or peaches instead of pears, for example. My goal is to include a variety of things that he wouldn’t normally eat otherwise. It doesn’t taste too bad, and he usually doesn’t mind eating it.

After doing this daily nutrition routine for the past few years, I wondered how nutritious it actually was. So I decided to weigh out everything that goes into an average batch, calculate the amount of nutrients based on the weight and nutrition tables from the USDA, and see what percentage of the daily recommended dietary intake of nutrients (for a 4–8 year old) that it provides.

Here’s what that looks like:

Additionally, each cup has about 70 calories, and 1.25 g of fat, which aren’t shown on the chart because they don’t have a DRI listed by the USDA for this age group.

By no surprise there is a decent amount of fiber, vitamin C, and vitamin A. Perhaps more surprising are high levels of copper and vitamin B6. There is also a lot of vitamin B12, which comes entirely from the coconut yogurt. But I was honestly a bit surprised to see most levels of vitamins and minerals below 10% RDI.

Since the rest of his diet is probably not making up for the gap in nutrients, I tried supplementing a recent batch with some vitamin powder, at about half the recommended dosage. But it added a terrible bitterness that was something like black licorice to the extreme. It about made me gag (and I like black licorice). It also turned it a dull gray color that made it look even less appetizing. I had to toss out that batch.

I have also tried adding whey protein to the smoothie, since meat is a bit lacking in our child’s diet. The whey protein doesn’t seem to affect the taste much. Similarly, the oat fiber adds a bit of chalkiness to the flavor, but it’s not that noticeable.

I’ve included chia seeds in the past, and should probably do that more often. There are some other things I could add to up my smoothie game like flaxseed as well that would boost nutrition in a variety of ways.

In conclusion, without supplementing vitamins, the smoothie tastes good, my kiddo eats it, and it adds some nutrition that he wouldn’t otherwise get. So for now the most important thing is to take the nutrition it does provide, try new things to incrementally add nutrition, and keep that routine going rather than risk complete refusal to eat it due to a sudden taste shift in the wrong direction.

Because honestly, some weeks he probably gets in more fruits and veggies from this smoothie routine than I do.

Robert Lawrence writes about science and illustrates data. You can find his published work at www.robertlawrencephd.com.