Are smoothies really good for you?
Humans evolved with a high intake of plants in our diet. Yet most people today do not eat a whole lot of fruits and vegetables. In fact, very few Americans meet the relatively meager federal recommended daily intake. This is a notable issue because there are many uniquely good things plants offer us.
Aside from fiber, vitamins, and minerals, plants offer us their phytochemicals, like carotenoids and polyphenols. These compounds have a wide range of health-promoting effects when we eat them. Here are a few benefits, with links to some of our previous writings detailing the positive effects:
- Fighting cancer
- Keeping arteries healthy
- Reducing inflammation and pain
- Improving aerobic capacity
- Blocking pathogenic microbes
- Protecting against cognitive decline
Two ways to get more plants in your diet is to blend them into a soup or smoothie. But does pulverizing fruits and veggies with a blender reduce their value? Certainly, ancient hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of Africa did not have a Vitamix. It’s a reasonable question, especially for those of us who eat smoothies or blended soups regularly.
It’s what you absorb
It turns out blending is not only not a problem, but as far as nutrient absorption is concerned, it’s actually a good thing. Let’s take a closer look at plant chemicals like beta carotene (the orange pigment in carrots and sweet potatoes) or lycopene (the red pigment in tomatoes and watermelon).
These compounds are inside the cell walls of fruits and vegetables. In order for these nutrients to be accessed by our bodies, the walls need to be broken. Our teeth do a pretty good job at this. However, blenders do a better job releasing these nutrients than chewing alone does.
When you process plant matter into tiny particles, these beneficial plant compounds become several times more accessible to the body. As an example, lycopene is 2–3 times more bioavailable from tomato paste than it is from fresh tomatoes.
Another interesting aspect of this is fiber. When you blend veggies into a smoothie, or include them in a soup, the fiber remains. Our ancient ancestors took in between 70–120g of fiber per day, but on average, Americans only get between 13–17 grams a day (cringe).
We know fiber is necessary to keep our gut microbiome healthy, but what a lot of people don’t know is that keeping the fiber means you’re also getting more healthy polyphenols (which are often bound to fiber). This is part of the reason why apple smoothies provide way more polyphenols than apple juice. This is also why smoothies are a better bet for health than drinking juice.
So what’s the verdict?
The blender can break plants down better than our teeth (no matter how good of a chewer you are). This means better access to absorb some of the healthy components these foods offer. Pretty cool.
In your smoothies, use mostly whole fruits and veggies. If you’re looking for vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytonutrients, greens are your best bet, and berries are pretty awesome too. Add in some frozen bananas and you’ve got a creamy delicious smoothie packed full of nutrients.
Overall, the science suggests that processing plants in this way is a good thing. An intelligently-devised smoothie could (in a way) help us return towards an ancestral eating pattern by helping us get more plants, and therefore, more fiber and nutrients into our diet while living in an era where this is actually a challenge to pull off.
