When I recommend dietary changes to clients, my initial recommendation is to consume more fruit. Why? Because if you eat a lot of processed food—anything canned, bottled, wrapped or packaged in any way—there’s a 74% chance that it has added sugar in it.
The USDA recommendation for consuming added sugar is no more than six teaspoons per day for a woman and nine teaspoons per day for a man. One 12 ounce can of Pepsi contains about nine teaspoons of added sugar, so it’s easy to blow by the USDA recommendations after breakfast or lunch.
Most Americans are consuming sugary products all day long and are addicted to sugar. However, there’s no suggested limit on how much sugar you may consume from natural products, like fruits and vegetables.
So, I say go for it. Let’s have a fruit party!
So, the biggest question I get about fruit consumption is should you consume your fruit in a smoothie? This is something I usually do not recommend. Of course, a smoothie is better than not consuming fruit at all, but we want things too quickly and easily in our culture. Yes. Chewing takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it from a metabolic perspective.
So here are my top five reasons to eat your fruit rather than put it in a smoothie.
- I’ve yet to find rock-solid information regarding how fiber may or may not be altered/destroy by a high-speed blender. However, I have heard that when consuming a smoothie, the absorption rate of the nutrients is faster, so the blender must have some effect.
- I prefer my clients get their fruit in during the course of an entire day rather than getting it all in one dose in a smoothie. Fruit should be consumed during breakfast, lunch and as dessert after dinner.
- Many people add all types of other products in smoothies, like protein powders, supplements, honey, none of which I recommend. After a while, fruit is the least of the products in it.
- The chewing process is the beginning of digestion since there are digestive juices in saliva. I have yet to chew a smoothie!
- I once heard Robert Lustig, author of “Fat Chance,” say, “It’s better to eat your calories than drink your calories.” You will consume less calories and that’s a good thing for most people.
