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Smoothies: Do Not Use Fruit Stones or Frozen Fruits

Health-conscious people don’t leave the house in the morning without their smoothie. When preparing the vitamin drink, however, there are a few things to consider so that the positive health effect does not turn negative. For example, frozen fruits and fruit stones are taboo for smoothies.

No fruit pits for smoothies

Not all ingredients for fruity smoothies are healthy – the right choice makes the difference! For example, no fruit cores such as those from apples, cherries, or plums should be put into the blender, as the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center is now warning.

During the digestion process, the nuclei form hydrocyanic acid. This in turn can lead to poisoning, shortness of breath, vomiting, or cramps in large quantities. The fruit stones should therefore be carefully removed before adding them to the smoothie mixer.

No frozen fruit for smoothies

Frozen fruits like strawberries, raspberries or blueberries are popular ingredients for smoothies. After all, the goods are fresh from the field, where they are shock-frozen directly. On the one hand, this means that a lot of vitamins and minerals remain, but on the other hand, the burden of pathogenic noroviruses can also be high.

The virus can be killed with heat. For this, it is necessary that the frozen fruits are not used directly from the freezer or thawed, but are heated to at least 90 degrees before consumption. If possible, smoothie lovers should use fresh, seasonal fruit from the region and only occasionally switch to frozen goods.

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Cooking Tips

Make Delicious and Healthy Smoothies

Are smoothies healthy? Yes, freshly prepared you can create delicious and healthy smoothies that are good for your health. We explain why smoothies are healthy and give great tips for making them from leftover vegetables. We have recipes for summer and winter.

Are smoothies healthy?

Do you often ask yourself are smoothies healthy or is it all just a marketing strategy? Of course, it depends on the preparation of the smoothies whether they are healthy or not. But when you make smoothies yourself, it’s in your hands. That’s why smoothies have experienced real hype in recent years. Because freshly prepared, they can be full of healthy ingredients. As a result, smoothies are healthier than juices because they use whole fruit or leafy greens. This preserves important fiber, which is important for good intestinal health, regulates blood sugar levels, and curbs appetite.

Make delicious smoothies and avoid flavor enhancers

And the good thing is that delicious smoothies are quick and easy to make yourself. You avoid unhealthy flavor enhancers. This is important because these, especially glutamate, are suspected of being harmful to health and of being a co-trigger of various diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis. It is also said to contribute to migraines, asthma, allergic reactions, nausea, dizziness, and a constant feeling of hunger, which in turn leads to obesity. However, it should be said here that glutamate is controversial in science.

Eat healthy with homemade smoothie juices

As a result, you are on the safe side if you consume flavor enhancers such as glutamate in moderation. So try to eat healthily. That means: eating as much unprocessed food as possible, mainly basic, home-cooked dishes. Also, eat little or no sugar and also avoid other artificial sweeteners of any kind. As a result, you should have raw or lightly cooked food on your menu that is as fresh as possible. Wild herbs and organic products are also beneficial. The purer the food, the better. Keyword Clean Eating. So you can eat healthily and still eat deliciously. Various smoothies will also help you with this.

Make smoothies from leftover veggies

It’s in our kitchen, in our freezers, or on the shelf. The vegetables are no longer attractive, but thanks to the smoothies you can conjure up something very special from them. So you don’t have to throw away what you paid dearly for and thus contribute to food waste. So put the vegetables in the practical kitchen helper called a blender, add water and some fruit, and you’ve created something completely new that doesn’t look as wilted or shriveled as it did before.

Benefits of a vegetable smoothie

But a smoothie is not always a healthy smoothie. Because there is a difference between whether you put vegetables or fruit in a smoothie. A lot of vegetables are one of the most important basic nutritional elements. Fruit, on the other hand, should only be eaten in moderation, in whatever form, as it contains fructose. Although this does not work like industrial sugar, it causes blood sugar to skyrocket. As a result, fructose can promote obesity and other unhealthy side effects. This contradicts the general belief that a lot of fruit is also healthy, but as mentioned, that is only partially true. Consequently, not all smoothies are suitable for successful and healthy weight loss.

Make your own green smoothies

Green smoothies have become particularly popular. They contain a lot of green leafy vegetables such as spinach, green salads, and wild herbs, which in turn contain a large number of vital substances, chlorophyll, and antioxidants. Chlorophyll purifies the blood, promotes detoxification, accelerates wound healing, and much more. A green with particularly sweet fruit, such as a ripe banana, still tastes very sweet with greens.

Green smoothies can also be prepared with cucumbers, broccoli, savoy cabbage, and other green vegetables. In addition to celery and garlic, other possible ingredients include tomatoes and peppers. You should always add some oil so that the body can also absorb the fat-soluble EDEKA vitamins. If you want to try wild herbs first, you can start with nettle, chickweed, and sorrel. When using dandelion, you should be careful, especially at the beginning, because it can be very tart and bitter.

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Cooking Tips

Coffee Smoothies – Avocado, Banana & Co in Your Coffee

Proper nutrition can be difficult, but thank God there are healthy smoothies! They taste good and provide our body many valuable nutrients. But what if we tell you that you can combine your favorite guard drink with it? Even better!

We want to help you find your new go-to coffee smoothie recipe. Of course, there are no limits to you and your imagination, but everyone has their taste preferences. There are so many options, be it smoothies with fruit, green smoothies, vegetables smoothies or low carb smoothies for losing weight – why not a coffee smoothie.

Coffee smoothie with banana recipe

1 large cup of coffee
1/2 cup of whole milk (or almond mich for vegan version)
2 bananas
2 tablespoons of peanut butter (optional)
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
2 TL honey (or natural sweetener)
Pinch
Ice cubes
Chia seeds

Avocado coffee recipe

1 ripe avocado
250 ml of almond milk
150 ml of coffee
1 tablespoon of honey
2 TL cinnamon

Coffee smoothie with coconut water – recipe

1 frozen banana
1 tablespoon of chia seeds
125 ml coconut water
1 teaspoon almonds (ground)
1 espresso
All of these ingredients are mixed together in the mixer – and this delicious coffee smoothie is ready.

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Food

3 Healthy Winter Smoothies That Will Warm You Up

Delicious winter smoothies can also be mixed from “winter vegetables”. Here are three delicious smoothie recipes with seasonal fruit and vegetables.

Of course, citrus fruits in particular are everywhere in winter, but they have come a long way. Tropical fruits are also delicious, but ecologically not sensible.

Instead, there are enough fruits and vegetables from local cultivation or from your own cellar to make healthy smoothies. Our winter smoothie recipes are based on the Utopia seasonal calendar. In it you can read when which fruit and vegetables are in season with us.

We have three simple recipes for you that require few ingredients, are therefore quick to prepare and are suitable for any time of the day. So that the fat-soluble vitamins can also be absorbed by the body, you should never omit the nuts.

Winter Smoothie Recipe #1: Spicy Beetroot

You only need a few ingredients for a smoothie that warms you from the inside with the spicy spiciness of ginger:

1 medium sized beetroot
1 large pear
1 piece of ginger
1 handful of hazelnuts
some water
How to prepare the winter smoothie:

Peel the beetroot and cut into pieces. Because the red juice stains strongly, it is better to wear gloves when processing the tuber or rub your fingers with lemon juice afterwards. Remove the core of the pear and peel the piece of ginger.
Now add water to taste and process all the ingredients into a creamy smoothie. The more ginger you use, the more warming the winter smoothie will be.
Tip: You can also use nut oil instead of grated hazelnuts. Simply add your nut oil of choice while blending so it emulsifies well. If you use roasted oil, the nut aroma is more intense.

Beetroot bulbs can weigh up to 600 grams and can be stored very well. That’s why they are also considered “winter vegetables”, although their harvest takes place in summer from July. So there is no reason to only eat them in winter.

The vegetables contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, especially potassium, B vitamins, iron and folic acid. With manganese, copper and selenium, beetroot also provides rare but important trace elements.
However, beetroot also has quite a lot of oxalic acid. Anyone who tends to form kidney stones should avoid excessive consumption of the red tuber.
Beetroot is also a good nitrate storer. Nitrates are used as fertilizer in agriculture and can be converted into toxic nitrite. If the field is over-fertilized, a relatively large amount of nitrate is stored in the beetroot. To minimize this risk, you should only buy organic beetroot.

Winter Smoothie Recipe #2: Winter Apple

Apples are a native fruit that is available to us practically all year round. They contain a lot of soluble and insoluble fiber such as pectins. Pectins are water soluble and cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Dietary fiber promotes digestion. They are also said to be helpful in preventing colon cancer. There is evidence that a high-fiber breakfast can directly or indirectly lower cholesterol levels. Tip: It is best to eat apples in their most natural form – as a whole fruit with skin.

The taste of this smoothie is reminiscent of baked apple. You need:

1 large apple
50 grams of raisins
1 handful of hazelnuts
Cinammon
some water
Here’s how to enjoy the winter smoothie for breakfast:

Soak the raisins in water the night before.
The next morning, remove the core of the apple. Then put the apple in the blender with the raisins, the soaking water and the hazelnuts.
If the raisins aren’t soaking in enough water to make them drinkable, add a little more water. Season with cinnamon and enjoy immediately.
In case you forgot to soak the raisins the night before, they will swell faster if you pour hot water over them. The better the raisins are soaked, the less power your blender will need. You can then also make the smoothie with a regular hand blender.

Smoothie Recipe #3: Fresh with lamb’s lettuce

Lamb’s lettuce also grows outdoors in winter in sheltered locations or under fleece. Not only in the cold months it is a good alternative to lettuce from greenhouses or southern growing areas.

Tip: If you don’t have any lamb’s lettuce at hand, you can also use other “winter salads” such as winter purslane, which is also called postelein.

For the green winter smoothie you need:

125 g lamb’s lettuce
1 large apple
1 tbsp walnuts
some water
How to prepare the winter smoothie:

Wash and clean the lamb’s lettuce well and cut the core out of the apple.
Put the apple and lettuce in a blender with a little water or use an immersion blender to make a green smoothie.
Roughly chop the walnuts and sprinkle over the smoothie. Do not puree with the other ingredients, the bitter substances in the walnuts would literally “bitter” the smoothie.
Tip: The smoothie recipe also tastes good with cress instead of lamb’s lettuce. In winter you can simply grow cress yourself on the window sill. You don’t need any special equipment for this: a plate and some kitchen paper are all you need to grow your own salad in the kitchen.

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Food

Smoothies: How Healthy are They Really?

Red, green, yellow: Smoothies are all the rage – but are they healthy too? And what exactly makes a healthy smoothie? Are the pureed fruits and vegetables really better than fresh? Are smoothies vegan? How much sugar do they contain?

In the cold season with dry heating air, wet, cold feet and cold viruses, our immune system has a lot to do! Vitamins help to support the body’s defenses and stay healthy.

Because it is not scientifically proven how well our body can absorb synthetic vitamins from effervescent tablets, vitamin pills or beverages and foods fortified with them, it is always best to absorb the vitamins in their natural form, i.e. directly from fruit and vegetables. Therefore, it is not only important in the wet and cold season to integrate this into our daily diet.

Simply drinking vitamins with smoothies?

It’s very easy with smoothies, which are recommended in every refrigerated section as a health booster. But because vitamins and some other phytonutrients degrade during storage and preservation, it’s healthier to make a smoothie fresh at home. You don’t necessarily need a smoothie maker from the advertisement. A simple, cheaper hand blender is all you need to start with.

Once you’ve gotten the taste for smoothies, it may be worth buying a powerful blender, with which you can crush ice cubes with the fruit in summer and also process woody components such as grass.

What exactly is a smoothie?

The “smoothie” is a neologism and originally comes from the South and Central American continent, where it has been freshly prepared as “jugo” (juice) with a blender at fruit and vegetable stands in the market for generations. From there, this way of preparing fruit and vegetables migrated to the USA, where the word “smoothie” came about.

“Smooth” means soft, creamy, smooth and supple, which primarily means the mouthfeel. Is that automatically healthy? Yes.

Because unlike juice, all the fruit and veg is processed here, resulting in a thick end product that sometimes needs a little water added to be drinkable. In the countries of origin, the “jugo” is served without water with a straw. This makes it easier (and more hygienic) to eat at the market.

What can go in the healthy smoothie?

Theoretically, everything that tastes good can be processed into smoothies. Grasses can also be combined with fruit and vegetables, and spinach or carrots, for example, give the smoothie bright colors. Various leafy greens, for example carrots or kohlrabi, taste delicious and do not have to go to the compost.

Spices and herbs make every smoothie even more interesting. It’s fun to experiment with spices to add that extra something to even simple combinations. Vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, tonka beans, cardamom, ginger and more go well with sweet creations – everything that is healthy. Green smoothies and those with a high vegetable content are deliciously seasoned with curry, paprika, dill, mint, basil, turmeric and many other herbs and spices.

To give your own smoothie recipes more variety, it’s worth taking a look in the pantry, for example to see the baking ingredients. Some cocoa, ground nuts or almonds also go well with many recipes and at the same time ensure a creamy consistency.

Is every smoothie healthy?

A smoothie is supposed to be healthy, so sugar (or honey and any other sugar alternative) has no place in the list of ingredients. What counts is the natural sweetness of the fruit and the pure taste. If the finished drink is too sour, a bit of banana always helps: Their natural fruit sweetness and creaminess quickly upgrade many smoothies. Dried fruits are also suitable.

But this is exactly where a problem with smoothies lies: due to the fruit sweetness, there is a lot of sugar in the creamy drinks. In the smoothie test, the consumer magazine Öko-Test had 20 red smoothies tested for their sugar content, among other things. Many smoothies even had a similarly high sugar content as lemonade and cola.

It is true that this is not added sugar, but the fructose of the individual types of fruit. Nevertheless, you can pay attention to the specified sugar content when buying a smoothie.

Are smoothies vegan?

Strictly speaking, smoothies are vegan, which is why dairy products have no place in them. In some recipes, ingredients such as milk or yoghurt appear. However, such a drink is then a “mixed milk drink”, especially if the milk makes up a larger part of the end product.

If you prepare fresh smoothies yourself, you can keep an eye on all the ingredients and make sure that the smoothie remains vegan. When buying a smoothie, you can look for a corresponding vegan logo.

What makes the smoothie a healthy vitamin bomb?

The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) recommends five portions or at least 400g of vegetables and 250g of fruit per day for adults, about half of which are raw and the other half heated.

The DGE also explains that the daily five servings of fruit and vegetables can occasionally be replaced by a vegetable juice or a fruit juice. “However, this should not happen every day,” the DGE continued.

According to the DGE, for a smoothie to replace a portion of fruit, it should:

  • a maximum of half juice and at least half pulp, puree or chunky fruit and vegetable components
  • no added sugar
  • no additives such as flavors, colors or preservatives
  • no isolated nutrients
  • not concentrated by removing water

If these requirements are met, the healthy smoothie can be a regular part of the diet. However, you should not replace fresh fruit and vegetables with smoothies every day.

Is a smoothie healthier than juice?

With a smoothie, fruit and vegetables are only pureed, not juiced. This means that most of the ingredients such as valuable dietary fiber and phytochemicals are included. This would not be the case with juice, since dietary fibers in particular from the peel and pulp are disposed of during juicing. Anyone who has ever made their own juice from carrots or apples knows how much pomace ends up unused in the (organic) waste bin. But it is precisely in the shell that there are often healthy ingredients.

A smoothie is usually freshly prepared and therefore contains more healthy vitamins than juice, which has to be preserved in bottles or tetra packs by heating. Even a ready-made smoothie from the refrigerated section contains more phytochemicals and vitamins than a juice that is also available chilled in the supermarket. However, it is generally better to freshly prepare a smoothie at home.

Are smoothies basically “light” or do they make you fat?

A smoothie, no matter what color it is, consists only of plant-based ingredients. However, this does not mean that smoothies are fat-free, because vegetables can also contain fat. Just think of the avocado, which is a little fat bomb with 15g of fat per 100g. But don’t worry: This fat is a healthy, vegetable fat that has a lot of calories, but also has positive effects on your health.

Smoothies are not necessarily low in calories, because with a smoothie you are consuming fruit and vegetables in a concentrated form. On the one hand this is good, on the other hand it can tempt you to consume more than you would actually eat if the fruit or vegetables were not pureed. Finished smoothies often contain a lot of hidden sugar in the form of fructose.

The disadvantage of fruit and vegetables in pureed form is that you can consume a large amount of them in a short time and do not give the feeling of satiety time to report in time. Too much of a good thing is no longer healthy.

A little trick: just imagine (even with juice!) the amount of fruit/vegetables that were on the table before you pureed/juiced them. Would you be able to eat the same portion again? Probably not. So skip the second glass, delicious as it is.

Healthy smoothies: You should keep this in mind when preparing them

In general, smoothies are easy to prepare. All you have to do is wash the fruit and vegetables, remove the cores if you have them and puree them with a stand mixer, blender or immersion blender. Because the whole fruit including the skin is used (as with vegetables), you should opt for organic quality food.

But in order to be able to use the vitamins contained in it optimally, you have to observe a few basic rules, otherwise the smoothie is only half as healthy as you think.

The ingredients should all be as fresh as possible in order to guarantee the highest vitamin content.
If the mixer used is powerful enough, frozen food can also be used. Even in winter you can use it to mix berries into your smoothie.
Many vitamins break down quite quickly when crushed and processed, so you should drink your smoothie as soon as possible after preparation in order to be able to use the greatest possible vitamin yield.

Some vitamins, such as vitamin A, are fat-soluble and can only be absorbed by the body if fat is available. However, smoothies are usually fat-free (unless avocado is one of the ingredients), so a few drops of high-quality vegetable oil or a teaspoon of nut butter should always be included in the blender, or oilseeds such as sunflower seeds, flaxseeds or nuts should be processed.

Are smoothies always raw?

A smoothie is mostly raw food, but not always. Not all foods should be eaten raw, so occasionally one or the other cooked vegetable “strays” into the smoothie.

For example, a boiled potato would be conceivable to help make very watery smoothies creamy, or boiled pumpkin, which can also be processed in less powerful blenders. In principle, however, the focus should be on raw fruit and vegetables, provided they are suitable for raw consumption.

Are green smoothies healthier?

Green smoothies are drinks made from mostly green fruits and vegetables. They usually get their green color from a high proportion of green leafy vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, kale and others. Such drinks are often marketed as “particularly healthy” because they contain an above-average amount of chlorophyll, i.e. leafy green.

Chlorophyll is one of the secondary plant substances and, according to the advertising, is said to make you particularly healthy, happy and even younger. All of this is justified with the “purifying” or “detox”, i.e. “detoxifying” effect of the green leaf pigment. In medicine, however, the term “detoxification” does not exist, it comes from naturopathy and is only passed on orally. The argument of detoxification is usually only used to sell products or methods profitably or to compensate for one’s own unhealthy behavior with “detoxification cures”.

Conclusion: Smoothies can be part of a healthy diet

Freshly made smoothies can make a healthy contribution to the daily consumption of fruit and vegetables, but should not replace them. Because: Fresh fruit and vegetables keep you full for longer and have a lower energy density than pureed smoothies.

It’s not difficult to prepare delicious smoothies with local and seasonal fruit and vegetables without having to do without more than enough vitamins and minerals.

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