Behind its apparent richness in fruit, the smoothie hides a large amount of sugars. Sugars again implicated in the onset of diabetes and arterial hypertension.
Swallowing a small smoothie to start the day in good shape, it’s tempting, but we should stop there for the rest of the … week! Indeed, a study, which comes from appear in the “Journal of the Endocrine Society”, shows that regularly drinking sugary drinks such as smoothies and other fruit juices or sodas, puts you at risk of diabetes and high blood pressure.
Sweetened drinks have been singled out for a long time, in particular all those enriched in sugars such as fructose, sucrose, glucose and … sweeteners which do not escape the vindictiveness of doctors. The researchers, who analyzed 36 previous studies, have indeed shown that drinking at least one sugary drink per day was associated with a higher risk of hypertension, and consuming two per week was linked to a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes.
If these already well-known data are confirmed for sodas, why are smoothies also questioned? The answers of Dr Jean-François Lemoine.
What is the composition of a “smoothie”?
JFL: To avoid Franglais, we could rather talk about frozen fruit juice. Because that’s just it, smoothies: vegetables or fruit, sometimes mixed with fruit juices and always with crushed ice or frozen yogurt. It is therefore a “smooth” fruit juice … But English speakers prefer the term “smooth” which means smooth.
So far, nothing that is in contradiction with what the doctors repeat over and over: you must consume at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day and dairy products. So we are in the middle of the ideal product?
JFL: It’s true that these products seemed so perfect that they have invaded supermarket shelves and small shops are starting to pop up all over the place. Sadly, Barry Popkin, who is a professor in the nutrition department at the University of North Carolina, calms the ardor of salespeople and enthusiasts alike. I quote him: ” In almost all countries consumers have started to replace sodas with fruit juice drinks, “smoothies”, which they wrongly consider to be good for health ”.
However, the doctors have repeated enough that drinking sugary sodas was an aberration… The ideal is undoubtedly to eat real fruit?
JFL: Be careful, consuming a lot of fruit to start a diet is also an aberration. Because fruits contain a lot of sugar! And that you shouldn’t eat too much of it. However, smoothies provide a significant amount of fructose: the sugar equivalent of four to six oranges or a glass of cola. We then come back to square one. In addition, consumption quickly becomes excessive, since the product is deemed to be healthy. In our world full of prohibitions, people wanted to take advantage of it. Finally, smoothies do not calm hunger as could, for example, orange juice; that’s why we consume even more.
Is there a difference between fruit sugar and “refined” sugar?
JFL: The body doesn’t really tell the difference. The enemy is sugar. And there, we are no longer in political correctness, but in the main cause of diabetes, a silent epidemic much more terrible than we think on a global scale.
But a smoothie a day, what’s the problem?
JFL: One a day, no problem.
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