5-a-Day in One Smoothie?

O.P.H

So there are a couple of things I try to have daily to stay healthy-
- fibre in the morning along with vitamin and fish oil tabs
- 2 litres of water (not including tea etc)
- 5 a day (usually an apple, banana, orange, and two different veg like carrot or broc etc)

- then its just common sense for the rest like no junk food and good healthy meals etc, but the above things I make it a point to have cause there generally the things I forget about.

My question is, can I not just blend all the 5 a day into one rotten smoothie just to save the hastle or am I processing the goodness away?

Duffman'05

O.P.H wrote: »

My question is, can I not just blend all the 5 a day into one rotten smoothie just to save the hastle or am I processing the goodness away?

No, you are not 'processing' the goodness away''. Your digestive system does a much more thorough job of breaking your ingested food into tiny pieces than any blender could.

Also be aware that ''5 a day'' could easily be insufficient fruit intake depending on your age, gender, body weight and body composition.

O.P.H

Duffman'05 wrote: »

No, you are not 'processing' the goodness away''. Your digestive system does a much more thorough job of breaking your ingested food into tiny pieces than any blender could.

Also be aware that ''5 a day'' could easily be insufficient fruit intake depending on your age, gender, body weight and body composition.

Insufficient!?

I'm male, 29, 6', normal build... seems like an awful lot of fruit and veg if I was eating more than that.

huskerdu

O.P.H wrote: »

Insufficient!?

I'm male, 29, 6', normal build... seems like an awful lot of fruit and veg if I was eating more than that.

At your height, your daily calorific intake is about 2000/2500 calories.

Unless the portion sizes are huge, then your 5 a day is about 500/600 calories. Its quite a small proportion of your daily intake.

Triangla

Remember the 5 a day thing is the minimum recommended.

SBWife

And there's no science behind 5 a day, it was chosen because it was seen as a number the general population would accept. Personally I average about 8 a day sometimes it's 10 and sometimes closer to 5.

I start the day with a green monster smoothie, spinach, soy milk, almond butter, spoonful of seeds, blueberries, banana and frozen raspberries or mango. 4 servings right there! A salad at lunch and two types of veg with my dinner and it's pretty easy to get to the full 8.

tHE vAGGABOND

Remember the 5 a day thing is the minimum recommended.

What they wanted was 9 a day, I read somewhere - but some committee somewhere dropped it to 5, as that was a more realistic target for ordinary folks

sas

O.P.H wrote: »

My question is, can I not just blend all the 5 a day into one rotten smoothie just to save the hastle or am I processing the goodness away?

Can't be sure of the level of expertise of this blogger but there is a comment at the bottom about why she believes you can't count smoothies towards your 5 a day.

http://www.foodforliving.ie/healthy-eating-breakfast-green-smoothie

O.P.H

sas wrote: »

Can't be sure of the level of expertise of this blogger but there is a comment at the bottom about why she believes you can't count smoothies towards your 5 a day.

http://www.foodforliving.ie/healthy-eating-breakfast-green-smoothie

Ya that's what some people have said to me about smoothies that they take away the fibre aspect of eating fruit.

9-a-day!? Christ I find it hard enough to 5, seems like it would be all I would be thinkin about during the day to get 9 lol

SBWife

O.P.H wrote: »

Ya that's what some people have said to me about smoothies that they take away the fibre aspect of eating fruit.

Tell that to my bowel! There's no change to the fibre on a molecular basis so your still eating it even if it is cut up very finely by the blender, I think some experts give the blending process more credit then it deserves.

sas

SBWife wrote: »

Tell that to my bowel! There's no change to the fibre on a molecular basis so your still eating it even if it is cut up very finely by the blender, I think some experts give the blending process more credit then it deserves.

Surely though in it's unblended state (i.e. if you'd simply eaten the fruit) the fibre is more readily able to assist the movement process.

This is what I'd extrapolated the point to be.

SBWife

sas wrote: »

Surely though in it's unblended state (i.e. if you'd simply eaten the fruit) the fibre is more readily able to assist the movement process.

This is what I'd extrapolated the point to be.

I doubt it, there's a hell of a lot of processing that happens before anything you eat reaches your bowel, I'd say any differences would be in the early stages of digestion.

Mr Simpson

For some reason the NHS website says that only 2 of your 5 a day can come from smoothies. I really don't understand why though

NHS

Chancer3001

ive read up on this before, and I remember reading that max 2 can come from the one source...

Now that makes zero sense to me too. If I just mix up 5 fruits is that ok?

Seems a bit random.

anyways, as has already been said, the "five" is minimum. id get through 10-15 usually. Like a big glass of OJ is 2...

O.P.H

Ya this whole numbers thing is all a load of rubbish to me, like everyone knows fruit and veg is good for you but whoever decided that a certain number of portions is what a person needs daily, I'd like to see the research to back it up.

10-15!? I think my problem is I look at one portion as a whole piece of fruit like a whole orange or apple or carrot etc.

Well I'm gonna use the smoothie way I think regardless, I get decent fiber from other sources anyway, I'll get as much as I can and sure that better than nothin I think