A freshly blended smoothie ticks a lot of boxes: It’s quick to prepare, easy to consume and a versatile base for whatever fruits and veggies you have on hand.
And if blending your produce can help you eat more of it, that’s a good thing, said Kristina Petersen, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University. According to surveys performed between 2017 and 2018, 86 percent of adults in the United States didn’t get the recommended 4.5 cups of fruits and vegetables each day.
But are nutrients lost when fruits and vegetables are chopped into bits by a blender blade? We asked experts to help us break it down so you can get the most out of your smoothie.
Unlike juicing, blending can incorporate all of the edible parts of fruits and vegetables — including the skin, seeds and pulp — so a smoothie can be nutritionally very similar to eating the produce whole, said Mary Ann Lila, a professor of food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences at North Carolina State University.
And blending shouldn’t degrade the vitamins or minerals found in fruits and vegetables, Dr. Lila said. Nor will it immediately harm certain antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds, like anthocyanins and flavonols, she said.
Fruits and vegetables are also good sources of fiber, which most of us could benefit from eating more of. And whether you eat an apple whole or as part of a smoothie, you’ve consumed exactly the same amount of fiber,” said Balazs Bajka, a gut physiologist at King’s College London.
Blending does, however, break the fibers into smaller pieces, which will affect how they move through your digestive system, he said. Some types of fibers, when chopped into bits, may disperse more quickly within your gut and slow digestion and absorption usually a good thing while others might lose some of the roughage effect that keeps things moving in your digestive tract and prevents constipation.
But there’s not much research on this topic, Dr. Bajka said, and specific effects may depend on the person and the fruit or vegetable. Regardless, eating any kind of fiber is good, he said.
