Juices Vs Smoothies

The whole foods world is crazy about juicing and smoothies, but which one is better?

Essentially they’re different things, which means they’re used for different reasons. Read on to find out which one is best for you.

Juices.

Juicing extracts the liquid part of a fruit of vegetable and leaves behind the fibre. One cup of juice can contain a few carrots, several bit of celery, a beetroot and an apple. There are several methods, but cold pressed is generally regarded as the best. Most juicers don’t need you to peel (except hard skins like citrus) or deseed the raw foods but they can be fiddly to clean. You need to make sure you don’t pack a juice with lots of fruit- it’s taking out the fibre but leaving the sugar in, so a plain apple juice could have the sugar of six apples but nothing to balance it out. Try to aim for one fruit per juice.

Good for:

Maximum absorption of nutrients

Large quantity of ingredients

Hard vegetables like carrots, beetroot

Smoothies.

This is when fruits and/or vegetables are blended into a pulp, often with water or ice added. The fibrous parts are left in so one cup might only contain an apple and a carrot, along with ice or water to thin it out a little and break up hard fibres. This fibre is filling, so it’s harder to drink large quantities. You’ll need a really high powered blender if you’re tackling anything other than soft fruit, otherwise it’ll be crunchy and you risk burning out the motor.

Good for:

Extra fibre- good for bowel function and very filling

Fruits, as you’re less likely to have too many

Softer vegetables like spinach (though you can blend hard veggies too!)

Blends

You can actually make a hybrid of the two. By adding some vegetable juice to a smoothie, you’re increasing the nutritional value but still getting a good dose of fibre. This means the drink will fill you up which is great if you need it to keep you going for a while.  It also means you can mix things like carrots (which can be a little grainy when blended) with bananas (which, needless to say don’t juice very well) for more flavour options.

The verdict

Both are good for you, as long as you don’t overload on fruit. A sudden increase in vegetable intake make upset your stomach though, so start by adding one juice or smoothie a day and slowly increase it. Experiment with both and see which ones you like better, but it’s generally best to have a combination of both if you can.

What smoothie or juice combinations do you like?

Author: Amy Hopkins

Budget And The Bees