Did you know that SMOOTHIE is not just a blended banana with milk, but smoothies can be a delicious, nutrient-packed and balanced meal? Many of us think of a smoothie as a blended banana and strawberries with milk for dessert. But in this article, we're going to cover the basics of how to mix yourself a balanced breakfast just in the form of a smoothie.
A little bit of history
The word "smoothie" came into use in the 1980s in America, when they adapted Brazilian recipes from fruit puree. Banana and pineapple smoothies were the first smoothies in cookbooks in America, conceived as a dessert. These blended drinks were, and are, very appealing and tasty, just because of their sweet and fruity taste. However, by consuming these smoothies, we can take in excessive amounts of sugar and possibly fat, if the smoothie is made with whole milk or cream. This energy is not used by the body during a sedentary lifestyle and is stored in fat stores. The idea behind smoothies is to blend fruit, but in this way we can consume much more fruit, and thus sugar, than if we were to eat the fruit in its natural state. That is why it is really important to watch the use of individual ingredients.Smoothies have one big advantage compared to juices. They also contain fibre which is mechanically blended. It is the mechanical blending that can be easier for many people to digest than eating the whole fruit if they have a problem digesting the fiber. Fibre is very important for proper digestive function, it is food for our gut microbiome, it binds to waste substances and helps them get out of the body. Adequate fibre intake prevents the development of colon cancer. If I haven't convinced you enough of the importance of fibre yet, perhaps I can convince you that fibre also forms a bulk in our digestion and helps us to fill up. A lot of volume for little energy. Imagine a bowl of salad, a big apple, a handful of blueberries... This also forms part of our diet, let's not forget about other nutrients.
So how do you make a balanced breakfast out of a smoothie?
When preparing breakfast, we cannot forget about the combinatorics of all the essential nutrients protein, fat, carbohydrates. I often come across that people forget about the sources of protein. They pour hot water over their cereal, throw in a banana and nuts. Protein is supposed to be included in food precisely for its high satiating effect, but also for its unmistakable place in the body's function. Next time, try enriching this porridge with white sherry, cottage cheese, cottage cheese, yoghurt, but also with kefir and acid, for example. And now we have already outlined what a smoothie should consist of. Let's start in order. As a source of carbohydrates, which is the easiest, we choose for example oatmeal (oat, barley, buckwheat, rice,...) and fruits such as berries blueberries, raspberries or banana (the latter is also great for sweetening), dried fruits. As a source of fat, choose nuts (cashews, almonds, walnuts, coconut) or nut "butter", seeds (chia, flax, hemp). As a source of protein we can choose skyr, yoghurt or cottage cheese. A banana can be enough to sweeten it, but if you like a sweeter breakfast, you can try adding chicory syrup or plain honey. We try to be sparing with sweeteners, even less sweet foods are easy to get used to. We would have a nutritionally balanced breakfast with these ingredients, but for now it would be more like porridge in consistency. A smoothie should be smooth, thinner, drinkable. Of course, when selecting the liquid ingredient, we always ask if we are trying to lose weight, when we naturally "conserve" with energy and select water as the liquid ingredient. If we want a more energetic breakfast, we can choose milk, kefir, acidko as a liquid ingredient. I always recommend to prefer white sour-milk products.
Don't have time to prepare a healthy breakfast at home? Pack our balanced breakfast porridges and blend them up in our new blender Fitstream PRO anywhere, anytime in 20 seconds.
Recipe
- 4 tbsp oatmeal
- ½ tbsp linseed
- 1 tsp chia seeds
- 2 walnuts
- 4 tbsp hollandaise yoghurt white
- 1 tbsp cottage cheese
- 2 - 3 dcl water
- a handful of blueberries
- ½ ripe banana
Mix everything together properly. Add water if necessary for a more liquid consistency. This breakfast will fill us up, give us energy, nutrients and of course the aforementioned fibre. They are tasty and you can drink them anywhere.
