I love a good smoothie but I will always make mine at home. Why? Because I like to know what is going in them. While we are on the subject of healthy fast food, let’s take a look at Boost Juice. All of this information is taken directly from the Boost Juice website.
Boost Juice states on their website that they do not add any artificial ingredients or sugar to their ‘freshly squeezed juices’. Great! But what about ‘Smoothies’?
Most of Boost smoothies contain the ‘TD4 Yoghurt’. As an example, I have listed the ingredients of the TD4 Strawberry Yoghurt below. Notice the lack of strawberries?
TD4 Strawberry Yoghurt Ingredients: Water, yoghurt (18%), (milk, vegetable gums (440,406), cultures, sucrose, milk solids, cream, food acid (270), emulsifier (471), strawberry flavour (nature identical), vegetable gums (412, 415, 410, 407a), fructose, natural colour (120).
Other smoothies contain sorbet: Water, Sucrose, Glucose (wheat), Dextrose, Vegetable Gums (412, 415) and Emulsifier (471).
To translate for everyone at home: anything usually ending in ‘ose’ is added sugar. So sucrose, glucose, fructose and dextrose are listed examples. The numbers or codes listed above represent artificial ingredients. And ‘strawberry flavour (nature identical)’? If it isn’t the real thing than what is it?
This brings me to my final point (yes boost juice rant almost over). Sugar makes us fat. They say that 4.2g of sugar represents 1 teaspoon of sugar and for comparison purposes, a can of coke contains 39g of sugar or just over 9 teaspoons. If you were to do the math (Boost Juice list their Nutritional Information in 100ml measurements), an original size ‘low fat smoothie’ blueberry blast contains the equivalent to 20 teaspoons of sugar. Yikes! ‘Mango Magic’ contains over 17 teaspoons of sugar. Eeeeek! And that’s just a snack?
If you’re struggling to lose weight, battling with fatigue or any other health issues, it’s so important to understand the foods you consuming. To help avoid these nasties, you can easily whip up one of my smoothies listed here:
You will skip the preservatives not to mention the added sugar, maintain the nutritional fibre and your body will thank you for it 🙂
Hi,
I am massive fan of the Blueberry Blast smoothie (I’m form the UK) and I am shocked at the amount of sugar that you have stated is in it… I am really trying to watch what I eat and was under the impression that one of my fav drinks when going shopping was a Blueberry Blast… anyway, can you suggest a home made recipe of trying to make it, even if it tastes similar that would be awesome.
Really dont want to be consuming 20 teaspoons of sugar, but boy does it taste good!! XD
Raz
Hi Raz!
I completely understand where you are coming from, I also used to love that smoothie! I’m currently working on bringing my readers a low sugar smoothie e-book full of delicious alternatives, but for now, perhaps try this alternative:
Blueberry Choc Smoothie (makes 1 large)
1 cup full fat coconut milk
1/2 cup filtered water
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1 frozen banana
2 tsp cacao nibs (optional, but delicious)
2 tsp. cacao powder (for extra magnesium!)
Not only is this smoothie low in sugar, it contains healthy fats to help sustain your energy and cacao for additional magnesium (of which, many of us are very deficient in). I hope this helps!
Be sure to keep an eye out for the launch of the smoothie e-book very shortly 🙂
the ‘natural color (120)’ they are referring to is most likely the same as the E120 code, which is natural color from BUGS BLOOD… disgusting!!! google it… E120 also know as carmine and red40.
Wow. I wonder if they consider that a “natural colour”?