Dr. Thomas Campbell remembers how, in his medical-school days, he would make up for his poor eating habits by drinking a kale smoothie: “I put about 6 cups of raw, cleaned kale tightly packed in a mixer along with a little water and nothing else and made the ultimate green smoothie,” he recalls. It was, unsurprisingly, awful: “It was like a grassy tasting slime, or perhaps cow cud.”
Adding fruit would have solved the flavor problem, but that can turn a veggie smoothie into a high-sugar beverage, notes Campbell, the medical director of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies. A typical smoothie with spinach, strawberries, blueberries, a banana and orange juice might include 32 grams of sugar, he calculates.
Many sugar-conscious consumers want smoothies with no fruit at all. What’s the secret to offering healthy, fruit-free smoothies that don’t taste like a cow’s breakfast? We’ll tell you.
