2. Before We Begin – The Downsides and Dangers of Smoothies
Before we dive right in though, you need to be aware that there are some downsides and risks involved with smoothies too.
Smoothies can do a world of good and throughout the rest of this book you’ll be learning the ingredients, the techniques and tricks to enjoying some seriously healthy and tasty juices.
But unfortunately, as with any health trend, there are also those on the web who are pushing false information and generally causing harm to the good name of smoothies!
The first thing to be aware of is the idea of ‘juice fasting’. Here, people will use smoothies as meal replacements and will only survive on juice for a period of days or weeks. The claim is that this is a great way to ‘detox’ the body and to remove ‘toxins’ and other things, as well as being a good way to jump- start your fat loss. This is not a good idea.
As far as detoxing goes, what’s important to keep in mind is that this is another arbitrary term that doesn’t really have any meaning. There is no scientific proof that we need to detox in any way or that we have a ‘build up’ of toxins.
The truth is that our body has its own system of detoxification and this works just fine without our help. Your body will have no difficulty in removing toxins over time and they are not likely to build up or increase in number in any way.
In one study, researchers asked the makers of ‘detoxing hair products’ to name some of the toxins that their shampoos and conditions could combat – they found that the manufacturers could give no good explanation.
We like the notion of detoxing because it seems to make intuitive sense but the reality is that this is actually just a waste of time.
And what you also need to be aware of, is the high sugar content found in smoothies. Now, sugar is not always a bad thing and over the course of this book, you will learn to mitigate the sugar found in your smoothies.
However, when you remove the food from your diet, you remove the buffer to protect you from the sugar and the acidity of your smoothies. This can then result in some serious damage to health and a diet consisting purely of smoothies is likely to damage the stomach lining and more importantly: the teeth.
I actually know someone who tried a ‘smoothie fast’ (despite my protestations) and they ended up eroding all of the enamel from their teeth. They had to go to the doctor and lost two teeth after just one week. So think long and hard before you jump on board any juice fasts or other trends.
The last thing to think about is whether or not a diet is sustainable. If you are going to ‘kick start’ a diet by using an extreme fast, then you’ll be putting your body through hell only to return to a normal type of eating. That means your weight will simply return to what it was before the fast and you won’t have benefited. Moreover, when you fast for this long, you actually increase your likelihood of storing fat.
Numerous processes in the body ensure this but one key example is that your body will produce a lot of cortisol as a response to low blood sugar. This cortisol then encourages lipogenesis – the creation of new fat stores. Oh and it also destroys muscle (via the release of myostatin) which makes you less metabolically active. It depletes testosterone significantly too, which further slows down your metabolism.
But you’re getting sugar right? From all that fruit? Yes – but only simple sugar. Fruits absorb very quickly into the blood stream and that means that you’re going to be getting three massive spikes of energy
throughout the day and nothing more. This is not good for your insulin sensitivity and it means you are highly likely to store all that sugar as fat.
So in short: avoid juice fasts and smoothie ‘cleanses’. Instead, focus on adding smoothies to your diet!
How to Avoid Harming Yourself With the Sugar in Smoothies
Smoothies do a ton of good but as we’ve learned, they can also carry a few risks with them. If you’re now concerned at the potential damage that the sugar in smoothies can do, it might have put you off of the idea of adding smoothies to your diet.
But don’t worry – when you add just one smoothie of a reasonable size to your morning routine, you have nothing to worry about. This is especially true if you also make sure that you reduce sugar from other sources in your diet.
If you have particularly sensitive teeth though, or if you don’t react well to sugar, another option is to focus more on vegetable smoothies or to look for fruits that are lower in sugar. There are plenty of good options to choose from and adding more water to your smoothie can also help to dilute it. When we go through the recipes and tips, you’ll see that there are a number of different options that are lower in sugar than average.
