Better Beverage Options Than Smoothies

We are not big fans of smoothies. Sure, they’re better for you than sweet drinks like colas, orange juice or apple juice, or Red Bull, but they are not the same as eating your fruits and vegetables. For starters, when you throw the yogurt, banana, peach and honey into a blender whirring at 20,000 RPM, the finished product qualifies as “processed” food. Why do you think they call it a food processor? Sharp steel blades spinning at unnaturally high speeds destroy the fiber and puree the produce into an easily digestible slurry with most of the calories in the form of sugar.

This spikes your blood glucose and deprives you of the valuable fiber in whole natural foods. Your body thrives best when you process your food the old-fashioned way - by simply chewing up the fresh berries, veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds before you swallow them. This strengthens your teeth and gums, and a whole-foods, mostly fresh produce diet is the single best way to get a sexy waistline, soft and supple arteries, a healthy heart, strong bones, beautiful skin and a sharp mind.

A better choice than a smoothie, one that won’t spike your blood sugar but will help to make you healthy from the inside out, is low-sodium V8 juice, particularly if you mix in some matcha tea. Nearly every morning I pour about 8 ounces of low-sodium V8 juice into a glass and use a hand-held battery-powered mixer to mix into it a quarter of a teaspoon of matcha tea powder.

This is a drink that is loaded with antioxidants, vitamins and potassium, and has a modest amount of caffeine naturally due to the fine green tea matcha powder that is mixed into the V8 juice. I have come to enjoy the earthy, vegetable taste of the V8 with matcha tea, and it’s an energizing drink that naturally lowers blood pressure and reduces anxi­ety. Another healthy option is whey protein mixed into milk. The whey protein will keep you feeling full lon­ger and will prevent cravings for junk food, and the milk is a good source of calcium.

Other beverages that you should be consuming regularly include water, coffee, tea and sparkling water. The drinks you choose should contain very few calories - like water and unsweet­ened tea, which were virtually the only options available to our ancient ances­tors out there in the wild.

Sports drinks, energy drinks, sweet­ened sodas and fruit juices tend to make you fat and/or diabetic - NOT healthy. Most of the diseases we are trying to avoid, including heart dis­ease, stroke, Alzheimer’s and diabetes are caused by chronic inflammation. Post-meal spikes in the blood levels of fats and sugar after eating processed foods and sweet drinks are the chief causes of inflammation in our bodies.

Avoid consuming virtually anything with more than 10 grams of sugar per serving. Also shun artificial sweeten­ers, except in very small doses, such as chewing gum. These non-caloric sweeteners fuel your sweet tooth, raise your insulin levels, distort the microbiome and change gene expres­sion, all of which compel you to eat more sweets and junk food.

In Good Health,

James O'Keefe, MD and Joan O'Keefe, RD