Juicing vs Smoothies: Who Wins the Healthiest Drink Battle?

When it comes to healthy food, there are some clear winners.

For example, which is more nutritious: fruit or cake?

It’s easy, right?

How about kale chips vs potato chips?

Come on!

But there are some calls that aren’t as easy to make, and fruit juice vs smoothies is one of them.

They both seem healthy on the surface, and both involve one of the nutritious foods on the planet: fruit.

Yet this is one decision a lot of people get wrong, and it could cost them when it comes to their health. Both drinks have their pros, but it’s the cons that make all the difference.

Is juicing healthy? Are smoothies good for you? Which is better? Let’s throw these two drinks in the ring and let them duke it out for top honors.

Juice: Better than soft drinks, but not by much

Anyone who has ever been a kid will be quite familiar with juice.

There’s a good chance you drank mass quantities of it when you were little, perhaps because your parents wanted to make sure you were getting plenty of fruit in your diet.

As you got older, they might have steered you toward juice at restaurants and birthday parties when the “cool kids” were ordering soft drinks.

And while orange juice is indisputably better than Coca-Cola, it’s not exactly the health food many people seem to think it is.

No, not even when you’re juicing organic fruits and veggies at home.

Here’s the rub: While this might be a way to get those who aren’t fruit and veggie fans to sneak some into their diets, these juices are high in sugar and not nearly as nutritious as you’d think.

The main problem with juice is the blood sugar spike it gives you, especially if your juice is a lot heavier in fruit than veggies.

In fact, getting back to our comparison with soda, did you know that 100 percent fruit juice and soda both have roughly the same amount of sugar – 20 to 26 grams per cup?

Research has linked sugary drinks to a higher risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and even premature death.

In addition, the fact that it’s calorie-dense yet low in fiber means it may lead to weight gain.

This is also why juice fasting and juice diets often don’t work.

But juice has a lot of vitamins and minerals, right?

Well, not necessarily. Let’s check out our other contender, smoothies, to understand why.

Smoothies: A smart choice… if you sip slowly

Smoothies might start with a lot of the same ingredients as juice, but they’re all blended together, which means the result includes the whole fruit and vegetables, often with their skin as well.

The main difference between smoothies and juice is that smoothies contain fiber.

That, my friends, is what gives smoothies the winning edge.

Fiber is digested by gut bacteria, which make health-enhancing short chain fatty acids out of it that help your body stop the growth of bad bacteria and boost mineral absorption.

But there’s more to it than that. If it was just about the fiber, the juice industry would simply add fiber to juice and they’d be able to say how great it is for you.

But they don’t.

Why not? Because it’s not just the fiber that you lose when you juice fruits and veggies – you also miss out on all the nutrients that are bound to the fiber.

You see, the antioxidants that make many types of produce so good for you are bound to the fiber in them – and juicing gets rid of up to 90 percent of the fiber in produce.

Another point in favor of smoothies is the fact that they lend themselves well to the addition of other nutritious ingredients.

Need more healthy fats in your diet? Add some almond butter, avocado or chia. As you can imagine, this doesn’t work too well with juice. You could also experiment with different plant milks, like oat or almond, to sneak in some other vitamins and minerals.

Take your time

There is one important thing to keep in mind with this winning drink, however: you need to sip it slowly.

Why?

Studies have shown that people feel a lot less full after a smoothie versus eating all of its contents individually, and that’s not good if it means you’ll be reaching for other snacks before the hour is through.

Other studies have shown that this effect is due to how quickly smoothies are consumed.

So don’t scarf your smoothie down, no matter how delicious it is.

Take your time – Dr. Greger recommends sipping one over the course of roughly half an hour – and it will be every bit as filling as the fruit and veggies would have been on their own.

It’s also a good idea to add more greens to it, like I do with my Immunity-Boosting Green Smoothie. Thicker smoothies are more satisfying, plus you’ll get a greater variety of nutrients that way.

Want to up the ante even more? Add some flaxseeds to your healthy green smoothie. This gives it a thick, milkshake-like texture – but wait, there’s more: A tablespoon of flaxseeds can suppress your appetite and calorie intake significantly!

And the winner is…

Juice put in a great effort and it’s not without its merits, but smoothies clearly have the edge in this competition.

If you’re looking for something cool to sip on that will nourish your body, smoothies are definitely the way to go – just be sure to sip them fashionably slowly!