our A's to your Q's

• How many portions of fruit does an innocent smoothie count for?
• How much fibre is there in your drinks?
• Why do we need fibre?
• Will smoothies make me fat?
• Why should I eat fruit and veg?
• Okay. So what are free radicals?
• What's all this stuff about GI diets then?
• Do you add sugar to your smoothies?
• What is love?
• Why is Vitamin C so jolly good for me?
• Got anything with calcium?
• Why do smoothies have sodium in them?
• Why are your kids' smoothies only 1 portion of fruit?
• Where did I put my keys?

An innocent smoothie counts as 2 portions of fruit. Seeing as all our smoothies are made with at least 80g of crushed fruit and 150 ml of juice. 80g of crushed fruit equates to 1 portion of fruit and so does 150ml of juice so you get 2 portions of fruit in each smoothie.

We try to pack as much whole crushed fruit into our smoothies as possible, so some of our recipes contain more than 80g of crushed fruit in them. In these recipes, we just make up the remainder of the second portion with juice.

We didn’t make these portion sizes up. You can check our maths with the British Nutrition Foundation who agree that some smoothies (i.e. ours) are 2 portions of fruit and not 1 as current guidelines state. The Food Standards Agency also agree that some smoothies can be more than 1 portion.

The Department of Health have now recognised our smoothies as two portions, read more about it here.

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Fruit juices don't contain any significant amounts of fibre but our smoothies are different because they contain whole crushed fruit as well as juice. This means you get more of the goodness from the fruit, like the vitamins, nutrients and of course, fibre.

Your recommended daily intake of fibre is 24g. Since our smoothies are made from whole crushed fruit, they contain between 2.3 - 6g of fibre per 250ml serving. Our smoothies give you on average 17% of the guideline amount (GDA) for fibre which is just under a quarter of your daily amount. Of all our drinks, our blackberries, raspberries & boysenberries recipe contains the most fibre, closely followed by our guavas, mangoes & goji berries recipe. Just in case you were wondering.

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Fibre is an essential part of any diet. It adds bulk to foods, slows down your digestion and helps you feel nice and full. It also helps keep your tummy healthy and helps, er, keep you regular.

If you want to learn a bit more about the wizardry of fibre, the British Nutrition Foundation has lots more detail on this wonderstuff. Or you can have a look at our very own fibre section right here.

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Every nutritionist in the land advocates eating as much fruit and veg as possible. The reason they’re all harping on about this is that fruit and veg are stuffed full of vitamins, nutrients, fibre and water - all good stuff needed for a healthy body.

We're supposed to eat around 2000 kcals a day. On average, smoothies give you 137 kcals which is only 7% of the guideline daily amount for calories. Or in very simple portion maths, smoothies have the same amount of calories as a banana and another portion of fruit. These are good calories in the sense that as well as giving you energy, our smoothies also provide you with fibre, anti-oxidants and vitamin C.

While fruit and veg definitely contain calories, every single calorie they contain delivers you positive nutrition. It's all about having a well balanced and varied diet or as your gran would say, eating everything in moderation.

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Everybody knows that fruit and veg are good for you. The NHS, your doctor, your gran – they’ll all tell you that for nothing.

The NHS advise that the second most important thing you can do to reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease is to eat more fruit and veg ( the first is to not smoke).

Interestingly though, whilst it’s a proven scientific fact that eating fruit and veg can help reduce incidences of all major diseases, it’s not yet fully understood why that is.

What we do know though is that it’s essential to eat fruit and veg as they provide two main things:

• Phytonutrients and essential non- antioxidant vitamins and minerals
• Antioxidants

What are phytonutrients and antioxidants?

Phytonutrients are the nutrients that come from plants. It’s essential for your body to get these nutrients to stay nice and healthy and function properly.

Anti-oxidants are the good guys. They protect the body against the damaging effects of oxidisation (which is the same process that turns an apple brown when you’ve bitten into it). The most well-known antioxidants are nutrients such as vitamins A, C, E, selenium and carotenoids (e.g beta-carotene).

There are some anti-oxidants which are specific to fruits and vegetables, such as anthocyanins and flavanoids, which help to give them their colour and flavour. The best way to get a good balance of these nutrients is to eat lots of different coloured fruit and veg. Have a read here to find out why variety really is the spice of life.

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Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that are responsible for the damaging process of oxidation. Free radicals are unstable because they only contain a single electron. If you can remember as far back as GCSE chemistry, you’ll know that means these molecules are hungry to find a partner (or another electron). In their quest to do this, they attack and damage healthy cells and can transform DNA. This is the process that can lead to the development of cancers. Free radicals can also damage the fatty acids in your blood and induce the hardening of your arteries, which won’t help your heart one bit.

Free radicals are a fact of life and are present in your body under normal circumstances from 3 main sources:
• Immune cells make free radicals to fight infections (to kill bacteria). So maintaining the supply of antioxidants in your body is especially important during infections, when free radicals will be in excess.

• All of the oxygen molecules we breathe in are converted to unstable free radicals during respiration.
• Free radicals can also come from the environment in which we live. A combination of pollution, fatty foods, cigarette smoke and alcohol can all contribute to their creation.

So, since free radicals are naturally present everywhere, eating a diet rich in fruit and veg is surefire way to ensure that you get enough antioxidants to help your body fight them off

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GI stands for Glycaemic Index. The glycaemic index value of a food indicates the amount it increases your blood sugar levels once you’ve eaten it. Low GI foods release energy slowly and help maintain blood suagr levels whereas foods with a high GI content release energy rapidly and can raise your blood sugar levels really quickly.

If you are on the GI diet, you should be eating a diet that is rich in low GI foods.

Seeing as all of our pure fruit smoothies contain whole crushed fruit, they have a low GI value. This is because the fibre from the whole crushed fruit helps release energy nice and slowly.

Simply put, low and medium GI foods will help keep you going for longer as they release energy more slowly than high GI foods, which give you quick release energy.

Low GI =	< 55	e.g porridge (54)
Medium GI =	55 - 69	55 - 69 e.g basmati rice (58)
High GI =	70+	e.g white bread (80)

What about the GI of fruit?
Different types of fruit have different GI ratings, depending on the type of sugar and the amount of fibre in that particular fruit. So, while pears have a low GI content (38), bananas are classed as medium GI (55) whilst watermelons have a high GI (79). It's important that you get enough fruit in your diet and every nutritionist in the land thinks we should be eating more of this stuff, whether it's a pear or a nice slice of watermelon. As with everything else, it’s all about getting the balance right.

What about the GI of your smoothies?
Since the GI content of fruit varies from fruit to fruit, the same is true of smoothies. The GI of our smoothies varies from low to medium, depending on which fruit we use in them. However, whether they are low or medium GI, all of our smoothies are equally good for you because they give you the vitamins and nutrients from a variety of fruit and due to the fibre content, help release energy that bit more slowly than that deep fried Battenberg you’ve had your eye on.

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We don't add sugar to any of our smoothies. Fruit, however, contains the natural sugars fructose, glucose and sucrose. And as our smoothies are made from nothing but fruit, they therefore only contain these natural sugars, most of which is fructose.

Well, how much natural sugar is there in your smoothies?
Sugar is an essential part of your diet. Natural fruit sugars are a valuable source of energy and bring with them the nutritional benefits of fruit, like the vitamins, antioxidants and fibre.

The quantity of sugar found in a smoothie depends on the fruits but each of our smoothies contains around the same amount of natural fruit sugar as 2 portions of fruit (i.e. medium size banana and another portion of fruit). You can find the exact nutritional information of all our smoothies on their individual pages of this website. You can get to them all by clicking here.

Another positive point to note is that the natural sugars combined with the presence of fibre help give our smoothies a low - medium glycaemic index (GI) value. This means that the energy from our smoothies is released slowly over time, unlike sugars such as glucose, which has a high GI value and can raise blood sugar levels quickly.

If smoothies contain sugar, are they bad for your teeth?
An innocent smoothie is made of nothing but fruit, meaning it contains lots of the good stuff you find in fruit, like amazing vitamins and phytoprotectants as well as the sugar that occurs naturally within fruit. Getting your 5-a-day is a good way of ensuring that you are healthy overall and definitely helps with gum disease.

But basically, our advice is to drink a smoothie whenever you’d be comfortable eating a piece of fruit. As long as you are brushing your teeth twice a day, having regular check ups with your dentist and keeping a healthy balanced diet, you should be ok. But we’re definitely not dentists, so if you’re worried, make sure you ask yours about it next time you see them.

What we can tell you is that there is a new study being done by the Dental Research team at Leeds University all about this stuff, and their initial findings are that whole fruit and juices have a similar impact on your teeth. As soon as the final report is out, we’ll put up a link here.

Some of our drinkers have also let us know they drink our smoothies through a straw, whilst others stick to drinking them at mealtimes. A few have even said that eating cheese after drinking something like a smoothie can help with your dental health. Apparently.

The main thing we’d like to say is that 250ml of one of our smoothies gives you 2 portions of fruit, and after that, common sense applies. As your mum would say, everything in moderation.

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Baby don’t hurt me. No more

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Vitamin C is probably the best known of all the vitamin family and every single one of our fruit smoothies contain this incredible little vitamin. It's a powerful anti-oxidant which means it can prevent cell damage from free radicals.

Most plants can make vitamin C from glucose but humans, primates, guinea-pigs and some birds can’t. This means that we have to get it from the food we eat.

The recommended daily amount (RDA) for vitamin C is 60mg. The RDA is the level of nutrients needed to help our bodies prevent deficiency, disease and maintain normal nutrition. So, 60mg of vitamin C is the amount our bodies need to help with all that stuff and stop us catching things like scurvy (the disease that old sailors lacking in vitamin C where their wounds wouldn’t heal properly).

Vitamin C participates in many everyday processes, including absorption of iron and skin healing. There is some evidence to suggest that for optimum health it could be that higher levels are needed.

Your body is clever enough to know how much it needs. As vitamin C is water soluble if you have more than you need your body it gets rid of the extra vitamin when you go for a pee

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Well, yes we do as a matter of fact. As any cheese maker will tell you, dairy foods are important as they contain calcium which is important for bone health and growth. There are certain groups in the UK that don't get enough calcium such as young teenage girls. This has huge implications for later on in life, and to prevent things like osteoporosis, it's important that we consume enough calcium early on in life.

Our thickies give you 40 - 45 % of the RDA of calcium per serving. A lot easier to swallow than a wheel of stilton.

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Sodium is a naturally occurring mineral in food. It’s naturally present in small amounts in most foods, including things like fruit and milk. Sodium is not the same as the white stuff you find on the table for your chips. Salt is sodium chloride and this is the thing that's added to food.

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Our kids smoothies have less whole crushed fruit in them than the smoothies for grown-ups. This is because kids like fewer bits in their smoothies hence why there’s only 1 portion of fruit in one of our kids’ smoothies.

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On the table next to the phone.

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