By Augusta Statz
Have you ever thought about how many calories you are taking in with your favorite summer drinks? It’s something I’ve been thinking about this summer season, and according to an article titled 7 Worst Summer Drinks, liquids make up more than 20 percent (approximately 450 daily calories) of our diets. I thought that a healthful alternative to some of the not-so-healthful drinks that I love, like frozen cappuccinos and milkshakes would definitely be worth a try. What would a healthful summer treat be? A fruit smoothie, or so I thought.
I was shocked to see that even fruit smoothies are not always the best summer drink to have. The same article ranked a strawberry smoothie from Smoothie King as the number two drink on the “worst summer drink” list. This particular smoothie had 834 calories, one and a half grams of fat and 134 grams of sugar.
This can’t be true for all smoothies, though. After looking up healthful smoothie recipes, I found a few websites that give recipes and show nutritional value information for a healthful summer drink like the EatingWell website, the allrecipes website and the Fitness Magazine website.
I decided to make one of the recipes from Fitness Magazine’s website to see how it would measure up to some of my other summer favorites. I chose to make a peanut butter and banana smoothie. The recipe was quick and easy:
10 ounces skim milk or plain soy milk (I chose to use skim milk)
1 tablespoon natural peanut butter
1 medium banana
Directions:
In a blender, combine all ingredients and mix until smooth. Use 6 ice cubes for a thicker consistency.
As far as nutritional value, the smoothie had 303 calories, nine grams of fat, 45 grams of carbohydrates, four grams of fiber and 16 grams of protein. This smoothie contains 531 fewer calories than the smoothie that ranked number two on the worst smoothie list.
It only took five minutes to make the smoothie, and it tasted delicious. It’s hard to mess up bananas and peanut butter, but I would definitely consider making this again instead of buying a fattening drink because it tasted just as good and was so easy to make. It was a little frothy for me, so next time I will probably use less ice cubes, but that is the only thing I would do differently with this recipe. Having something that is so simple and yet, so good makes making healthful choices that much easier.
