Probably nothing says more about how popular smoothies have become than the fact that McDonalds has now added two flavors of smoothies to their menu. They offer "Wild Berry" which is a blend of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and some other flavors and the always popular "Strawberry Banana".
The ingredients of these two new menu items are not as bad as you might suppose, but they are very typical of modern food produced on an industrial scale. The "Wild Berry" flavor is concocted with: "strawberry puree, water, sugar, blackberry puree, blueberry puree, concentrated pineapple juice, concentrated apple juice". Complete ingredient information can be found at nutrition.mcdonalds.com. The "strawberry banana blend is much the same but uses banana puree instead of blueberry and blackberry. And it leaves out the pineapple and apple juice as well.
Smoothie Recipe
Nutritionally, neither of these smoothies is too bad. For the Strawberry Banana flavor a 16 fluid ounce cup (medium) the information is:
- 260 calories
- 1 gram of Fat
- No saturated or Trans fat
- 5 milligrams cholesterol
- 40 milligrams sodium
- 60 grams Carbohydrates
- 3 grams Dietary Fiber
- 54 grams Sugars
- 2 grams Protein
- vitamins A and C
- minerals Calcium and Iron
The Wild Berry Smoothie has much the same nutritional information. Again complete nutritional information can be found at http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com.
McDonalds is to be commended for adding these two fruit smoothie items to their menu with such a reasonable nutritional make up. When compared with other items on the McDonalds menu, these smoothies stand out as beacons of restraint.
The other benefit to these smoothies being offered is that it will increase the popularity of smoothies overall. More and more people will become interested in fruit smoothie recipes as a very healthy food choice and begin to make them at home as snacks and desserts instead of eating higher calorie choices like sweets and junk food. There are many places to find smoothie recipes and you might well be surprised at how many different possibilities there are to make a very tasty smoothie with a huge variety of ingredients.
Fruit Smoothie Popularity Is Growing
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