A: Making smoothies and juices are becoming more and more popular. As I previously mentioned, juicing is a great way to increase your intake of many important nutrients especially if you don’t really like vegetables. But the fibre is left behind when you make juice from fruits and vegetables.

So what’s different about smoothies? Making smoothies with fruit and vegetables means you use whole fruit or vegetable. You also get many important nutrients, you generally feel fuller from smoothies and you don’t get that afternoon slump as you would after a sugar spike. Everything you put into the blender is used up meaning you get all of the nutrients including fibre. When you make juice there is always left over fibre and this means it can only count towards one of your 5-a-day no matter how much you have.

So you think you should get more than one of your 5-a-day from a smoothie? This depends on how you prepare it. For a smoothie to have one of your 5-a-day it must have one fruit or vegetable serving. The following counts as one serving, there are many more fruits and vegetables but these are some popular ones.

• 1 medium apple, banana or orange.
• 2 small fruits kiki kiwi or plums.
• 1 cup of strawberries or a half cup of grapes
• Half cup of vegetables
• 1 cup of salad vegetables

For your smoothie to contain 2 of your 5-a-day you would need to put in two servings, and so on. Because smoothies retain all the fibre you actually won’t use as many ingredients. This means you might find that one glass of smoothie may still only contain 1 of your 5-a-day!

So they both definitely have their pros. You can juice many different fruits and vegetables and consume a variety of nutrients and with smoothies you stay full and can get more than one of your five a day. Enjoy various combinations of juices and smoothies as part of a healthy balanced diet.