That smoothie in your trolley looks like the healthiest thing in the shop. Bright colours, whole fruit on the label, a five-a-day badge. But blend fruit instead of eating it, and the sugar story changes completely. Let's open the bottle.
A small 200ml glass of orange juice has around five teaspoons of sugar. That's naturally occurring, from the fruit, but your body can't tell the difference — and it's roughly the same as a small glass of cola. Juicing strips out the fibre that would normally slow it down.
A typical 250ml fruit smoothie goes further — around six to seven teaspoons of sugar. Why more than juice? Because blending uses the whole fruit, flesh and all, so a lot more fruit fits into that bottle than you'd ever peel and eat in one sitting.
Those big 750ml bottles are usually meant to be three servings. Drink the lot in one go, as many of us do, and you're looking at around eighteen to twenty teaspoons of sugar — more than in three standard chocolate bars. The label's serving size does a lot of quiet work.
A whole apple has sugar too, around four teaspoons, similar to a small glass of apple juice. The difference is fibre — it's still there in the apple, slowing digestion down, filling you up. Juice and smoothies remove or blitz that fibre away.
There's no need to give up juice or smoothies entirely. A small glass rather than a tall one, cut with water or ice, or swapping some servings for whole fruit — any of these quietly lowers the teaspoon count without losing the taste you enjoy.
Start your transformation — try SugarCoach free, then £2.99/weekGeneral lifestyle education, not medical advice — personal medical decisions belong with your GP or pharmacist.