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July
29
Legalize Banana Smoothies
Filed under Blog by Frederic Patenaude
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This morning I woke up with this incredible craving for bananas!
In the summer, we have so many delicious fruits available, like mangoes, peaches, watermelon, cherries — that I find I don’t desire bananas that much during that time.
Yet this morning, my craving for bananas was so intense that I ended up running to the store to get some.
And then I came back and made this huge banana smoothie.
After drinking it, I got this surge of energy.
I thought, this stuff is so good it should be legalized!
Oh wait, bananas are not a drug…
But they might as well be one, a great natural energy booster.
The best way to get started eating more raw foods is to make giant banana smoothies in the morning. And your smoothies don’t need to contain just bananas!
Use bananas as a staple, but also add other fruits and greens such as:
- Frozen fruits (berries are great)
- Fresh seasonal fruits like mango or peaches
- Baby spinach, Swiss chard, kale
- Fresh herbs (try crazy combinations like basil or mint)
- Fruit that will go bad soon if you don’t eat them (like that wrinkled apple in the back of your fridge)
For variety you can even replace water with some almond-milk. Store-bought almond milk may not be raw, but it doesn’t contain that much fat at all, and adds an incredible, creamy taste to smoothies. You could use it occasionally as a treat — but not all the time.
You just can’t go wrong with banana smoothies. As long as you use ripe spotted bananas as the base and some liquid (1/2 cup to 1 cup), then you can add almost anything but sawdust to the smoothie and it will taste good!
Banana smoothies are excellent after exercise, as a recovery drink. Try adding a bit of fresh celery to it to make it even more like a real recovery drink. Celery adds natural sodium which helps in rehydration.
The great thing about bananas is that they are fairly cheap. By calories, it’s certainly the most affordable healthy choice you can make.
When I lived near Montreal, I would buy an entire 40-pound case of organic bananas at a distributor for around $30-35.
Even if you can’t afford organic bananas, don’t be afraid to buy conventional. Conventional bananas are listed very low on the list of pesticide-containing foods. Due to their thick skin, they are considered pretty safe.
Sometimes, you can find bananas for less than 50 cents a pound! When I was younger, I would often buy them at less than 30 cents a pound in some stores. It seems like the days of really cheap food are over, but at least bananas have remained relatively cheap.
I’m not one of those people who say you must absolutely eat 30 bananas a day.
You just need to eat the amount of fruit that you need, based on your energy levels and your lifestyle.
I personally could not make bananas the #1 staple of my diet all the time, but I enjoy them often and overall, it’s probably the main fruit that I eat throughout the year.
If you’ve procrastinated giving raw foods a try, start with banana smoothies. You’ll love them so much that you’ll wonder when they’ll become illegal!
8 Responses to “Legalize Banana Smoothies”
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Bananas go in as a foundation to pretty much every smoothie I make, usually with another fruit (or berries) and some leafy greens.
They’re also the easiest snack on the go and always take them along on a hike.
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Em says:
I love bananas – they’re my favourite thing to put into smoothies…though I’m now wondering…I only eat the super-sweet Asian bananas – quite large but with very thin skins. They’re everywhere in the Vietnamese markets where I live in Sydney and taste so much better than ordinary bananas.
But I guess that the thin skins (sometimes they’re paper thin!) means I’m also taking in a lot of pesticides…
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Been eating raw for about 4 years and had amazing results but still Learning more about fruit and less nuts. Same thing this week been learning about eating bananas and really had tons of energy whereas with juicing only not much energy in general. Glad you article summed up my experience too!
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Yes, thanks! We LOVE banana based smoothies and milkshakes! Talk about inexpensive too! Here in Nanaimo, B.C. we regularly get organic bananas at the Superette on the corner of Albert and Wilson for twenty seven cents a pound! Until the bananas begin to show brown spots the natural sugars haven’t yet developed, but most people reject them as “overripe” as they are picked green and that is what they believe bananas should be like: firm and green! We take our haul home and slice them into rounds, putting 2 to 2 1/2 bananas in each Ziploc bag and then freeze. We have a discount health foods store (Nanaimo Green Store) that sells frozen almond Silk, 1.87L for $1. We thaw the Silk as needed and add the frozen bananas in our blender. Experiment until you get the desired consistency. We’ve also begun adding the frozen bananas to our green smoothies coz they (bananas or mangoes) help to take away the “swamp odor” and act as an emulsifier. I have been told that I’m suffering CHF (Congestive Heart Failure) and the only way doctors have for me to get better is a stent or invasive surgery. I prefer the natural way first, am already getting better thanks to raw foods like these.
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catherine says:
I appreciate the article but bananas for some can be “deadly”. They are an extremely yin fruit thus creating a damp energy in the body. They are off-the-charts on the glycemic index and will create a rapid rise in blood sugar making the pancreas work overtime. Those with weight issues should avoid them altogether. Avocado and kiwi have far more potassium. Just a word of caution. Bananas are not great for everybody.
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I love bananas! They are my absolute favourite food to put into smoothies – though now I’m wondering…
I buy only Asian bananas – they are so much sweeter, creamier and tastier (when eaten fully ripe) and with at least double the yield due to their ‘density’. They are also readily available where I live in Sydney.
But with their super-thin skins (sometimes literally paper-thin – even tissue-paper-thin at times!) – I’m clearly ingesting quite a heavy load of pesticides:( Hmmm…
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mary-love says:
are bananas full of starch? I am trying to eliminate starch from my diet
