As adults, it is still quite difficult to achieve a change to a more healthy diet containing the additional fruits and vegetables that nutritionists, scientists and the government are telling us, almost daily it seems, is what we must do to ensure our long-term health. We can understand the reasons why we are being told to make this change, but for our children, it is much more difficult when there are so many temptations and so much more pressure from friends to choose things that really are not good for them. You might not think of a smoothie maker as a tool in your arsenal to educate children into eating more healthily but smoothies are so delicious and full of goodness that they are a great start in getting children to eat more fruit and vegetables.
If your children descend on your kitchen at the end of their school day, ravenous and wanting the fastest possible snack to stoke up again to keep them going until supper time, you need some help if you are going to get them to choose a healthy option. If you want to divert them from crisps, cakes and biscuits and onto a more nutritious snack, it is going to have to be something that is speedy and delicious and that is where you win on both counts with a home smoothie maker. A delicious smoothie can be made in a few seconds and your children can even help to make their favourite recipe and get a delicious and nutritious smoothie in no time flat!
All children enjoy a glass of fruit juice. If you have a juicer at home, you will know that you are giving them a drink packed full of vitamins from freshly squeezed fruit. However, even though juice is great and much, much better than a fizzy drink, juice does not have the goodness of the whole fruit because all the pulp containing fibre, antioxidants and other nutrients remains in the juicer.
By using your home smoothie maker you will save money as the cost is a tiny fraction of the ready-made smoothies sold in stores and the result will be a drink, packed full of vital antioxidants that protect us from free radicals, plus all the vitamins and minerals contained in the fruit juice itself. There is also another great benefit to digestive systems and that is the soluble and insoluble fibre from the fruit pulp.
Insoluble fibre is vital and consuming insufficient in our daily diets could have serious effects on our health. Initially this may only be the problem of constipation and perhaps the discomfort of developing piles (haemorrhoids). In the long term, we may be storing up much more serious problems for ourselves by becoming more prone to very serious diseases such as cancer of the colon or bowel.
Soluble fibre is vital too. It is a great asset if you are trying to eat more healthily and perhaps loose weight too as it helps to regulate the sugar levels in our blood. If you find that you suffer from ‘lows’ in you sugar levels when you need to eat sweet things, insoluble fibre will help to smooth out those ‘lows’. A great bonus is that it also has a beneficial effect on our cholesterol levels.
A smoothie maker probably does not sound like a valuable weapon in the war against unhealthy eating. By making good, healthy food taste so delicious and therefore making it popular and eaten without any fuss or bother, even by the pickiest children, we are going to be setting them on the path to eating more healthily and we can all avoid some of the major medical problems that cause so much distress and heartache in later life.