This is the perfect sunny day snack or meal when you need a serious vitamin and energy boost. The only ingredient in this entire colorful Triple Layer Smoothie is fruit - seven different kinds of fruit, to be specific. If you're eating this smoothie as a meal, we recommend adding a bit of heart-healthy fat in order to help stave off hunger longer - we used raw pumpkin seeds for the smoothie in the picture, but almonds, peanut butter, walnuts, avocado, etc all taste great.
It takes a little extra effort to blend the three different fruit combinations but they taste great and end up looking a lot like candy, which makes this an easy sell as a dessert for kids (or your spouse!).
You will need
- Frozen raspberries, strawberries, peach, mango, blueberry, blackberry
- Room temperature bananas
- A blender
- A couple of jars to pour the smoothie mix into while you blend the other flavor combinations
How to
For each of the fruit groups below, blend the banana first, then add the frozen fruit; blend well. Set each aside and once all have been blended, pour into a glass in whichever color combination you like. I didn't use almond milk or any other liquid for these, which helped them keep their form, preventing the color layers from bleeding over into one another. If your blender is struggling with the blending process, you can always add a little milk.
Fruit/Color Combinations
Pink/Red: Roughly 1/2 cup of both Raspberries & Strawberries + 1 Banana
Yellow: Roughly 1/2 cup of both Peaches & Mangoes + 1 Banana
Blue/Purple: Roughly 1/2 cup of both Blueberries & Blackberries + 1 Banana
Serving Sizes
The allotments above make 2-3 very generous, meal-sized smoothies, but you could easily downsize the serving size and make 4-5 smaller glasses if you're using it as a small snack or dessert after a meal. The nutrition information below is for half of the smoothie.
What about all of the carbs?!
Something we get asked a lot is whether or not we're afraid of gaining weight from eating a lot of fruit, or if we ever eat fruit after 1 PM. We eat a lot of fruits and other healthy carbohydrate sources without any worry of weight gain, and we certainly don't have a cut off time when we stop eating them. The question probably arises from the villainization of carbohydrate in favor of protein (which is - go figure - usually being pushed by protein supplement companies). We believe that all three macronutrients - carbs, protein, and fat - are all immensely important to good health, and that one should not be considered more essential than the other. In fact, any diet that has you steering clear of one or eating only another, is probably something that should raise some serious red flags as to that diet's credibility or safety.
Have you tried this smoothie yet? What did you think?
Nutrition Information (for half of the serving above)
Calories: 268
Total Fat: 0.7 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 4 mg
Potassium: 960 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 66 g
Dietary Fiber: 12 g
Sugars: 39 g
Protein: 3.7 g
Vitamin: A 14%
Vitamin: C 114%
Calcium: 5%
Iron: 9%