Nutrition Nugget: Salad Power Smoothies

[00:00:26] So this one came from one of our awesome members of the Happy Healthy Hub. They said, I'm curious about drinking salad power smoothies. They're pure veggies. Are they adequate for getting in greens while on the go? So I love this question for a bunch of reasons. First, I always love when you send in your questions and suggestions, and I also love that you gave me the link so I knew that what I was looking at is exactly the thing that you were asking about.

[00:01:25] Our formula is geared towards functionality and still tastes great too. So okay so far. I'm on board. It says their mission and I like their mission. It says, make the easiest way on planet Earth to consume organic vegetables every day. We think it's crazy that junk food is always within arm's reach, but humankind's most important food group vegetables.

[00:02:16] Remind me, we're gonna come back to this when we look at the ingredients. So then before we look at the ingredients and the nutrition facts, I wanna highlight the founder, because this guy sounds very impressive, super bright entrepreneur in his mid thirties, very impressive background. And after running a hedge fund here in New York, he blended his passions for economics and healthcare in a new startup that is solid power.

[00:03:03] Salad power has spinach, kale, carrot, broccoli, apple and lemon. Nothing more, nothing less. The quantity of each ingredient is based on average weights from the most recent harvest. Our smoothies are made from only real whole organic produce. I like that. I'm on board with you. Okay. After that though, I think this is where they lose me.

[00:03:54] Thank you. Especially if you're a long time listener of salad with a side of fries. You know, we need to [00:04:00] chew our food and especially chew our vegetables. Right? It's that fiber piece, so, okay. Let's keep going. The flavor is described as very veggie, so kind of funny. At least they're honest. Okay. Then they showed this graphic of 16 spinach leaves, 12 parts of kale, leaves five carrots, four broccoli florets, one apple, and a wedge of lemon.

[00:04:50] So I don't love. That the two lists are in different orders, but like, I don't know. I'm trying to rationalize and logic my way through this, right? Because, [00:05:00] so on the ingredient list, things are to be listed in order by dry weight, and certainly carrots are gonna be above spinach. Even if there's more spinach than carrots, the piece, then if I follow that same logic, it doesn't necessarily track to like that.

[00:05:45] So. Interesting because then, oh, I had said this before, right? Going back to, they said they were using the lemon to cut the bitterness of kale and spinach. In my experience, those two flavors, more or less disappear in a smoothie, and [00:06:00] it's the broccoli. That's giving that very veggie taste profile. And by the way, I think the broccoli is likely the reason for the reviews.

[00:06:34] There's some vitamin C and potassium, and then a little bit of kale and magnesium. So here's the deal. If you were to use our trusty old net carb guideline of single digit net carbs right from a single packaged food, this wouldn't qualify. So 21 grams of total carbs, less five grams of fiber is 16 grams of net carbs.

[00:07:19] Now, here's my thought process on, again, going back to why I don't love them, saying that this can be your number one source of veggies. So one reason, I have two reasons for this. One reason is the price, depending on how many pouches you buy at a time, and by the way, it's a subscription model, so they're gonna keep showing up at your door.

[00:08:11] So if you had, you know, multiple people in your home and this was gonna be your source of veggies, like minimum $6 per person per day like that can add up. So price was one thing. The other issue that I have is if we go back to that picture where they had 16 leaves of spinach, 12 pieces of kale leaves five carrots, four broccoli ettes, an apple and a lemon wedge.

[00:09:05] By my rough estimation, we would get about 2.1 to 2.4 grams of fiber from the spinach, about four grams of fiber from the kale, about five grams of fiber from the carrots, 2.4 from the broccoli, four to five from the apple. And then I was sort of like, we can ignore the lemon. Wed right. If we add this up, it comes to 18.4 grams of fiber.

[00:09:57] So there's a lot less of that when coming in the [00:10:00] form of a smoothie than if we are eating and chewing the vegetables. So I share this so that we can have some perspective, and then we get to make our own personal choices and what makes sense. So then that brings us to the fantastic question that was submitted in the Happy Healthy Hub.

[00:10:42] So. On occasion, especially if you're traveling, these could be super helpful. If I was eating this and only this as a snack, it would not last me very long till I would be hungry again. Like depending on how hungry I was to begin [00:11:00] with for this snack, like this alone, probably wouldn't do the trick. Maybe it would last me an hour.

[00:11:35] Quality fat to help balance out the snack and then of course, certainly taste it first because that broccoli flavor in a smoothie can be polarizing. So there you have it. Friends, my take on the salad power smoothies. As always, everybody. I'm your host, Jenn Trepeck. Connect with me on Instagram or all social media.

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