Doctor Beet Smoothie

You can blend your smoothies with almost any liquid of your choice – we recommend using 200ml apple juice, but for a lower GI option you could use coconut water, almond or oat milk, half water/half juice, pineapple juice, or even a mix of water and Greek yoghurt. There’s a handy little chart here showing you which juice is the best option for each flavour.

Each smoothie sachet is 140g, and after blending with 200ml liquid you will get a 12oz smoothie. That’s a standard UK size, the same as you’ll get in a café. We find it’s a large-ish portion for an adult, or two smaller portions for kids. Each smoothie has its own ‘nutritionals’ section – for example, see Pash n Shoot here – which gives you the calories per 100g and all the other info you might need.

They will keep for up to 2 years from production date in your freezer, but check each packet for its own Best Before End date. If your smoothies have defrosted a little in transit, don’t worry, simply stick them straight in the freezer and they’ll be good to go. A lumpy sachet may take a little longer to blend, so either give it a few minutes to defrost before blending, or a good bash with a rolling pin if particularly lumpy!

We pick our fruit and veg at peak ripeness and blast freeze them almost straight away. This means that they retain as many vitamins and minerals as their fresh counterparts. In fact, because fresh produce is often picked when it’s not ripe and artificially ripened in transit with ethylene (yikes!), frozen fruit is actually higher in key vitamins (for example Vit C in blueberries).

Have you also noticed how bottled smoothies seem to all taste of banana? They’re the most common addition to smoothies because they add sweetness, body, and nutrients. We’re obviously a bit biased here, but this means that the problem with ready-made is that there is too much sugar (sweetened fruit juice, sugary frozen yogurt, dollops of honey, all those bananas). So it’s pretty safe to say that frozen packs are healthier than bottled smoothies.

Finally, because we use the whole of the fruit and veg in our smoothies, you’ll get all the fibre in your drink, and therefore a slower sugar release. If you want to lower the GI even further, use coconut water, almond milk or water as your blending liquid. Having a wide variety of different fruit & veg gives our smoothies a depth of flavour as well as nature’s wonderful variety of vitamins, antioxidants and minerals.

Yes of course! You can recycle the cardboard box with your normal recycling, and the little sachets together with supermarket bags. UK law states that we can’t yet use recycled plastic for food packaging, but we’re working on a couple of more sustainable options for the future – watch this space!