Every morning Karen (32) makes a smoothie with lots of fruit (from the freezer), yoghurt or cottage cheese. “I enjoy this every morning. I like it and I always thought: look at me being healthy. But now a friend recently warned that this is not very healthy at all, because you quickly get hungry afterwards and therefore start eating again Moreover, all that fruit would not be very healthy, because it also contains a lot of sugar.”
“I’m disappointed about this: I just stopped eating bread in the morning because I had the idea that I gained weight from it. Is my girlfriend right and should I eat something heavier in the morning?”
Diet psychologist Eveline van de Waterlaat I can imagine that you don’t know what to believe anymore. “If you Nutrition Center persists, then fruit is super healthy, but if you follow a low-carbohydrate diet, fruit is out of the question. If you follow a slimming diet that does not contain gluten, then bread is your enemy. However, if you count your calories, a slice of bread will come out fine again.”
Fortunately, Van de Waterlaat has good news for Karen: neither smoothies nor bread will make you fat. “Whether you get hungry again quickly after drinking a smoothie differs per person and also depends on the ingredients (see box) you use.”
Fat, fiber and protein
Are you hungry again after your morning smoothie? Then experiment with adding extra fat, protein or fiber.
Fat: “You can add more fat to your smoothie by using full-fat dairy instead of low-fat, such as full-fat yogurt or full-fat quark. But you can also add vegetable fats, for example by adding some avocado to your smoothie. This makes your smoothie nice and creamy. Pieces of avocado are now also available frozen.” Fiber: “To increase the fiber content of a smoothie, you can also add leafy vegetables, such as spinach, in addition to fruit. Kernels and seeds are also a good addition, such as pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, linseed, chia seeds or sesame seeds. fruit juice (also not fresh juice), because with juice the fibers are largely filtered out.” Proteins: “You can add more proteins to your smoothie by, for example, using cottage cheese or Greek yogurt instead of regular yogurt. But protein powder is also often used to increase the protein content.”
Also make a smoothie bowl: “A smoothie bowl is nothing more than a smoothie that you eat with a spoon. They are often a bit thicker (and therefore more satiating) than the version that you drink from a glass. You top them off with some fruit, grains, coconut chips, pips or seeds.”
According to Van de Waterlaat, fruit has taken a big hit since the increased popularity of low-carbohydrate diets. “Especially fruits that contain more fruit sugars are often thought to make you fat. That’s a pity, because fruit provides us with many other healthy nutrients, including fiber. And that while 90 percent of the Dutch do not consume enough fiber , resulting in bowel and intestinal problems.”
Three pieces of fruit
“My advice is therefore not to eat two, but three pieces of fruit a day. Whether you eat it at once or during the day, it doesn’t matter. If you use more than three servings of fruit in your smoothie, it should you can also replace part of it with leafy vegetables.”
There is nothing wrong with the frozen fruit that Karen uses in her smoothies, on the contrary. “It is even healthier. Because it is frozen immediately after harvest, fewer vitamins are lost.”
Saturation
If Karen wants to watch her weight, then ‘a feeling of fullness’ is an important one, the diet psychologist advises, because ‘nothing makes losing weight more difficult than walking around feeling hungry all day’. “In general, fats, proteins and fibers provide more satiety than carbohydrates. But there is also a lot of difference here. One person is saturated much longer from a bowl of full quark (contains fat and proteins). While the other notices little difference if he eats low-fat cottage cheese (contains protein, but no fat).”
Foods and (pronounced) flavors that you like generally provide much more satiety than foods with little taste or foods that you don’t like, says Van de Waterlaat. “Taste is greatly underestimated when losing weight. For example, fat gives flavor to a dish and a nice mouthfeel. While many diets eat as little fat as possible. And that while a good taste and mouthfeel not only make losing weight much tastier, you keep this also makes it full for much longer.”
Van de Waterlaat therefore wants to advise Karen not to just assume something, but to test it in practice first. “A smoothie can be a great choice. Don’t be fooled by others, but trust yourself and your body.”
Rubriek: Asking for a friend
In this weekly column Asking for a friend we submit reader questions about health to one of our experts. Do you also have a pressing health question for a general practitioner, obstetrician, dietician, psychologist or another health expert? Then mail it to weekendmagazine@rtl.nl and who knows, you might see the answer appear here soon.
2023-09-04 09:26:11
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