What Is The Nutritional Values Of McDonald's Fruit Smoothies?

McDonalds offers consumers a choice of fruit smoothies and people, especially women, are enjoying them thinking they’re healthier than a soda or other sugary drinks. With a choice of banana, wild berry fruit or a strawberry banana combination, these smoothies are loaded with calories and off the chart sugar readings.

A small banana smoothie from McDonalds has 210 calories. The large smoothie has 330 calories with 70 grams of sugar. Smoothies may be one treat consumers need to be careful with.

McDonalds says that their smoothies are made with real fruit, and in fact, they are. However, the high sugar content comes from the natural sugars already present in the natural fruit in combination with additional sugars added by McDonalds.

The bottom line is that McDonald’s fruit smoothies are loaded in sugar, and sugar equals calories. The large banana smoothie has more calories in it than a McDonald’s cheeseburger, so for this reason it is not a good idea to have a fruit smoothie with your quarter-pounder meal.

Fruit smoothies on their own do not have enough nutritional value, such as protein, to be used as a meal. However, they are not the worst thing on the menu. A McDonalds strawberry shake has 570 calories, of which 17 grams of that are fat.

The ultimate culprit is McDonald’s 32 oz triple thick chocolate shake. This shake consists of 1,160 calories and 27 grams of fat, as well as 168 grams of sugar. For the sake of comparison, this one shake is the equivalent of eating 13 McDonlad’s baked hot apple pies.

McDonalds does have a website where consumers can check out the nutritional food value of all their meals. It is at nurtirion.mcdonalds.com.
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    Ingredients (Allergen statement in ALL CAPS.)
    Wild Berry Fruit Blend
    Strawberry puree, water, sugar, blackberry puree, blueberry puree,
    concentrated pineapple juice, concentrated apple juice, contains less
    than 1% of the following: Cellulose powder, xanthan gum, colored with
    fruit and vegetable juice, natural (botanical source) and artificial
    flavors, pectin, citric acid. *Dispensed from equipment that also
    dispenses milk ingredients (yogurt) If these ingredients from McDonald's website are correct, and by law they should be, then McDonald's deserves a little more respect for this offering than they are getting on this board. I have never been an advocate for McDonald's -- quite the contrary.  As it stands, this is probably the healthiest thing that McDonald's serves besides water.  The fact that there is no corn syrup in here is huge! There is a vast difference between sugar and corn syrup in their effects on your body and the latter is probably the single most important cause of obesity in the U.S.  Corn syrup and High Fructose Corn Syrup are cheap sweeteners used in almost every processed food in America.  It is more addictive than sugar and leads to not only obesity, but high blood pressure, and increased levels of triglycerides in the blood.  Our rise from a 15% obese population in 1970 to 33% today coincides with the introduction of corn syrup in the American diet starting in the 1970's and it's wide adoption today.So, it's still not as healthy as eating whole foods but it's not a bad alternative compared to any other fast food offering I've seen.
    The McDonalds website says this:

    Ingredients (Allergen statement in ALL CAPS.)
    Strawberry Banana Fruit Blend
    Strawberry Banana Fruit Blend: Strawberry puree, banana puree, water, sugar, concentrated apple juice, contains less than 1% of the following: Cellulose powder, natural (botanical source) and artificial flavors, xanthan gum, citric acid, colored with fruit and vegetable juice, pectin. *Dispensed from equipment that also dispenses milk ingredients (yogurt)

    Ingredients (Allergen statement in ALL CAPS.)
    Wild Berry Fruit Blend
    Strawberry puree, water, sugar, blackberry puree, blueberry puree, concentrated pineapple juice, concentrated apple juice, contains less than 1% of the following: Cellulose powder, xanthan gum, colored with fruit and vegetable juice, natural (botanical source) and artificial flavors, pectin, citric acid. *Dispensed from equipment that also dispenses milk ingredients (yogurt)

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