When you walk into a McDonald's and notice how appetizing their smoothie looks, your high hopes might get crushed upon looking at the ingredient list. Because chances are, you’re gonna learn a few new words today.
First impressions:
I’ll take a wild guess and assume that if you’re going for a smoothie option in a McDonald's, you’re remotely conscious about your health and what you put in your body.
A quick glance at the official product page of their Mango Pineapple smoothie, and it doesn’t even look that bad at first sight. They nonchalantly list the "three" ingredients it’s made out of, but I bet you’ll find it astonishing just how many questionable components they’re using that make up these three, seemingly innocent ingredients.
An abundance of additives & sugar:
So let’s take a deeper dive: the fruit content comes from purees and concentrates (they’re not peeling pineapples and bananas back there). Although these fruits are naturally sweet, the 52 grams of sugar content in McDonald’s’ medium-sized smoothie makes me wonder if there is added sugar in their fruit “base”.
If this doesn’t mean anything to you, that’s 13 teaspoons of sugar. That’s exactly how much sugar an average person would use to sweeten 13 servings worth of coffee. Yikes.
But don’t worry, sugar is the last thing that makes me iffy about these. Cellulose powder, artificial flavors, and xanthan gum are way more alarming and frankly, I wouldn’t expect to find any of these in a fruit smoothie.
And the cherry on top is their “smoothie yogurt” that completes the drink, which, among other things, lists additives such as sugar (why?), fructose (sure, let’s dump even more sugar in there), gelatin, corn starch and modified corn starch. Yummy.
The verdict & what we recommend:
Overall, nothing about the McDonald's smoothies makes me want to crave one, not even for free and maybe you feel the same way now. When I want to indulge, I’d much rather go down on 3 glazed donuts and eat less sugar in the process. (appx. 15 grams of sugar per donut).
Smoothies should be a healthy way to get your daily nutrients such as fiber, iron, and potassium instead of a weekly dose of sugar and preservatives that are already present in so many of our processed foods.
With that said, you might want to check out our smoothies that have zero additives or preservatives. It’s also 100% natural, has no added sugar and you can make it anywhere, without a blender. Where is the catch you might say? You, you are a good catch!
Order Smoothie-N-Go here!
Sources:
-https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/mango-pineapple-smoothie-small.html
-https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/mango-pineapple-smoothie-medium.html