5 Key Ingredients for a Healthy Smoothie

Add these 5 tasty & nutritious ingredients to your healthy smoothie for a detoxifying energy boost!

I don’t know about you, but after all the heavy foods and sweets over the holidays, it always feels so good to start off the new year eating light and clean! It’s also a great time to set some health and fitness goals, and give your body a little detox. A daily healthy smoothie is a great way to include lots of health-boosting and detoxifying ingredients in your diet.

Whether you’re looking for a way to detoxify, need to revitalize after good workout, or you simply want to get your day off to a great start, there are lots of healthy ingredients you can add to give your smoothie a little extra boost.  While you shouldn’t try to cram everything into one smoothie, you can look at these key ingredients and use them to make amazing drinks and juices. With so many different foods to experiment with, there’s almost no end to the healthy smoothie recipes you can come up with!

Here are 5 key ingredients to consider:

1.) Bananas

Bananas give you an extra burst of energy, and they also add a nice thickening effect to your smoothies. Bananas are an ideal food to use as your base for the smoothie, using a few other fruits as additions. If you are using bananas in your smoothies, you can also add coconut milk, almond milk, yogurt or dairy milk to up your protein intake.

2.) Raspberries

Owing to their sweet and tangy taste, raspberries have become a firm favorite in smoothies. They are full of antioxidants to help cleanse your body and aid with weight loss too. Many women have praised raspberries for the benefits they have in helping to reduce pains and tummy cramps during periods. Raspberries are also thought to help reduce inflammation in the skin, as well as ease redness and other skin problems.

3.) Cranberries

Cranberries are very tart on their own, but they taste great in a smoothie! You can use fresh cranberries and put them in a juicer or simply blend them into your smoothie, or you can buy cartons of cranberry juice and add to the rest of your ingredients. As well as aiding weight loss, cranberry juice is well known for preventing urinary tract infections.

4.) Oranges

Fresh oranges are great in smoothies – just peel and toss into your blender – or juice them first, and then add the juice to your smoothie. Or, if you want an easier option, you can buy pre-squeezed orange juice in a carton and add this to the smoothie. Oranges contain high levels of vitamin C to keep you feeling strong and healthy, and they have high levels of antioxidants too. For a truly fresh-tasting smoothie, you can even include a bit of orange peel! (Note that it’s best to do this only with organic oranges.)

5.) Peanut Butter

You can add protein and healthy fats to your diet quite quickly by including natural peanut butter in your smoothies. You only need to add a teaspoon full of peanut butter, since it is rich and thick and will quickly add taste and texture to your drink. As well as helping your skin and hair to look healthier, peanut butter helps look after your heart too. (Be sure to use only natural peanut butter, not the stuff with added sugars and oils.)

Smoothies, like salads, are limited only by your creativity! You can make your smoothie your own by adding your own favorite ingredients, but including one or more of the above options is a great way to give your body a little boost of energy and naturally support detoxification.