How Many Calories Are in a Banana Smoothie?

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered and licensed dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic and I've been asked how many calories are in a banana smoothie. This will actually vary a lot depending on how the smoothie is made. Some people will make smoothies strictly with the fruit and with the juice. Other people will make it with fruit and a yogurt. Some people will add milk into the mix. So you really want to find out how your banana smoothie is being made. If you are going to be making it at home, are you going to make it with just banana and milk, are you going to use fruit juice instead. If you are using milk the best thing to do if you are concerned about your calorie intake is to make sure you are using a very low fat milk or a skim milk. So a one percent milk would be the lowest fat milk that you can purchase in most stores. Some stores will carry a half percent milk but that's pretty hard to find. So skim milk or again one percent milk is fine to use. Try to avoid adding any additional sugar. Maybe add a few other flavorings such as vanilla or cinnamon and blend it up with some extra ice and that will be a fairly low calorie smoothie. With that one banana, say a eight ounce cup of skim milk you are probably going to be having a smoothie close to around two hundred calories. If you go somewhere and buy the smoothie depending on what all else they add, if they are adding yogurt, if they are adding other fruit juices and depending on the size, whether you are getting an eight ounce cup or you are getting a sixteen ounce glass there is going to be a wide variation in the calorie level. Some smoothies can go up as high as around eight hundred calories depending on what is added to them. Some smoothie factories will actually add protein powders and that will really kick up the calorie content as well. So make sure that depending on where you go for your smoothie, just check the nutrition information if they have it available in the restaurant. If not try to check ahead of time online. A lot of restaurants will publish their nutrition information online and if that's not available, it's not available online and you go to the restaurant and you don't see it available ask the person who is making your smoothie what all they are putting in there. And you can get a pretty rough idea of how many calories are in your smoothie. A couple of things to keep in mind is that a medium size banana is going to have around a hundred calories to it. If they are using an eight ounce cup of plain yogurt that's going to be about a hundred calories. If they are using an eight ounce cup of a skim milk that is going to be around ninety calories. So a few calorie levels to keep in your mind, they are adding fruit juice to it and eight ounce cup of fruit juice is going to be about a hundred and twenty calories. So keep all those things in mind, make sure that if all those things are added you are adding all of those various calorie levels and that will give you a rough idea of how many calories are in your smoothie."