Healthy Smoothie Recipes

On this page, we’re going to look at the building blocks of all healthy smoothie recipes.

Instead of trying to list off a few totally arbitrary smoothies that may or may not actually appeal to you, I’m going to give you the skeleton key that will empower you to create your own healthy smoothies no matter what particular set of ingredients you have on hand.

First off, we have to define our terms.

What do we mean by “healthy” smoothies?

There are certainly plenty of competition definitions of what “healthy” is, but in this article, I’m going to focus on healthy smoothie recipes that fulfill the following simple criteria:

  • Healthy Smoothies contain no artificial ingredients.
  • Healthy Smoothies contain no concentrated sweeteners (like sugar or honey). They get all their sweetness from fruit.
  • Healthy Smoothies contain no dairy. Although dairy isn’t necessarily unhealthy in all cases, most people eat more than enough dairy and don’t need extra in their healthy smoothies. Dairy is unnecessary, mucous-forming and best left for indulgent occasions.

Those are the things healthy smoothies don’t contain.

Here are the things healthy smoothies do contain:

  • Whole, fresh fruits
  • Superfoods
  • Clean sources of fat like flax seed oil, coconut and raw nuts.

two strawberries two bananas Healthy Smoothie Recipes

The Key Components of a Healthy Smoothie:

When you get ready to blend up a healthy smoothie, you have three questions to answer:

  1. What fruits are you going to put in your smoothie?
  2. What type of liquid are you going to use for your smoothie’s base?
  3. What sort of extras are you going to add into your smoothie?

Let’s look at possibilities contained within each of these three areas.

The Best Fruits for Healthy Smoothies

Within the domain of fruits, here are the classics that have proven themselves in smoothie duty time and again:

  • Banana (the king of smoothie fruits)
  • Berries (anything goes here–strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, etc.)
  • Apples and Pears
  • Peaches and Nectarines
  • Tropical Fruit like Mangoes, Pineapple, Jackfruit, Durian and Mamey Sapote
  • Melons

Just because I didn’t mention a fruit doesn’t mean you can’t add it in with your smoothie recipe.

I suspect there’s a potentially incredible smoothie waiting to be discovered for every fruit in existence.

The Best Liquids to Use in Your Healthy Smoothies

The sky’s the limit here!

Don’t be afraid of really experimenting with the type of liquid you use as a base for your smoothies.

  • Fresh Juice (orange juice, carrot juice, apple juice, mango juice, etc.)
  • Power Juices like organic Noni juice, Healthy Smoothie Recipes mangosteen juice, Healthy Smoothie Recipes goji berry juice, Healthy Smoothie Recipes or organic acai juice Healthy Smoothie Recipes
  • Coconut Water (either with the flesh from a young Thai coconut or out of a can)
  • Water (for a very mellow, much less sweet smoothie experience)
  • Nut Milks (store-bought or homemade, of which almond milk is probably my favorite)

Which liquids did I leave out? Let me know in the comments.

The Best Extras You Can Add to Your Healthy Smoothies

This is where things get really crazy!

There are infinite flavor combinations you can add to your smoothies.

Consider all the healthy, nutrient-rich foods you love. Could they potentially make a great smoothie add-in?

Here are the primary categories from which you can add ingredients to your healthy smoothies:

  • Greens (spinach makes a fantastic smoothie addition, and you can experiment with virtually any green. Tread lightly, though! Greens can overpower a smoothie real quick!)
  • Raw Nuts (I almost always toss raw cashews into my smoothies. Hemp seeds are fantastic as well. Just make sure your nuts aren’t salted or things can get a little weird.)
  • Oils (favorites include flax seed oil, hemp seed oil and basically any oil that doesn’t have a particularly strong flavor but is still high in rich healthy fats)
  • Nutritional Supplements (I love Vega Whole Food Health Optimizer, spiralinspirulina) or Vitamineral Green Healthy Smoothie Recipes.
  • Nut Butters (my favorite is raw almond butter, but peanut butter can work fantastically as can most other nut butters) or Raw Organic Nut Butters. Healthy Smoothie Recipes
  • Raw Cacao Beans or Raw Cacao Powder Healthy Smoothie Recipes. Healthy Smoothie Recipes
  • Exotic Superfoods (like maca, goji berries or acai powder.

That list barely scratches the surface of the extras you can add into your favorite healthy smoothie experiments, but they’ll at least get you started.