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This New York Times article makes the claim that:

The fiber in whole fruit “acts as a net” to slow down the process by which the body turns sugar from food into blood sugar, Ms. Krieger said, and though the smoothie still contains fiber, it has been pulverized during the blending process. As a result you’re likely to feel hungrier again sooner after drinking the smoothie than you would have had you eaten the same fruits and vegetables whole.

There's no scientific source for this claim in the article. How can blending fruit damage fiber molecules any more than chewing can so they are no longer usable by the body?

Is there an effect of blending fruit that means the fibre is damaged and it doesn't satisfy your hunger for as long?

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    The speed issue is about quantity and satiety: eat faster and you tend to eat more. There is no claim made about eating the same quantity and having different results depending on speed, it was referring to quantity and added sugars. There is also no claim made about fiber molecules being pulverized, insoluble fiber has a physical rather than molecular impact on digestion. Nov 27, 2019 at 1:38
  • The article states that: "It’s very likely that you are getting more calories and sugar when you drink a smoothie than when eating whole fruits or vegetables," which is a very misleading claim at best and what bothered me enough to make this question. I don't know why the mods deleted it. Nov 27, 2019 at 1:40
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    @SurpriseDog: Because you were misrepresenting the claim and their justifications for it.
    – Oddthinking
    Nov 27, 2019 at 1:53
  • I literally quoted the first sentence in the article. How is that misrepresenting the claim? If anything, the article is badly written. Nov 27, 2019 at 1:56
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; let's move to chat.
    – Oddthinking
    Nov 27, 2019 at 2:02

1 Answer 1

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It appears that this is an area of dispute amongst the experts, and I don't believe the research supports any bold claims.

For example, in 2016 Mother Jones interviewed Robert Lustig, who has been the subject of many Skeptics.SE questions here, and who provided limited evidence to the journalist.

Then the journalist followed up with David Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at Yale University:

In an emailed note, he wrote that while the blending process “certainly [has] an effect” on fiber, there has been little research documenting precisely how much it breaks down insoluble fiber and reduces the benefits of fruit. He added, “Let’s face it: Chewing grinds up fiber to some extent, too.” That said, “we have a fairly solid basis for saying: Whole food is best,” he wrote.

So, while he believes the claim might be true, he admits the research isn't there yet.

Katz goes on to point out that liquidizing food has other effects which may have an even more important role that the claim about fiber:

For one thing, “blenderizing takes away chewing, which reduces the time spent eating” and may inspire you to take in more. Also, “fluids are less filling than solids.” Finally, he added, turning foods into liquids markedly raises their glycemic load, which is a measure of how much a particular amount of food affects blood sugar and insulin levels. Indeed, a whole apple has a glycemic load of 6, while a serving of apple juice clocks in at 30—higher even than Coca-Cola, at 16.

Meanwhile, a 2017 article in the Atlantic take another tack, talking to Robin Spiller, director of biomedical research at the Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre in the U.K.

He looked studied the consumption of soup, and found blending it stopped consumers from feeling hungry for longer! However, his explanation for this is that when foods in the stomach "crack" - split into layers, the water can be quickly absorbed by the body. If the water remains in emulsion, it takes longer to consume.

On the other hand:

Though it’s not clear that all smoothies would do exactly the same thing as his chicken slurry soup, Spiller explains

So perhaps this argument isn't particularly strong for fruit smoothies, where the water may be easily absorbed.

Spiller goes on to warn of other effects:

“When you eat an apple, there’s a lot of crunching,” said Spiller. “That's a strong stimulus for the gut to secrete fluid. A lot of the behavior of your intestine is anticipatory –– it has to work ahead of what's happening. It’s no good producing enzymes to digest stuff when the material arrives. That’s too late. You’ve got to produce it ahead of time.”

So there are other effects that affect hunger unrelated to the specific claim which is about fiber.

Stiller weighs in here too:

“Blending won’t have a significant negative impact on fiber,” Spiller reassured me. “Fiber is what’s responsible for the viscosity of a smoothie and its impact on the bacteria of the large bowel. Mashing fiber up into small pieces should only enhance its availability for the bacteria. Its prebiotic effect is definitely unimpaired––it might be enhanced, even.”


So, the tally is:

  • one guy who is known for controversial claims says it has an effect,
  • one expert says he thinks it does (but has no research to support it) and points out other more significant effects.
  • one expert says he thinks it doesn't (but doesn't quote any research), and points out other more significant effects.

What does the actual research say?

I have to note that I was hampered by the number of papers that matched my search because as part of the method for measuring the fiber in food, many experimentalists blended it first. It seems that they are not concerned about the effect of blending.

I found some research in hamsters showing that particle size affected digestion, but they were talking about "micronization", and I don't think blenders count.

The best reference I found was:

This review paper quoted a couple of experimental studies:

Two studies have shown that fibre material is retained in smoothies. Scientists from the University of Leeds found that that cell wall structure of smoothies remained intact after they had been manufactured and exposed to simulated digestion for up to 16 h [14]. It was also observed that smoothie mixing led to a 68% reduction in viscosity, 30% reduction in total dietary fibre and 10% increase in soluble dietary fibre [14]. Equally, another trial found that fibre material is still present in the smoothies after processing-16.9% and 17.5% fruit cellular material by weight in the two smoothies tested [15]. These findings revealed that the fibre content retained in the smoothies resembled that similar to the process of chewing fruit, with this potentially having its own health effects.

So, yes, the blender had an effect, but the author likened it to chewing.


My conclusion is that the research isn't there to support the claim that a blender affects the fibre more than chewing fruit might. However, there are a plethora of other reasons which may cause similar effects - to feel hungrier sooner or to consume more fruit faster.

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  • (Sorry @Laurel, I stomped on your edit. I hope you are satisfied with the result. If not, please do edit again with my apologies.)
    – Oddthinking
    Nov 27, 2019 at 3:09
  • Just a funny note: the Goggle search info box tells me that all smoothies Google knows about have 0 fibre… More recent, but small : ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29889581 (look at the 'quantification') Big caveat: home-made or commercial (sweeter? juicier? fructose?)) and derived from that: which ingredients used? What is in the leftover tray? (Obviously often a lot of fibre…) Nov 27, 2019 at 9:57
  • @LangLang The numbers from that paper seemed the same as the one quoted above as "another trial". Sure enough, it seems to be the same authors with a very similar paper. Compare the review article's cite: Saltaouras G, Shaw PK, Fraser AC, Hawes C, Smith H, et al. (2017) The fibre content and impact on glycaemic response of two commercially available fruit smoothies. J Nutr Food Sci. with your cite. Clearly the experiments are in common.
    – Oddthinking
    Nov 27, 2019 at 13:09
  • @LangLang: As for Google, it seems to have stumbled on "V8 Splash Smoothies". I found the ingredients list for one of their flavours. Decreasing by weight: Water, high fructose corn syrup (!!!), vegetable juice (water and concentrated juice of sweet potatoes), soy protein isolate, pectin and then the added colours, flavours and sweeteners and added vitamins. It is sugar water with sweet potato juice!? That is not what I think of when I think of a smoothie.
    – Oddthinking
    Nov 27, 2019 at 13:16
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    Yo. V8: plus pectin usually is a soluble fibre! That's just to show how wide the spectrum is in commercial smoothies. A real big lot of those I'd never qualify as anything good at all, being better off with beer or coke… ;) Nov 27, 2019 at 13:21

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