 As I've explored previously, drinking sugar water is bad for you. If you have people drink glass of water with three tablespoons of table sugar, and it was like a can of soda, this is the spike in blood sugar you get within the first hour. Our body freaks out so much, releases so much insulin. We actually overshoot, by the second hour, a relatively high bogel. I see me dropping our blood sugar below where it was when we started out fasting. In response, our body dumps fat into our bloodstream, as if we're starving, because our blood sugar just drops so low. And the same thing happens after drinking apple juice. Here's what happens to your blood sugar on three hours after eating four and a half cups of apple slices. It goes up, comes down. But if you eat the same amount of sugar in apple juice form, about two cups, your body overreacts. Releasing too much insulin, you end up dipping below where you started. The removal of fiber in the production of fruit juice can enhance the insulin response and result in this rebound hypoglycemia. What would happen, though, if you stuck those four and a half cups of sliced apples in a blender with some water and pureed them into an apple smoothie? It would still have all its fiber, yet it still caused that hypoglycemic dip. Three bound fallen blood sugars, which occurred during the second and third hours after juice and puree, was in striking contrast to the practically steady level after apples. This finding not only indicates how important the presence of fiber is, but also perhaps whether or not the fiber is physically disrupted, like in the blender. Let's play devil's advocate, though. Eating four and a half cups of apples took 17 minutes, but to drink four and a half cups of apples in smoothie form only took about six minutes, and you can down two cups of juice in like 90 seconds. So maybe these dramatic differences have more to do with how fast the fruit entered into our system, rather than its physical form. If it's just the speed, we could instead sip a smoothie over 17 minutes would be the same, right? So they put it to the test. Fast juice was drinking in 90 seconds, but what if you instead sipped the juice over 17 minutes? Same problem. So it wasn't the speed, it was the lack of fiber. What if you disrupt that fiber with blending, but sip it as slowly as the whole apple eating? A little better, but not as good as just eating the apple. So eating apples is better than drinking apple smoothies. But who drinks apple smoothies? What about bananas, mangoes, berries? There was a study that compared whole bananas to blended bananas and didn't see any difference, but they only looked for an hour and it was while they were exercising. Bananas in general, though, may actually improve blood sugars over time. The same thing with mangoes, and this was with powdered mango, and it can't get any more fiber disrupted than that. It may be due to a phytonutrient called mangifarin, which may slow sugar absorption through the intestinal wall. Berries help control blood sugar so well they can counter the effects of the sugar water even when they're pureed in a blender. Adding blended berries, in addition to the sugar water, and you don't get the hypoglycemic dip, you don't get that burst of fat in the blood. Drinking blended berries isn't just neutral, but improves blood sugar control. Again, thought to be due to special phytonutrient that can slow sugar uptake into the bloodstream. Indeed, six weeks of blueberry smoothie consumption actually improve whole body insulin sensitivity. So while apple smoothies may be questionable, a recipe like Mayo's basic green smoothie recipe, packed with berries and greens, would be expected to deliver the best of both worlds, maximum nutrient absorption, without risking overly rapid sugar absorption.