Hectic Host: Blend It Like Beckham; Summer Smoothies

Last year, in a marketing masterstroke, a fast food giant signed up David Beckham to promote their healthy option fruit smoothie. Fast food is associated with apathy and sloth; so aligning with a peak-performing, over-achieving athlete helped to pitch this product perfectly in the minds of the public. The problem, however, with commercially produced smoothies is the high content of sugar syrup, which is omitted if blending at home or buying from an artisan source. Smoothies are a quick and easy way add to your child’s five a day requirement and if you avoid any additional sugars they are a great slow-release of energy way to start the day.

The best thing about making smoothies is that the jury is pretty much out on everything. When it comes to method there are no hard and fast rules, so you can pretty much write the recipe book as you go. Just get the blender out and get blitzing. But beware, the process is somewhat addictive, however, the great news is that they keep a few days in the fridge. Make them on a Monday and you have breakfast and post-school snacks sorted until Wednesday.

You essentially need fruit and sufficient liquid to make the pulped fruit flesh drinkable. This can be milk, a milk substitute (I think Oatly is the best dairy alternative on the market, it is full of flavour and packed with goodness), yoghurt, or fruit juice. I would try to avoid the use of too much concentrated fruit juice as the sugar content is really high; in fact the sugar content of apple juice from concentrate is around 11%, the sugar content of a leading brand cola drink is around 10%! You can get creative here and you can use an alternative such as carrot juice or coconut water, two great examples of juices that kids ordinarily would not touch but when hidden by the fruit you can sneak them in undetected. You can also use a high water content fruit such as watermelon, pineapple or just plain old-fashioned water.

Beside some sneaky nutritious juices, you can also use the fruit flavour to hide some even more radical inclusions; no one would detect several leaves of lettuce added to a strawberry smoothie or some celery sticks secreted in a peach and raspberry blend. As a rule of thumb the darker and more flavoursome you go with the fruit then the more adventurous your guerrilla nutritioning can become; a handful of spinach leaves added to blackberries, some beetroot leaves added to blueberries. Do not forget to experiment with herbs too. Fresh mint is wonderfully good for you and works well with pineapple and strawberries. Fresh ginger is also very good for you, although is probably better suited to the adult pallet, again great with strawberries. Black pepper is good for the metabolism and is fabulous combined with strawberries or melon.

It you are using ripe fruit the smoothie should be sweet enough, if not and it is still a little sharp, try honey rather than sugar. Try sprinkling with deliciously nutty oat bran or stir in some rolled oats for some bonus fibre.

If all of that seems too much trouble, then we are fortunate to have some wonderful smoothies available to take away; try Homemade on Barry Road, the juice bar at Pretty Traditional on North Cross Road and the Dulwich Bakery on Park Hall Road.

This article originally appeared in the June issues of the SE Magazines group of publications, to which Lawrence is a regular contributor, Please click here to read online.