This low sugar smoothie is a favorite around here and they go into heavy rotation when it’s 100 degrees outside. Super easy for breakfast or a quick snack, no cooking required and probably the easiest strategy to sneak hidden nutrition into a toddler’s diet. Parenting WIN. My only beef with most smoothies is the insanely high sugar content. Between the fruit, any juice add ins, yogurt and a little honey, it adds up quick. I recently googled “low sugar smoothie recipes” and the first hit touted recipes with 25-30 grams of sugar for an 8oz serving! In my book, that’s still too much. And if you are purchasing one from your favorite smoothie joint, odds are it’s closer to 50 grams.
When I started paying attention and actually adding up how much sugar was going into my smoothies (and into my toddler’s tummy) it was closer to that 20 gram mark. We’ve made a couple easy substitutions/eliminations and come up with a low sugar smoothie recipe with only 11 grams of sugar. Yes, it’s less sweet than you are used to, but my official taste tester gobbled it down with a smile and I felt a lot better about giving it to him. And added bonus around here- Alan can actually enjoy a small portion with his breakfast without worrying about it affecting his blood sugar too badly.
This time of year, when the berries are in season and look this gorgeous, we use fresh beauties like these. As summer wanes we’ll switch to frozen.
To lower the sugar content to an acceptable range, we reduced the amount of frozen bananas I typically use, swapped the milk for almond milk (zero sugar!) and reduced the amount of honey. You can obviously play around with this recipe, switch up your fruits, milks and add ins. You could even skip the honey and use Stevia. I like the Greek yogurt and some sort of nut butter for protein and good fats to keep little tummies (and mine) full.
I know I have a lot of mamas of littles out there! Please leave any kid friendly, low sugar snacks in the comments. I would love some new ideas! Thanks so much for being here. Happy Cooking!
Low Sugar Berry Smoothie
A light and delicious smoothie with only 11 grams of sugar.
Yields: Two 8oz servings
- 1/2 C plain Greek yogurt
- 1/2 C blueberries, fresh or frozen
- 1/2 C strawberries, fresh or frozen
- 1/2 C almond milk
- 1/4 frozen banana
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 Tbsp peanut or almond butter
- 1 tsp honey
- 4 ice cubes
- Blend all ingredients together in blender
- Enjoy
- Preparation time: 5 minutes
- Cook time: 1 minute
- Total time: 6 minutes
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