WHAT'S THE STORY WITH THE NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF SMOOTHIES?:IN AN IRONY as delicious as any smoothie, there appeared to be confusion in the Safefood camp last week over a survey it published recently focusing on consumer confusion over the nutritional benefits of the fruit-filled drinks.

In its report, published at the end of last month, Safefood suggested that three quarters of smoothie drinkers overestimated the nutritional benefit of the drinks and assumed they contributed more than one portion of fruit and vegetables a day.

“Vegetable or fruit smoothies only count as one portion a day, regardless of how many you drink,” it said in the statement accompanying its 24-page report on consumer knowledge, attitudes and beliefs around the nutritional content of smoothies. “This is because smoothie ingredients contain less fibre than their whole fruit or vegetable equivalents.” It was an assertion that was made twice more in the report but, after being contacted by Pricewatch, Safefood appeared to have second thoughts.

We asked on what basis it had concluded that smoothies – irrespective of contents or quality – could be classified as counting for a single portion of daily fruit or veg? Safefood replied that the guidance contained in the study had been based on “current advice” from the Department of Health and Children and the Health Promotion Agency in Northern Ireland, but went on to say that “Safefood has just become aware that the Department of Health in the UK have just issued guidelines stating two portions per smoothie and will re-look at this now from an island of Ireland context”.

We then received further communication from Safefood which said that the initial response we got contained “an inaccuracy” and the original one-a-day advice stood. We were told the confusion arose out of correspondence between the UK Department of Health and Innocent Smoothies which has not been put in the public domain.

For its part, Innocent, the company with the largest share of the smoothie market in Ireland, were less than pleased when the Safefood report was published, hardly surprising when you consider the money at stake. In 2007, the smoothie market in Ireland was worth €9.3 million – up €6.8m over the previous five years. Although sales have bottomed out as the Great Recession settles in for an extended visit, the drinks remain big business in Ireland; being able to make bolder claims about the nutritional benefits of the product will have a big impact on any company’s bottom line.

Dr Shilpee Mehrotra is the nutritionist at the Innocent headquarters in London. “We have been talking to the Department of Health here for two years about getting our smoothies reclassified as two pieces of fruit,” she told Pricewatch last week. “They asked us to prove it, and only this week we got a letter from the department confirming that our position had been accepted. As well as that, we have the approval of the Food Safety Authority and the vast majority of nutritionists.”

Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan, director of human health and nutrition at Safefood, told Pricewatch it stood over its claim that smoothies amounted to a single portion of fruit. She said it was important to “give advice from a public perspective that is simple and consistent” and, she said, the consistent advice worldwide is that smoothies count as just one portion.

She said that while she had “no reason to believe the Innocent product is anything but very good”, she did say it had been lobbying the British government hard for years about the health claims it could make about its product.

“We are not saying that this is something that should not be reviewed by organisations such as the World Health Organisation,” but, she said, Safefood would be remiss if it did not go by the advice it was given from it and other international groups.

“We would say that this is a healthy option. All we are saying is that the proportion of people who overestimate their benefits is very high. There are a certain proportion of people who feel that they are the panacea. We have people who are drinking smoothies all day and they think they are doing themselves good.”

THE SAFEFOOD STUDY found that while almost 60 per cent of consumers agree that smoothies were high in natural sugars, less than 25 per cent thought they might be high in added sugars while only one in four surveyed believed that they could be bad for your teeth.

Last year the British Dental Health Foundation warned consumers about the potential harm to teeth associated with frequent smoothie consumption because of their sugar and acid content. Safefood also showed that there was a low awareness of the ingredients that could be put into a smoothie including sweetened fruit juice, concentrate, fruit syrups, added sugars and preservatives.

Innocent makes much of the fact that none of these things are to be found in their product. Dr Mehrotra says that guidelines such as those relied upon by Safefood “move very slowly”. When the last classification was made in the UK, smoothies made up a tiny percentage of the market so were classified alongside regular fruit juices. The argument that Innocent makes, however, is that in addition to the 150ml of fruit juice in every portion there is also 80g of a variety of crushed fibrous fruits.

“We are still eating less than three portions of fruit and vegetable a day on average and one of the big issues is convenience,” says Dr Mehrotra. “We are not saying smoothies should replace other sources of fruit and vegetable, but they are an excellent addition and anything that gets consumers excited about fruit and vegetables is to be welcomed.”

The big companies were not the only ones to take Safefood to task. “It is true that many smoothies are not as healthy as they seem – especially if they contain added sugar,” says Colin Jephson, who runs two Juice Master franchises in Waterford. He said Safefood had to take “a simplistic, broad brushstroke approach and if the message is too complicated it could get lost, but I was still disappointed by its comments. It is important to highlight that not all juice bars are the same. A few are committed to producing good-quality, nutritious juices and smoothies.”

He cites his own Turbocharge smoothie which contains apples, celery, spinach, pineapple, cucumber and lime – all blended with avocado. “As it is made fresh and not pasteurised and has nothing added, it is wonderfully good for you and worth more than one portion of fruit and veg, no matter what Safefood say.

“It is clear that many freshly made juices and smoothies are very nutritious indeed. I would prefer if they attempted to alert consumers to the poor quality of some products and help people to be more discerning in their choices.”