Results tagged “smoothie”

Naked Juice Strawberry Kiwi Kick

By: Laura S | Apr 18, 2009

Picking through the selection of smoothies in the refrigerator case of a convenience store is always a challenge. Despite the fact that most of these smoothies are "all natural" and "100% juice," they're often so high calorie that I steer clear. However, when I have a craving for a smoothie, I look for the lowest calorie one I can find (ideally under 300 calories per bottle). In this case, that was Naked Juice Strawberry Kiwi Kick Energy Smoothie, priced at $3.99 at the airport kiosk where I picked it up.

Like most refrigerator case smoothies, the drink is just slightly thicker than a juice, but not as thick as a real smoothie that you'd blend yourself. The taste was super sweet but also a bit tangy - I found it to be a nice and refreshing combination. On the Naked Juice website, it lists all the fruit inside a bottle, "14 strawberries, 1/2 Kiwi, almost 3 apples and a hint of banana."

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Dunkin Donuts Reduced Calorie Smoothie versus Starbucks Vivanno

By: Tanya Patrice | Aug 1, 2008

Call this Battle of the Reduced Calorie Coffee Shop Smoothies. The contenders: the new Starbucks Vivanno Orange Mango Banana Smoothie versus Dunkin Donuts Reduced Calorie Berry Smoothie. We talked about Starbucks Vivanno over at Food-Notes.com when it was introduced as Starbucks latest menu addition in the "lower calorie" options. Dunkin Donuts is doing something similar with their DDSmart Menu, which features this reduced calorie smoothies in addition to other "healthier" options.

Nutrition Facts: Both are 250 calories with similar amount of fat as shown below. What separates the two is that Starbucks Vivanno has less sugar, more fiber and more protein, while Dunkin Donuts has more Vitamin C and Calcium. Looks like Starbucks comes out slightly ahead on this one.

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Lightfull Mango Oasis Satiety Smoothie

By: Tanya Patrice | Jul 14, 2008

I've been hearing about Lightfull Smoothies for a long time, but I just couldn't find them in my local grocery stores. Finally I spotted them in Mrs. Greens Natural Grocer so I picked up the Mango Oasis flavor. On the Lightfull Smoothie website, they say, "We have only 1 point to make, All Natural Lightfull Satiety Smoothies keep you full and satisfied for hours."

As we say in Jamaica, that's big talk, so I definitely put this to the test. I woke up and purposely didn't eat breakfast or anything else. By 11AM I was feeling pretty hungry, so I reached for my bottle of Lightfull Smoothie and drank it all - only 90 calories, so that's a huge plus. The flavor was slightly mango and slightly sweet, but otherwise unremarkable. It's not bad, but it's not that great either - it's certainly good enough that I would buy it again if it kept me feeling full for hours.

I was surprised that after I drank the bottle, I was no longer feeling hungry like before. I was satisfied and didn't have any food cravings until 3:00 PM - and I was pretty hungry by then. Wow! I was impressed and I can definitely see incorporating this is a diet plan to help stop over-eating. My problem is that I stay up extremely late and I tend to snack at night, so I can see drinking a bottle of this in the evenings, a few hours before bed. The only drawback is the price. I purchased (1) 8.5 ounce bottle for $2.97. It's cheaper to buy it online at Amazon.com, $28.00 for 12 (which works out to $2.33 each).

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Slim Fast Optima Hunger Control Shake

By: Tanya Patrice | Jun 8, 2006

Slim Fast seems to have been around as long as dieting has been, and this "new and improved" shake is nothing but a winner in my book. I was actually very skeptical about trying the Slim Fast Optima Hunger Control Shake I mean - a shake that can control hunger? puh-lease! But a friend suggested I try them, so even though I nearly had a mini stroke at the price of $8.50 for a case of 6, I went ahead and purchased the French Vanilla flavor.

The Slim Fast shakes stayed in my refrigerator for about a week, until late one Saturday evening, as I was really pigging out on junk food and feeling quite remorseful about it while simultaneously eating more, I thought that this would be a perfect time to try the shakes and stop myself. Can I say, "Wow" I was impressed. I don't know what they put in this shake (and maybe I don't want to know), but it really seemed to work for me. I did feel full, and I didn't feel like I wanted to eat anything, and I didn't for the next few hours. The French Vanilla was a pleasant, mild flavor. The beverage is creamy, with milk (fat free) being the first ingredient.

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Stonyfield Farm Light Yogurt Smoothie

By: Tanya Patrice | Feb 19, 2006

Stonyfield Farms is known for providing products which are "all natural." Their mission is "to deliver the healthiest, most delicious and nutritious yogurts on Earth." Seems like they are branching out from yogurts to smoothies. In addition to being natural with no preservatives, it's pretty good nutritionally too. One 10 ounce bottle is 130 calories, which is less than Yoplait Nouriche Light, and it tastes better too. There's no fat, 19 grams of sugars,18 grams of the sugar alcohol erythritol, 3 grams of fiber and 9 grams of protein. Also 2-15% of quite a few vitamins and minerals.

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DanActive Light Probiotic Dairy Drink

By: Tanya Patrice | Nov 24, 2005

Have you seen this in the supermarket? It's right where they keep the yogurt. Look again, because these bottles are so small, containing only 3 fluid ounces, that you might have missed them the first time around. The pack comes with 4 of these small bottles for $1.93. The 'price for the amount you get ratio' seems to be off for this one. For 2 bucks I could have bought a gallon of Arizona Diet Green Tea.

So how does this taste? I had the strawberry flavor and it has a a slight yogurt taste, with a wee bit of tartness to it, which I really liked. The consistency is more liquid than those yogurt smoothies that's been popping up lately, more like that of milk, which is the first ingredient.

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Yoplait Nouriche Light Breakfast Smoothie

By: Tanya Patrice | Jul 14, 2005

I am pretty much a fan of 'yogurt smoothies' but as to how a 'light' version would taste, I wasn't sure. I first tried the regular Nouriche smoothie, and I loved it. It's thick, creamy, and smooth going down.But it was 260 calories and 42 grams of sugar in the 11 oz bottle, so treat this like breakfast - after all, it does say it's a 'breakfast smoothie.' That's a lot of sugar to take in at one time -- enough to have me bouncing off the walls.

Thankfully they made a Nouriche Light version. The light version is not as tasty as the original, in my opinion. I was 'wowed' by the original, but with this 'low sugar' one which I thought was just ... okay." It's not as sweet, but still pretty thick, and fruity (I hope those were little fruit chunks I felt going down my throat, and not something else).

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Yoplait Light Smoothie

By: Tanya Patrice | Jun 15, 2005

My aboslute favorite yogurt is Yoplait Light [read the review], and I don't like people to mess around with what I think is a successful formula. But it seems that the people at Yoplait had different ideas -- so here comes Yoplait Light Smoothie. This has some very high standards to live up to. I mean, Yoplait Light now has a reputation for being the best, so whatever they come up with had better be good or they will face the wrath of scathing emails sent to the company by me and a freaking bad review (and you know how they tremble in fear of a bad review on Iateapie.net)!

So I'm in the store and I grab a bottle of Yoplait Light smoothie and since I had such high respect for the Yoplait brand, I didn't even blink at the almost $2.00 for one bottle - instead I grabbed two bottles! I tried the peach flavor and it was great. The smoothie was of a thick consistency, very smooth, creamy and had a rich, fruity (peachie since it was the peach flavor) taste.

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Silk Live Mango Smoothie

By: Tanya Patrice | Mar 15, 2005

Silk Live! is a "live cultured" soy smoothie, which basically means that there are living, breathing, thriving bacteria in it. I'm sure this is true of a few other beverages and all yogurts, but since when did "we are chock full of bacteria" become a selling point for a food product? Nevertheless, the marketing geniuses at this company convinced the big wigs that splashing this little bit of info all over the front of the bottle would sell products, and here I am proving them right by buying it.

The main question on my mind prior to tasting this product was, "Does it have a mango taste?" And the answer to that proved to be, "Yes, albeit like a 'bitter mango instead of a sweet mango' taste." To say that I liked this product might be an overstatement. Soy smoothies are definitely an acquired taste. You will either like/tolerate it or absolutely hate them. Really, we all hate them at first, but as you diet and your taste buds become numb due to bad tasting no carb products and tasteless fat free products, then the soy 'yogurt' smoothie doesn't start to taste so bad after all.

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Jello Smoothie Snacks

By: Tanya Patrice | Dec 1, 2004

I thought this might make a healthy snack, since it was only 100 calories, and 15 g from sugars. At first, I really wasn't really feeling the taste of this 'smoothie.' It's not a smoothie in the traditional sense, since it's not something you can drink and it has a yogurt type consistency, but it's not really yogurt either. After a few spoonfuls, the taste started to grow on me. It's not very sweet, but that's a good thing. I think this may be an acquired taste, but very easily acquired. If you're looking for a snack that's not too bad for you, I think this fits the bill. The price isn't bad either at $2.50 for 6.

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Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie

By: Tanya Patrice | Oct 21, 2004

Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie Mixed Berry is absolutely delicious! It was smooth and creamy and good! I bought the 4 pack which has 4 7 ounce bottles and I had some preconceived notions, about the size of the bottle - I didn't think it would be enough to satisfy me in the least because 7 ounces is a a little less than a cup (8 oz). Suprise: It was actually enough! For some reason, after drinking just 1 bottle, I was good - I felt satisfied and didn't need anymore.

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