Blended fruits/veges vs whole?

[Darrin]

Jordan,

I got a VitaMix blender as a gift a while back. I quickly discovered that I could drop a couple of salads' worth of vegetables and fruits (green leafys, carrots, cauliflower, apples, avocados, etc) into it and mix myself up a green smoothie that was convenient to consume, easy to travel with, and tasted good. I figured I was doing myself a big favor because my vege and fruit consumption went up significantly.

But then I ran across a couple of articles that make it seem like blending fruits and veges destroys some of the essential fiber and/or allows absorption of nutrients faster than is desirable. For example: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/11/169144...llacies-of-fat.

Note that I'm talking _blending_, not juicing. I blend the whole carrot, orange (except the peel of course), apple (incl. skin, but not the core), etc. Basically anything that I would eat unblended goes into the blender whole.

What's your take on this?

P.S. Thanks for all your thoughtful responses in this forum.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

You lose a bit of fiber and the structure of the food when blending but it's not completely lost like it is when juicing. I'm not really worried about absorption speed per se, unless it effects your satiety and thus total cals/macros later on.