If whipping up a smoothie is your favorite way to start your day, you might want to pause before you hit that puree button on your blender if bananas are one of the ingredients.
For many of us, smoothies are the perfect breakfast and a fast and easy way to get your fruit serving in for the day. But recent research finds that combining bananas with other fruits can actually inhibit your body's ability to absorb flavanols.
The study was published in Food and Function and was conducted by researchers at the University of California - Davis. Flavanols are good for your heart and brain health and found naturally in blueberries, blackberries, and cocoa as well as many other sources. Researchers wanted to find out how combining various fruits with a banana-based smoothie would affect the body's ability to absorb flavanols.
Bananas are naturally high in PPO, an enzyme naturally present in foods, while various berries are naturally low in PPO. What the researchers found was that study participants who consumed a banana smoothie mixed with berries had 84% lower levels of favanols in their body compared to those who did not drink a banana smoothie.
Researchers recommend that for people who wish to consume high levels of flavanol-rich fruits, they need to avoid bananas and berries and combine with other low PPO fruits like pineapple, mango or yogurt.
