A Smoothie Bowl Recipe to Use Up Ripe Bananas | Reduce Food Waste
Food waste sucks but smoothie bowls don’t! Smoothie bowls are also a fantastic way to use up any older fruits & veggies that are near their expiration and a smoothie bowl is exactly what I made with a banana that was a bit past it’s prime!
Let’s talk about WHY it’s important to care about food waste.
If you care about nutrition then you should care about food waste because food is not nutritious unless it’s eaten.
In my opinion, and this is an opinion, we don’t have a problem with food production we have a problem with food distribution. I think this because of the crazy amounts of food that are gone to waste!
Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted.
Fruits and vegetables, plus roots and tubers have the highest wastage rates of any food.
Per capita waste by consumers is between 95-115 kg a year in Europe and North America.
I got those statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization!
I can share many more stats but my point is we already waste so much food that taking small steps at home to prevent or reduce food waste can help.
Enter the smoothie bowl.
Smoothie bowls or just regular smoothies are blended up fruits , veggies, and other nutritious additions. Half of the root veggies, other veggies and fruits are wasted! At that rate, it’s really important that we find ways to not let his happen in our own homes.
If you sense a few of your fruits are starting to get near their end or if veggies are beginning to turn throw them in the freezer right away.
Freezing halts the ripening process and keeps them from spoiling even more.
Think about this, frozen fruits and veggies are cheaper than fresh because the shelf life is longer. What’s a shelf life? It’s the amount of time a food can be on the shelf before it’s not viable for sale anymore.
So frozen = longer shelf life = cheaper to keep in stock for longer. This savings or cost benefit works in your home too! You pay good money for those fruits and veggies so don’t waste your money , or food, by letting these nutritional treasures spoil.
Last week Zack bought bananas and last Friday when we went to Sprouts he bought more. We both realized thereafter that there were some bananas that were brown on the outside which was cue for freezer time.
Since I’m not a baker I wasn’t exactly ready to whoop up a banana bread. Besides, a smoothie bowl is way easier to make than banana bread!
So I’m the freezer the bananas went and the next morning I made a delicious, nutrition creamy smoothie bowl!
Recipe for 1 Smoothie Bowl with Frozen Bananas
1 cup Ice cubes
1/2 or about 70 grams of Frozen banana
1/2 cup frozen Spinach
1/3 cup Frozen berries
30 grams of chocolate vegan protein powder
1 to 1.5 cups of Unsweetened vanilla almond milk
Toss all of the above into a personal sized blender. I rely on my trusty side kick the Nutribullet ! My parents gifted me a nutribullet for Christmas when I was 18! So this sucker has been around for a WHILE! And it’s only $100 which is hella cheaper than some of the other blenders or there. In my opinion this is just as good :)
So all ingredients in the Nutribullet, turn to blend and only about 15-20 seconds until it’s done! This is WAY quicker than baking a banana bread . Not that I am hating on banana bread. I freaking love banana bread. But i love quick easy healthy meals more.
That said if you want to deliver me a banana bread , I’d be happy to take it!
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