Are Wawa Smoothies Healthy? [Keto Alternatives] (2024)

Smoothies are a part of almost everyone’s diet these days. And yet, there are smoothies that are healthy and ones that are not.

One of the most popular smoothies people are consuming is Wawa smoothies so I spent about 5 hours trying to find out the truth about them. Are they healthy? The more I searched, the more I wanted to find out.

Wawa smoothies are not healthy. It may be misleading when you read that these contain real fruit! Based on the carb content only about 10% of the carbs are real fruit. Any smoothie with 40 plus grams carbs is unhealthy and every one of the Wawa smoothies have less than 40 grams carbs.

From Wawa banana foster smoothie with 750 calories to Wawa raspberry smoothie with 94 calories all show an unhealthy food choice when you examine them.

DISCLAIMER: While this information was prepared by a certified dietitian, it is NOT a medical advice. Please consult your own medical professional before altering your diet. The information is strictly for educational purposes.

How should you analyze products like Wawa smoothies to figure out whether or not they are healthy?

To determine the answer to this question – are Wawa fruit smoothies healthy, there’s a simple formula:

1. Find out how many calories are in the food.
2. Then look at the grams of fat.
3. Next look at the carbs. Too many carbs spells trouble.
4. Look at the fiber.
5. Then, look at the protein.
6. Look at the ingredients.

Nutrition Info

How many calories are in Wawa smoothies:

But now that you have seen them all, how do you determine what is a good level? The way to do that is to consider how many calories you want to eat per day and the number of meals you will eat.

If you are consuming 1200 calories and 3 meals in a day, then 1200 divided by 3 is 400 calories. You wouldn’t want more than 400 calories in the smoothie.

On that list, the mango banana smoothie has a calorie count of 440. The banana cream smoothie has 490 calories and the banana foster smoothie has 750 calories.

Does this mean that you can’t drink them? Your goal is to stay healthy and not gain weight or gain fat.

No, actually you could still consume the banana foster smoothie if you split it up into two servings.

This way you would have some for today and some for tomorrow and still meet your goals for staying healthy.

For the banana cream smoothie, you could give one-fifth of the smoothie away to someone you know, like your spouse or your child.

That’s only about three shot glasses full if the smoothie is 16 ounces. If you made these changes then you would be able to stay within your calorie constraints for the day. But still, that may not be good enough.

Wawa Smoothies Nutrition – How much fat is in Wawa smoothies?

1 gram fat is what they all generally contain but banana foster smoothie has 27 grams fat.

How do you know how much fat is good for you?

Fat is needed in the diet. If you only need the minimum amount of fat, calculate that you need 30% of your calories for the day as fat.

Here’s a little table of how much fat you would need as a minimum following the 30% rule.

But if you have 27 grams fat in a banana foster smoothie and are only allowed 33-50 grams fat for the day, you will most likely exceed your fat level. And that means lack of weight loss.

Is a Banana Foster Smoothie Healthy If I’m on Keto?

Being on a keto diet changes all this. On a keto diet, you want more fat in the diet. Thus, based on all the comparisons of wawa smoothies, your best bet for the fat is the banana foster smoothie.

However, there is something else you have to know about a keto diet. They are low in carbs.

So the next step is to consider what is the carb content of that smoothie? If the smoothie has no carbohydrates in it, then it’s suitable for a keto diet.

Wawa Smoothies Nutrition – Carbohydrate and Protein in Wawa Smoothies

From this chart you can quickly see that none of the Wawa smoothies should be consumed if you are eating a keto diet.

They all have too many grams of carbohydrates, and that means you will not stay in ketosis when you drink one. Your body will shift out of ketosis to burn the carbs.

We will come back to this table to discuss the protein.

How Much Sugar in Wawa Smoothies?

Another thing to consider about the carbohydrate grams in any food is that if the food is a packaged or prepared food, the chances are good that the carbs are also pure sugar added to the product.

Let’s see if this is true by adding more info from the labels.

From this table you can see that most of the carbohydrate is from added sugar.

In fact, the percentages of sugar to carbohydrate in the smoothies is 90%, 88%, 0%, 86%, 75%, and 61%, respectively. Only the super fruit smoothie is below a ratio of 10%.

You don’t want a high amount of sugar added to your food – and to any food. Sugar is now linked to Alzheimer’s disease and it is more addictive than cocaine. Every disease worsens when there is sugar in the diet.

That means diabetes progresses faster and the diabetic ends up with cataracts and kidney damage a lot sooner than it should happen.

Every 4 grams sugar equals one teaspoon. So when you see the 98 grams sugar in 12 ounces of mango banana smoothie, that means almost 25 teaspoons of sugar. Think of how fast that large amount of sugar is going to act upon the brain.

It’s not like your brain can run away and say, “No! I don’t want any sugar! Leave me alone.”

Instead, you are choosing to bathe your brain in sugar, and causing molecular damage. Willingly.

Here’s a table that will help you determine how much carbohydrate should be in your diet unless you are on keto.

This is based on a higher protein content than usual to prevent hunger, and fat could be a little higher if you aren’t trying to lose weight.

Is the Superfruit Smoothie Healthy?

No. A total of 53 grams of carbohydrates consumed at one time is too much, whether it has superfruit in it or not.

It will spike your blood sugar and then your body will be forced to pump out extra insulin – even up to 3 or 4 times more than normal.

When this happens repeatedly, you are setting yourself up for diabetes or pre-diabetes. You may also want to read our post on Are Fruit Cups Healthy

What Wawa Smoothie is Highest in Fiber?

Won’t fiber counteract the sugar? No, unless the levels are high enough. You would have to have a hefty amount of fiber to counteract 25 teaspoons of sugar!

And all the Wawa smoothies only have 4 grams to 7 grams fiber, except for the superfruit smoothie which has no fiber at all.

If you consume that superfruit smoothie, you will certainly get a spike of blood sugar (with high insulin levels) because there is 0 grams fiber in it.

This smoothie is a sure set up for pre-diabetes. Drink it daily for about 30 days and your doctor will tell you your blood sugar is too high.

Even the raspberry smoothie doesn’t have that much fiber in it. Mind you, 1 tablespoon of fiber added to a drink gives you 5 grams fiber.

Perhaps if you added 1 tablespoon fiber like acacia or psyllium fiber to the raspberry smoothie, you might be able to balance it out. The 23 grams carbohydrates in it is at least reasonable.

You Don’t Have To Give Up Delicious Food

How Much Protein in Wawa Smoothies?

Protein is essential for every meal you eat. Protein counters high carbs a little. What nutritionists have found over the years is that the carbohydrate to protein ratio matters, especially when it comes to blood sugar control.

A 10:1 ratio up to a 1:1 ratio is good but anything higher is not healthy. That means for every 2 grams carbs, there should be 1 gram protein.

In the mango banana smoothie, the ratio is 15.5:1. Yikes! That’s far too much carbohydrate to handle.

For the Superfruit smoothie, the ratio is 53:1. Crazy! That’s worse! The raspberry smoothie has a ratio of 11.5, so it’s the closest to what is needed for a healthy smoothie.

We didn’t even have to look at the ingredients of Wawa smoothies to answer the question of whether or not they are healthy for you. They aren’t. The macros tell it all.

Are Wawa Smoothies Made with Real Fruit?

In fact, asking the question, does Wawa use real fruit in their smoothies, is really a moot point. It doesn’t matter. They aren’t healthy for you.

And based on all that sugar added to them, there probably is very little real fruit added to them.

If there was an appreciable amount of real fruit added to them, the company would say “1 cup real fruit in every serving” or something like that. This doesn’t happen with this product.

Wawa Strawberry Banana Smoothie Ingredients

The ingredients for Wawa strawberry banana smoothie include water, strawberry smoothie base, strawberries, water, sugar, less than 1% of natural flavors, citric acid, xanthan and guar gums, vegetable juice, banana.

But when you take the total grams of sugar and subtract the grams of sugar that are added, you get the real amount of fruit revealed.

In this case, it’s 104-91 grams = 13 grams. This is only about one serving of fruit. And then you add almost 23 teaspoons sugar.

That’s why Wawa Strawberry Banana Smoothie is not healthy. It’s the wrong ratio. There should be 1-3 servings of fruit and maybe a maximum of 1 teaspoon sugar.

With the mango banana smoothie, 12 oz, it’s 109-98 = 11 grams, or about 1 serving fruit.

With the Superfruit smoothie, 12 oz, it’s 53 grams minus 0 grams sugar = 53 grams, about 5 servings of fruit.

(This is too much fruit.) Banana cream smoothie of 12 oz, it’s 73-62 =9 grams fruit, not even 1 serving. With the raspberry smoothie, 12 oz, it’s 23 – 14 = 9 grams fruit, not even 1 serving.

With these, you can see that although there may be some real fruit in Wawa smoothies, there’s either not enough in them to combat the added sugar or too much fruit as in the case of the Superfruit smoothie. Always remember that nutrition is always about balance.

These smoothies are a bad habit to start in your regular meal plan. However, every few months, you may enjoy yourself, we know we are.