Ask a public-health/nutrition student

[Aractus]

I recently bought a nutri ninja, It's similar to the vitamix, what do you think of these powerful blenders and the drinks they can produce?

Most nutritionists don't think much of them. Juicing or creating smoothes is simply a way to extract the energy, and most of the micro-nutrients, and leave the fibre behind, you're better off eating the fruits/vegetables whole (or as a salad). Besides, blending vegetables together generally tastes like shit (which is why your work colleagues are put off), and so could end up turning people off eating vegetables, or people will find other ways to make them more palatable (adding milk/ice-cream, etc).

Whilst adding milk isn't necessarily going to make it unhealthy, it probably results in lowering the bioavailability of the calcium and phosphorus (which will bind to the plant lectins).

With that said I know someone who told me that they can't eat enough vegetables and keep them down, so they blend them together and eat the slush - it tastes like shit but it stays down.

Have you ever read or listened to the audio book of "Salt, Sugar, Fat How The Food Giants Hooked us"?

No, but I have seen the "men who made us fat" documentary series which I enjoyed, and if I watch it again I can provide further insight. But suffice to say they get a lot of their facts right*:

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https://vimeo.com/44450267
https://vimeo.com/44892521
https://vimeo.com/45786862

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*(edit) I just remembered their description of BMI as "arbitrary" is not entirely accurate. It doesn't matter who invented BMI, it is widely used as a guideline to define relative health risks in populations, and just like anything used in a "population" it has more limited used in individual cases.

Does it ever frustrate you watching people consume cigarettes and energy drinks constantly?  I think this might just be personal to me but I work in a really working class environment where people have a heavy smoke break every two hours and usually guzzle down an energy drink or two within that time.

It doesn't bother me, no. Lung cancer is a disease of old age (generally), the median age is above 70. Emphysema has a more meaningful impact on smoker's health at younger ages. In any case it's a dose response, if people cut down to only a handful of cigarettes per day (let's say 3 or 4) then most of the negative health impact is mitigated, and is probably a lot easier to maintain than quitting. Please note that the current thinking on Gambling Disorder is to help patients to manage their spending not to completely irradiate the behaviour, so for that reason I personally think the same philosophy can be applied to other addictions.

Energy drinks are no different to regular soft-drinks, the only difference is they're caffeinated with the amount of caffeine found in a cup of coffee. But basically they're just sugar and water. I don't like the fact that "Red Bull" advertises that it contains taurine, when in fact the taurine content is in a meaningless amount for any proposed cognitive benefit (from memory it would need to contain at least 10x as much to have a small probable impact on cognitive function).