fitdudefood
Smoothies, milkshakes, health shakes, whatever you call them they’ve been popular for many years as a tasty easy way to get your nutrition in when you’re in a hurry.
In the 1980’s it became popular to add calcium and oat bran to products, so any smoothie, cereal or anything else that featured either of those two items was deemed extra healthy and people flocked to it.
The 1990’s ushered in the massive surge of juice and smoothie bars in malls, shopping strips, beaches etc…Jamba Juice, Smoothie King, each totally different, with no real logical reasoning behind the ingredients, simply the feel that juicing something made it healthier and drinking a smoothie made you more responsible for your health.
The 2000’s continued to see a surge in popularity of the smoothie bar, with a new feature of added shots of health, omegas, aminos, whatever made it sound like you were doing yourself a favor while downing all that sugar. However at the end of the day, even those who knew well enough to make their own smoothies never really had a rock solid recipe standard. Everyone just randomly threw in all the veggies they could find at the store, and a few fruits to make it taste good, winding up with a lopsided, disjointed, brownish green shake that tasted horrible and didn’t provide a balanced nutritional supplement, much less a filling meal.
Enter Shakeology.
Beachbody’s, the company behind P90X, Insanity, and many other fitness programs, CEO Carl Daikeler, while great at working out, was still eating like a 10 year old, even as the CEO of a health & fitness company. His wife Isabelle, ironically, was a nutritionist and decided that enough was enough, and that he needed to improve his eating habits. Carl, being the amazing business futurist that he is, immediately saw an opportunity for a solution not only for himself but for all the people doing his fitness programs – he would revolutionize the smoothie industry and actually make a smoothie that was COMPLETELY healthy, cutting NO corners AND tasty AND filling all at the same time! In fact, within minutes he even had the name – Shakeology!
The only snag was, he didn’t yet have the shake. So, he reached out to Darin Olien, an avid superfood hunter who was already in the process of creating cutting edge superfood and herbal formulas, and asked them to put their minds together and create the ultimate shake – something that would be quite literally the healthiest calories you can put in your body, while truly tasting good without nasty health food aftertaste, and actually fill you up as a meal replacement, along with truly delivering on all the failed promises of previous shakes such as increased energy, digestive regularity, lowered cholesterol, probiotic health benefits, weight loss, etc…
It took a few years from initial conception to the release date for all elements to fall into place. Direct sourcing of superfoods from villages around the world, drying the superfoods at low enough temperatures to keep all the nutrients intact, creating blends that tasted good. Finally two flavors were released – Greenberry and Chocolate.
Both of these flavors provided an amazing meal replacement shake in Shakeology, the nutritional equivalent of 42 cups of fruits & vegetables, or a $42 salad, all in one delicious shake!
Chocolate was an immediate hit, but greenberry was a more polarizing flavor. Old school smoothie fans loved it because it was green, and thus it must be healthy. However, the generic berry/wheat grass flavor didn’t hit it off with most people, and so when Beachbody released the vegan flavors of Strawberry and vegan chocolate a few years later, greenberry’s popularity fell to a select few diehard fans.
However, this week that’s all changed! Beachbody recently decided to update the greenberry formula, both to add in the more recent superfood discoveries made by Darin Olien, as well as to improve the flavor to truly be something worthy of the Shakeology name and finally compete with strawberry and the two chocolate flavors for popularity. Has it succeeded? Check out some taste test panelists’ opinions:
- “The new greenberry is MUCH better than the original!”
- “This new greenberry was great! Nice sweetness and texture. I will definitely add this into rotation!”
- “Awesome! Love the texture and enhanced flavor! By far my fav.”
So while it just came out, it definitely sounds promising! More fruit taste, less wheatgrass flavor, and all the health benefits of Shakeology. I know I’ll be getting some to taste next month! If you’d like to try it out, just go here (as always, make sure to choose the HD/autoship option to save on shipping):
