Seasonal Sipping: Pumpkin Pie Smoothie

Hello ACN community! I’m so excited to be sharing a seasonally delicious recipe with you today. In honour of Thanksgiving approaching for our neighbours to the south and the fabulous price of pumpkin at our local farmers markets, I want to share a recipe for one of my favourite go-to smoothies using this versatile ingredient. I purchased a small pumpkin for about $3 and after roasting and pureeing it had enough pumpkin to make smoothies for a week. Now that is economical healthy eating at its finest!

This recipe takes advantage of the versatility and health benefits of the affordable pumpkin to create a smoothie that tastes just as sweet as pumpkin pie without the added sugars, ensuring we maintain stable energy all day long. Many of the ingredients in this smoothie contain blood sugar balancing properties to prevent the spikes and crashes that lead to fatigue and food cravings.

Pumpkin is a great source of beta-carotene, an important antioxidant and a precursor to vitamin A. We need both of these nutrients to help protect our cells from free radical damage and to promote immunity, respectively.

The polysaccharides in pumpkin, which include a fibre called pectin, have been shown in animal studies to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, as well as anti-diabetic and insulin regulating properties. These fantastic attributes mean that sipping on pumpkin pie can actually make us healthier. What a beautiful world we live in!

I’ve also included a couple spices whose scent stirs up memories of holidays and delicious treats. Fortunately for our health and waistlines, cinnamon and ginger add another punch to our smoothie by helping our bodies with the cellular uptake of glucose and by increasing our insulin sensitivity, respectively. By supporting our natural bodily processes, adding these spices means we’ll have less sugar in our bloodstreams and more balanced energy all day long.

This smoothie is super simple to make and full of all your favourite winter spices, so start sipping today. I hope you enjoy it!