(definitely from the Good Food Diet)

Kick-start your day with this delicious, nourishing smoothie. Or pack it into your lunch box (make it the night before and keep it in the fridge) and enjoy as a meal-on-the-go during a hectic day. Guaranteed to give you an instant energy and nutrient boost! The big bonus is that it will help you to feel fuller for longer. Kids love this one, too.  Banana (read more about bananas below) is nature’s perfect smoothie ingredient. It gives smoothies a thick, creamy texture, adds natural sweetness and offers lots of fibre, potassium and Vitamin C.

•    heart-friendly
•    diabetic-friendly
•    vegetarian-friendly
•    fibre-rich (add the oat bran)
•    wheat-free
•    gluten-free (if you are sensitive to oats, leave out the oat bran) and
•    egg-free

10 ml (2 tsp) cocoa powder
30 ml (2 tbsp) boiling water
1 banana, sliced
125 ml (½ cup) chilled low fat milk
60 ml (¼ cup) chilled low fat plain yoghurt
2,5 ml (½ tsp) white sugar

Step1: In a bowl, mix cocoa powder with boiling water.

Step 2: Add rest of the ingredients. Liquidise (I use a hand blender).

Step 3: Pour smoothie into a glass. Chill for at least 1 hour… or overnight. (Makes 1 generous smoothie – 375 ml/1½ cups)

Tip:
For a healthy boost of soluble, as well as insoluble fibre, stir 10 ml (2 tsp) oat bran into the smoothie just before serving.

This ancient, curved fruit is one of the most widely consumed foods in the world. Together with rice, wheat and maize, the banana is a staple food for millions of people in Asia, Africa and South America. It is native to south-east Asia, with India being the largest banana producer in the world.

The humble banana found its way to the West back in 327 BC when Alexander the Great invaded India and simply could not resist taking home a bunch or two. But bananas go back much further: some scholars of the Koran believe that the banana was the forbidden fruit eaten in the Garden of Eden.

Money does not grow on trees and neither do bananas. In fact, there is no such thing as a banana tree. Bananas grow on giant tropical herb plants. These banana plants can grow as high as 8 metres and what may look like trunks to us, are really their pseudostems, formed by sheaths of overlapping leaves.

The way in which bananas grow on the plant gives a good clue to the origin of its name. Clusters of bananas are referred to as “hands”. Each hand consists of up to 20 bananas, called “fingers”. The Arabic word for finger is “banan”.

The banana that we know is a dessert banana. It has a much bigger relative – a cooking banana by the name of plantain (pronounced PLAN-tihn). It is a hard, green banana, which is very starchy and is used almost like a potato in West-Indian, Latin American and African savoury dishes. The plantain also has a very high ranking on the world’s staple foods list.

Life is ironic. On the one hand the nutritious banana is a vital item in the diet of millions of poor and undernourished people the world over; on the other hand a banana lolly (a frozen banana on a stick, maybe dipped into dark chocolate on a decadent day) is the ultimate treat for the serious dieter.