Blueberry Banana Peanut Low Protein Smoothie Recipe

For many people with CKD, smoothies can be a practical solution when appetite is low, mornings are rushed, or cooking feels overwhelming. They’re an easy, delicious, and filling way to work more fruits and vegetables into your day with very little effort.

Benefits of Smoothies for CKD

Smoothies can be a great fit for a kidney-friendly eating pattern for several reasons:

• High in fruits and vegetables – Getting enough fruits and vegetables is a key component of kidney-friendly eating. Smoothies make it easy to include one—or several—servings at a time, especially for people who struggle to eat produce consistently.
• Very low in sodium – Smoothies are naturally low in sodium and contain no added salt, making them a helpful option for people with CKD who are working on sodium reduction. Choosing lower-sodium meals like this can also give you more flexibility elsewhere in your day.
• Surprisingly blood-sugar friendly – It was once assumed that smoothies would cause larger blood sugar spikes than eating the same ingredients whole. While blending does make food easier to digest, research suggests that smoothies often lead to more moderate blood sugar responses. One theory is that blending helps release fiber more effectively, slowing glucose absorption. Including a healthy fat source—as this recipe does—can further support stable blood sugars.
• Low Effort – As long as you have a blender, smoothies are very forgiving. There’s no chopping, no cooking, and no special skills required—just add the ingredients and blend.
• Easy Clean-Up – Smoothies create very little mess. I drink mine straight out of the blender cup and use a kitchen scale to measure ingredients, which means no measuring cups, spoons, or extra glasses to wash. I just pop the blender cup in the dishwasher, rinse my reusable straw, and wipe down the blender base. Cleanup takes less than a minute.
• A helpful source of calcium – Many people with CKD struggle to meet calcium needs for a variety of reasons, which can affect both bone and heart health. Using a kidney-friendly plant milk is an easy way to add calcium without significantly increasing protein intake. If you’re not a fan of plant milk on its own, the other smoothie ingredients do a great job of masking the flavor.
• Less food waste – Most of the ingredients in this smoothie are frozen. Frozen fruits and vegetables are often just as nutritious—sometimes even more so—than fresh options, and they last much longer. This reduces waste and makes it easier to keep smoothie ingredients on hand.

About the low protein smoothie ingredients:

• Wild Frozen blueberries – Blueberries are a high fiber, low potassium fruit that are packed full of vitamin and antioxidants and make a great addition to any low protein smoothie for kidney disease. I personally prefer to buy the wild versions of blueberries. They tend to be smaller and a bit more flavorful. The rich purple color from the blueberries help disguise the green color of the spinach. If you’re looking for other high fiber, low potassium fruits to include in your low protein smoothies, check out the Fruit & Vegetable Potassium Guide.
• Frozen spinach – spinach is a very mild leafy green that is easy to sneak into a smoothie without noticing the taste (trust me, I’ve added it to smoothies I make for other people and they have no clue!). This is such an easy way to incorporate more vegetables into your day with minimal effort. I’ve tried using kale before, but it left a distinct taste in the smoothie, so I stick with spinach. Just be sure to buy the bagged spinach and not a block of frozen spinach to make it easier to portion out.
• Banana – I use a half of a banana in this smoothie. The banana adds a nice creaminess to the smoothie that is sometimes lacking if you are making a low protein smoothie that doesn’t contain any protein powder. While bananas are traditionally seen as too high in potassium and off limits in a CKD eating plan, that’s not always the case.
• Unrefined peanut oil – I typically add nut butter to my smoothies, but decided to skip the nut butter to further reduce the amount of protein in the recipe and make this a very low protein smoothie. I use unrefined peanut oil, which still retains the peanut taste to it. I’ve managed to add calories and peanut taste without any extra protein! If you have refined peanut oil, it will taste more bland and neutral. If you don’t need your smoothie to be this low in protein, feel free to use regular peanut butter instead.
• Monk Fruit Sweetener – I prefer my smoothies on the sweeter side, so I add 2 tablespoons of a zero calorie sweetener to my smoothie. This particular sweetener measures cup-for-cup like sugar, so if you choose a different sweetener, you may need to adjust the amount used.
• Vanilla extract – since I omitted the protein powder, I added in a small amount of vanilla extract to give it that warm vanilla taste without all the added protein.
• Plant based milk – every smoothie needs some liquid, and I highly recommend using a kidney friendly plant milk as your liquid. This helps ensure that you get adequate calcium in your day to help support bone and heart health.

Another thing to note is that I use a gram scale every morning to measure out my ingredients. Rather than dirty up a bunch of measuring cups, I just set my blender cup on the scale and add the required ingredients. I find that this saves me a lot of time with clean up!

Low Potassium Smoothie

This smoothie has 524 calories and only 583mg of potassium – a surprisingly low amount of potassium given that it includes 3 servings of fruits and vegetables, including banana! When evaluating the amount of potassium in foods, always be sure to compare it to the calories to get an idea of whether or not a food is truly high in potassium.

If you have chronic kidney disease (CKD), you may not need to worry about the potassium content of the foods that you eat. Many people with CKD do not need to restrict their potassium intake (and doing so can actually backfire in the long-run if you restrict when you don’t need to!). Be sure to talk with your healthcare team about whether you need to follow a potassium restriction.

If you are still concerned about potassium, or just want to avoid needing a potassium restriction as long as possible, please sign up for our free 5 day email course 5 Ways to Control Potassium Without Avoiding High Potassium Foods. We provide you with simple, actionable steps that you can take right away to better manage potassium – designed specifically for people who are not on dialysis. You can sign up below:

Blueberry Banana Peanut Low Protein Smoothie Recipe

More Kidney Friendly Recipes

Looking for more delicious, kidney-friendly recipes? Check out our Recipes and Meal Planning page!