A smoothie is a blended

Blender

A blender is a kitchen appliance for chopping or liquefying food.Blender may also refer to:Media:* Blender , a music-themed magazine* Blender , a free and open-source software program for 3D modeling, animation, and rendering...

 and sometimes sweetened

Sugar substitute

A sugar substitute is a food additive that duplicates the effect of sugar in taste, usually with less food energy. Some sugar substitutes are natural and some are synthetic. Those that are not natural are, in general, called artificial sweeteners....

 beverage

Drink

A drink, or beverage, is a liquid which is specifically prepared for human consumption. In addition to fulfilling a basic human need, beverages form part of the culture of human society.-Water:...

 made from fresh fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 (fruit smoothie) and in special cases can contain chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

 or peanut butter

Peanut butter

Peanut butter is a food paste made primarily from ground dry roasted peanuts, popular in North America, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and parts of Asia, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia. It is mainly used as a sandwich spread, sometimes in combination as in the peanut butter and jelly...

. In addition to fruit, many smoothies include crushed ice

Ice

Ice is water frozen into the solid state. Usually ice is the phase known as ice Ih, which is the most abundant of the varying solid phases on the Earth's surface. It can appear transparent or opaque bluish-white color, depending on the presence of impurities or air inclusions...

, frozen fruit, honey

Honey

Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...

 or contain syrup and ice ingredients. They have a milkshake

Milkshake

A milkshake is a sweet, cold beverage which is made from milk, ice cream or iced milk, and flavorings or sweeteners such as fruit syrup or chocolate sauce....

-like consistency that is thicker than slush

Slush (beverage)

A slush is a flavored frozen drink.There are a number of different kinds of slush drinks:* Frozen carbonated beverages, typified by the Slurpee or ICEE, are made by freezing a carbonated drink. These machines are complicated and expensive, and notably require a carbon dioxide supply...

 drinks. They can also contain milk, yogurt or ice cream. Interestingly, the difference between a fruit smoothie and a fruit juice is that smoothies use the fruit in its entirety, whereas a juice simply extracts the liquids from a fruit. For this reason smoothies are said to contain pulps and fibres, as well as in some instance the nutrients from skins (for example apples) and therefore can be marketed as being a more healthy and nutritious drink than a fruit juice. Smoothies are often marketed

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 to health-conscious people, and some restaurants offer add-ins such as soy milk

Soy milk

Soy milk and sometimes referred to as soy drink/beverage is a beverage made from soybeans. A stable emulsion of oil, water, and protein, it is produced by soaking dry soybeans and grinding them with water...

, whey powder, green tea

Green tea

Green tea is made solely from the leaves of Camellia sinensis that have undergone minimal oxidation during processing. Green tea originates from China and has become associated with many cultures throughout Asia. It has recently become more widespread in the West, where black tea is traditionally...

, herbal supplements, or nutritional supplement mixes.
Smoothies became widely available in the United States in the late 1960s when ice cream vendors and health food

Health food

The term health food is generally used to describe foods that are considered to be beneficial to health, beyond a normal healthy diet required for human nutrition. However, the term is not precisely defined by national regulatory agencies such as the U.S...

stores began selling them. By the 1990s and 2000s, smoothies became available at mainstream cafés and coffee shops and in pre-bottled versions at supermarkets all over the world.