What Is The Most Unhealthiest Shake You Can Have?

The unhealthiest shake you can have is a commercial milkshake loaded with excessive sugars, unhealthy fats, and artificial ingredients, often found in fast food chains.

Key Takeaway

• High Sugar and Calorie Content: Fast food milkshakes often exceed daily sugar and calorie recommendations, contributing to weight gain and metabolic issues.
• Unhealthy Fats: The presence of trans fats and saturated fats in these shakes can increase the risk of heart disease and other chronic conditions.
• Artificial Ingredients: These milkshakes typically contain artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives, which offer no nutritional benefits and may harm health.
• Blood Sugar Spikes: The high sugar content causes rapid blood glucose spikes and crashes, leading to fatigue and increased hunger.

In 2008, Baskin-Robbins released a limited-time shake that was advertised as the ‘unhealthiest drink in America’.

This shake was made from 73 different ingredients and contained over 2,000 calories – that’s more calories than some people consume in a single day! 

But this fact got us wondering – what is the most unhealthiest shake you can have? 

Here, we are going to look at the most unhealthy ingredients you can add to a shake. This way, you will know what ingredients to avoid stacking up in your shakes and find healthier alternatives. 

So, let’s dive in! 

Defining Unhealthy: What Makes A Shake Unhealthy?

Shakes and smoothies are a great way to consume important nutrients but what exactly makes a shake and smoothie healthy or unhealthy?

There are advantages and disadvantages to every potential shake ingredient.

For example, take sugar – sugar is linked to health issues like obesity and cardiovascular diseases but types of sugar, like glucose, are an important fuel source for our bodies. 

This makes defining healthy and unhealthy foods pretty tricky. You can make an argument for the benefits of each type of food – including shake ingredients. 

As a result, the key to differentiating between healthy and unhealthy foods is excess.

A shake can still be healthy if it contains sugar but if it has way too much sugar – an excess of sugar – then it loses its nutritional value. 

Basically, if food does more harm than good to your body, it’s unhealthy – the excess amount of sugar, fat, salt, and calories makes the benefits not worth it. 

A good example of this is fruit. You’ll often hear that fruits like watermelon or bananas are actually bad for you because they are high in natural sugars and calories.

However, while this is true, the additional benefits of consuming these fruits outweigh the temporary excess sugar.

This is why so many health boards will recommend you eat fruit – even though they may be high in sugar. 

So, don’t expect to find any fruit in the unhealthiest shake you can have.

Instead, you will need to look for ingredients that feature an excess level of sugar, fat, and salt without offering a high nutritional value to balance this. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the unhealthiest ingredients you can use in a shake! 

Ingredients For The Unhealthiest Shake

Here, we are going to be listing ingredients we would use to make the unhealthiest shake possible.

We’ve also explained why we have included them in our unhealthy shake so you can better understand their nutritional value (or lack thereof). 

Banana Milk

Every shake needs milk to give it its body – but the issue is that a lot of milk (even the ones high in fat or calories) is still very nutritious. 

For example, take a look at dairy milk. It’s very thick and creamy and high in natural fat but it also has nutritious value because it’s high in calcium, protein, and vitamin B-12.

These are all important nutrients for us to consume (Calcium, for example, is vital for muscle repair and bone growth) so dairy milk is an important part of a varied, balanced diet. 

This meant that finding milk for our unhealthy milkshake was tricky but we think we found one: banana milk! 

Banana milk is created by blending bananas and water. It’s a dairy-free, nut-free type of milk that, like all other types of milk, has its benefits. It’s very creamy in taste and texture, and rich in potassium and vitamin B6. 

However, banana milk has the least nutritional value compared to other milk options for shakes. Cow’s milk is higher in protein, calcium, and vitamin D. 

The use of bananas in banana milk means that it is high in sugar and carbohydrates. It also lacks fiber. 

This makes banana milk our milk option for our unhealthy shake. 

Whipped Cream

Dairy products are important for a natural, balanced diet – but too much in excess can introduce additional fats to your diet that you don’t need. 

This is why whipped cream is one of the unhealthiest shake ingredients you can add.

You already have enough calcium and other important nutrients included in your milk base – you don’t need to add more through whipped cream! 

As a result, whipped cream is only bringing extra calories and fat to your shake. This makes it a must-have ingredient for the unhealthiest shake possible! 

The same goes for other dairy products in your shake – ice cream, double cream, yogurt. You don’t need to add these extra ingredients.

Most of the time, they are added to shakes to help thicken them but they add no nutritional value. So, let’s throw them all into our unhealthy shake! 

Chocolate 

Sometimes the truth hurts – and unfortunately, chocolate does not belong in a healthy shake. Instead, it’s a must-have ingredient in the unhealthiest shake you can make. 

There are some benefits to chocolate. It’s rich in flavanols which can boost your immune system, protect your cells from inflammation, and improve your cardiovascular health.

Dark chocolate in particular is high in these benefits. Unfortunately, it’s all about excess. 

Chocolate is very high in sugar and saturated fat. Eat too much of it and you can increase your blood pressure, put yourself at obesity-linked health problems like diabetes and coronary artery disease. 

Eating just a small bit of chocolate is enough for you. To get a rich chocolate flavor for your shake, you will need to add an excess amount.

As a result, to make the unhealthiest shake possible, you will need to add a lot of chocolate. 

Syrup

Next up is syrup. 

Syrups are high in sugars and don’t really provide any nutritional benefits at all (apart from maple syrup). The unhealthiest type of syrup is corn syrup, which is also used to make caramel.

So, we’re going to add a ton of caramel to our unhealthy shake so it’s packed with sugar and calories. 

Syrup can sneak its way into your milkshake very easily. You may think adding canned fruit to your shake is a great way to make it healthy – but canned fruit is often soaked in syrups to help it stay fresh and sweet.

As a result, you are also adding a ton of syrup to your shake! 

So, let’s not only add a ton of syrup to our unhealthy shake but some syrup-rich canned fruit too.

The best option is cherries. Like syrup, they’re super high in sugar too and once you add the syrup, it quickly drowns out the benefits of all the vitamin C and potassium you can find in cherries. 

Alcohol

Finally, we have alcohol. 

Alcohol is known for greeting long-term health issues when consumed in excess. There’s barely a part of your body alcohol doesn’t ruin.

It increases your chances of cancer across your body, raises your blood pressure, and causes disease in your heart and liver. 

Adding a splash of it to our shake is the final touch it needs to make it incredibly unhealthy. 

Final Thoughts

So, the unhealthiest shake you can have is a banana milk chocolate and caramel shake with a shot of alcohol, syrup-coated cherries, and whipped cream. 

In truth, it sounds kind of nice – but the high amount of sugar and calories is just not worth it! 

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