These 9 Smoothie Chain Drinks Contain The Most Sugar

Smoothies can be extremely healthy for you. Filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, they can really pack in the nutrients and vitamins. Toss in a little protein powder, and you have a great, nutritious start to your day.

However, some smoothies are actually wearing a mask of healthfulness. Like salads, this is one food item that, while healthy under many circumstances, can turn less-than-ideal for meeting certain health goals really quickly. This is especially the case at national or regional smoothie chains, where the sugar is piled into your cup at such a rapid rate that you might as well be slurping down a Starbucks venti frap. That's not to say that these drinks are all bad, all the time. They can definitely be a fun treat — but just maybe don't rely on them for your daily dose of fruits and veg.

So, which smoothie chain drinks are packed with the most sugar? These are some of the sweetest and sugariest you can find around the United States.

Admittedly, when you hear the name "White Gummi Smoothie," you're probably not thinking that this is going to be the pinnacle of all health drinks. The name conjures up images of abnormally colored, gelatin-derived candies that kids might crave and adults might indulge in on the sly. With a pineapple base,Jamba's (formerly known as Jamba Juice) White Gummi Smoothie contains a generous amount of pineapple sherbet, raspberry sherbet, and orange sherbet, plus soy milk, lime sherbet, and peach-flavored pear juice.

The large White Gummi Smoothie clocks in at 565 calories and 124 grams of sugar. If that's an amount of sugar that's a bit difficult to wrap your head around, keep in mind that 4 grams of sugar is equivalent to 1 teaspoon of sugar. So, drinking this smoothie is nutritionally the same as eating 31 teaspoons of straight sugar — and you'd never (or hopefully you'd never) grab a bag of sugar from your pantry and begin digging into it with a spoon. And yet, with this smoothie, you might as well.

Initially, Dairy Queen's Orange Julius's Strawberry Mango Rush smoothie seems relatively benign — healthy, even. After all, the summer special is advertised as a simple blend of strawberries, mangoes, bananas, yogurt, and ice. What's so bad?

However, dig a little deeper and there's more lurking beneath this smoothie's surface. For instance, a large Strawberry Mango Rush smoothie comes with 460 calories and a whopping 120 grams of sugar. Again, if 4 grams of sugar is equivalent to 1 teaspoon of sugar, that means that you're eating nearly 30 teaspoons of sugar when you order this smoothie. At least you get 4 grams of fiber?

In contrast, the Orange Julius smoothie with the least amount of sugar is the Berry Peachy Premium fruit smoothie, with just 5 and 6 grams of sugar for a small or medium-sized smoothie, respectively. That said, the amount of sugar jumps up if you order a large, to 42 grams.

With the most sugar out of all the Planet Smoothie beverages, the Captain Kid smoothie is definitely not kid-friendly. The Captain Kid recipe is pretty simple, incorporating just water, stabilized strawberries, and orange sherbet. However, all the sugar in those strawberries and the sherbet adds up to an impressive 141 grams (123 of which are added sugars) in a 44-ounce serving. That's alongside the 660 calories and 2.5 grams of fat.

While there are a few other Planet Smoothie drinks that get up around the Captain Kid's total amount of sugar — such as the Vinnie Del Rocco smoothie (made with raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and orange sherbet) with its 127 grams or The Last Mango Smoothie with its 106 grams of sugar — the large majority of Planet Smoothie drinks do keep the sugar content beneath 100 grams. That's still not exactly ideal, but it is at least overall better.

Smoothie King's whole tagline is "Nutritious by nature. Delicious by design." The brand's website is littered with nutrition-based promises, and it isn't even trying to hide its nutrition guide, as so many chains do on their websites. To learn more about menu item ingredients and sugar content, there's no need for interested customers to download a pdf and then endlessly scroll, hoping to find the information necessary to make the best decisions for their health. Instead, the website has a nutrition calculator right on its home page.

Even with all that, though, Smoothie King still does have some smoothies that are a bit high in the sugar (and caffeine) department. Take, for example, its sugariest drink of all: The Hulk Espresso. It has 89 grams of sugar (58 grams of which are added), 700 calories, and 21 grams of fat, in a 20-fluid-ounce serving size. 

Admittedly, it's easy to see why this smoothie packs in so many calories, grams of fat, and sugar. Unlike some of the other smoothies on this list that hide behind fruit and sherbet, this smoothie just comes out and says it includes a nice serving of butter pecan ice cream, alongside its bananas and espresso.

Tropical Smoothie Café likewise purports to put nutrition first and the brand doesn't make any secret of its drinks' nutritional info. Still, again, the chain has some drinks that are going to really increase your daily sugar and caloric intake.

The Mocha Madness smoothie's main ingredients are chocolate, coffee, cappuccino, and non-fat yogurt. With 163 grams of sugar, it absolutely contains the most sugar of any other smoothie on the menu, with the runner up, the Mango Monsoon smoothie, trailing behind with 127 grams. The Mocha Madness also packs in 810 calories (making it the most calorie-rich item on the menu, too), as well as 270 milligrams of sodium and 225 milligrams of caffeine. It's the only smoothie on the menu to offer caffeine. In comparison, a standard, 8-ounce cup of black coffee has 96 milligrams of caffeine, and an 8-ounce basic energy drink has 79 milligrams of caffeine.

Juice It Up offers so much more than smoothies, with the chain also serving raw juice and bowls across nearly 100 locations on the West Coast. However, if we're just looking at smoothies, the Passion Fruit-Orange-Guava smoothie takes the cake as the one with the most sugar overall. A large size comes with 148 grams of sugar and 710 calories. It's not all bad, though. The smoothie also will give you 80% of your vitamin C for the day.

Juice It Up introduced the Passion Fruit-Orange-Guava smoothie as a summer offering in 2024, and now it's listed among its classics. When the smoothie, which incorporates passion fruit, pineapple, and orange sherbet, was originally launched, it was marketed as a tropical, flavor-forward offering that "captures the essence of summer."

While Juice It Up's smoothies are where you'll find the most sugar on the menu, the chain's bowls and raw juice blends aren't entirely in the clear. You can still find items in both categories packing in more than 50 grams of sugar, such as the Optimizer raw juice blend (a mix of pineapple, beets, carrot, cucumber, celery, and red grapes) and the Dragon Fruit bowl (with its dragon fruit puree and cane sugar base).

Another primarily West Coast chain, Robeks' top smoothie with the most sugar is actually not too bad in comparison to some of the others on this list. You can enjoy a large Piña Koolada smoothie and rest assured that you'll stay under 100 grams of sugar, with the smoothie packing in 99 grams, plus 520 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, and 90% of your daily vitamin C. The ingredients are pineapple, banana, coconut, pineapple sherbet, frozen yogurt, and papaya juice.

Robeks has a lot of smoothies that sit right around this range of 90-ish grams of sugar per serving. Others that are not too far off include the Mango Turmeric Madness smoothie (76 grams in a large), Acai Energizer smoothie (87 grams in a large), Awesome Acai smoothie (96 grams in a large), and the Muscle Max smoothie (92 grams in a large). 

Interestingly, some of the other smoothies also bring in a fair amount of sodium. For instance, there's the Nuts About Protein smoothie, which comes with 600 milligrams of sodium — or nearly half of the recommended amount that the American Heart Association says is optimal for most adults: 1,500 milligrams daily.

Back at Jamba, it's worth pointing out some of the other highest-sugar options on the brand's menu beyond the White Gummi Smoothie, even if just because Jamba is likely the most recognizable smoothie chain on this entire list. Our second look at the chain brings us to the Peanut Butter Moo'd smoothie, which does make sense as a high-sugar item once you get a glimpse of its ingredients. Chocolate and peanut butter? Yeah, you've got a banana, but this is no fruit-forward smoothie.

In addition to a large's 120 grams of sugar, the smoothie also comes with 950 calories, 424 milligrams of sodium, and 29 grams of fat. While we haven't talked a ton about fat throughout this list, to give you an idea of just how much that is, take into consideration that it's recommended that if you're eating a 2,000-calorie diet, you should only be eating 44–78 grams of fat per day.

We'll take one last look at Tropical Smoothie Café as well. There, the Bahama Mama smoothie is worth an additional mention, due to its 112 grams of sugar. This smoothie's primary ingredients are strawberries, pineapple, coconut, and white chocolate — so the sugar content is easy to justify. Additionally, this smoothie has 520 calories. Otherwise, it's pretty nutritionally boring. Nothing much else to see here.

Unfortunately, the Bahama Mama smoothie is just a continuation of the trend we've already seen with chain smoothies: They can be a wonderful treat, but buying prepared smoothies probably isn't going to give you the health benefits that you might be wanting when ordering a smoothie in the first place. To be a complete and nutritional meal, a smoothie should have a few things, including protein, fiber, healthy fats, and complex carbs. That said, if you're only ordering smoothies for the taste, don't let the nutritional details deter you — just be aware of what you're eating.