Freezing meal replacement shakes - is it okay?
Meal replacement shakes are a convenient way of ensuring you get all of your essential nutrients, reach your daily protein intake, and hit all of your macro targets without lots of preparation. You can get ready-made meal replacement shakes, but lots of people opt to make their own, using a protein powder or nutritious base like our WHOLE vegan meal replacement, fruits, veggies, a liquid and toppings to create a healthy, balanced meal replacement smoothie.
While having these meal replacement shakes in your bag might be convenient, sometimes the process of actually having to whip them up first thing in the morning is quite the opposite. Many of us don’t have the time or energy to faff around with fruit, powder and a blender when we’re in a rush, and so freezing your homemade meal replacement shake can be the solution to this.
Can you freeze meal replacement shakes?
The bottom line is that you absolutely can. You can put any shake with protein in it in the freezer without affecting the protein’s nutrients, digestibility or absorption. If you’re happy to sacrifice some of the freshness of the taste, there’s nothing harmful about pre-mixing your shake and all of the nutrients will be preserved.
How to freeze meal replacement shakes
Simply prepare all your ingredients the night before, blend up your shake, pour the liquid into different containers for each day, and set them in the freezer. That way you’ll get an extra 5 or 10 minutes in bed - plus, there’s no need to clean up a blender in the morning (aka the worst part of making any smoothie!)
When thinking about how to store your shake and what to store it in, if you’re opting for a glass jar, make sure it’s tempered glass so that it won’t crack as it moves from freezer temperature to room temperature. It’s also worth leaving some room at the top of your glass for your frozen shake so that, if it expands, the glass won’t break.
The best way to keep the consistency right is to set one out each night before you go to sleep to let it defrost for the next morning’s breakfast, or grab it straight from the freezer and go if you know you’re going to have it later in the day as a snack. You can let them thaw in the fridge, but the texture is likely to be a lot runnier. Freezing your meal replacement shake may change the texture or flavour anyway, but to avoid pockets of powder, make sure you mix your shake completely before you freeze it so you have a well mixed drink when it’s thawed.
Alternatives to freezing your meal replacement shake
If you don’t want the consistency of your shake to be affected, the best thing to do is to prepare the rest of your ingredients the night before. You can then blend or shake the prepared ingredients (the added greens, fruits and veggies) in the morning with your liquid and your protein powder. You might still have to tackle cleaning the dreaded blender, but having everything prepared the night before can still shave off valuable minutes from your morning routine.
