Nutrition & Vitamins - How many calories are in a banana milkshake?

My name is Christine Marquette, and I'm a registered and licensed dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic, and I'm going to talk to you about how many calories are in a banana milkshake. Now this could vary widely depending on if it's a homemade banana milkshake, or if it's a store-bought banana milkshake and also what type of store you buy it in. If you buy it in a fast food restaurant versus a sit-down restaurant. The size is going to make a huge difference on how many calories that banana milkshake actually has. The other thing is going to be what kind of milk is it made with? Is it made with skim milk, low-fat, whole milk? That's going to have a huge impact. Some restaurants actually also use vanilla ice cream when they're making their milkshakes, so ice cream itself is going to have a whole lot more calories in it than even whole milk would. So, there is going to be a very wide range may be in a banana milk shake. So, let's start with an eight ounce cup, a small serving for a banana milk shake. If you make it homemade and you use skim milk, you use one whole banana, you don't add any additional sugar to it, maybe you add a little bit of vanilla, maybe you add a little bit of cinnamon-- those items aren't going to add any calories to it. So you're really going to get about 200 calories for your eight ounce cup between the milk and the actual banana. Now, if that eight ounce cup was made with whole milk, you're going to need to add an additional 60 calories. So that's going to be about 260 calories. If you were to get this item made in a restaurant, it could be quite a bit more because again they may actually be adding ice cream. They may actually add more sugar to it as well. So you can get all the way up to 400 calories for this little eight ounce cup of a banana milkshake. So you see there's a wide range if you had it at home to less than, or about 200, all the way to over 400 if you actually get it in a restaurant. So the best thing to do is actually, if you're going to a restaurant, check their actual nutrition information. A lot of restaurants now offer it in their restaurants or they offer it online ahead of time so you can actually check it out before you even go and order that banana milkshake. If it seems to be very high calorie, once you get there you may request, ask them if they can make it with a lower fat milk and that will really cut down on the amount of calories you're getting form that banana milkshake.