The start-up says that its smoothie can quickly replace three of the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables. It has developed a powder made from freeze-dried fruit for this purpose. Startbase tested the starter set.

Five portions of fruit and vegetables a day: almost everyone knows this recommendation and almost no one sticks to it in a disciplined way. Especially when things get stressful in everyday life, the motivation to peel a mandarin or prepare a salad is low. What remains is a guilty conscience - and a poor immune system in the long term. Many people therefore try to fill their vitamin needs with smoothies. But these often contain a lot of sugar and are more like desserts.

This is precisely where Daily Five claims to have discovered a gap in the market. The start-up sells so-called instant smoothies. These are fruit and vegetable powders that customers can easily mix themselves into a smoothie with water or milk. The powder consists of freeze-dried fruit and vegetables. The advantage: unlike apple juice, for example, which is often added to smoothies from the supermarket, the healthy ingredients are more concentrated in freeze-dried fruit or vegetables.

The idea came to the two Chemnitz founders Christian Lein (22) and Lennie Schlund (24) during their dual business studies. "A dual degree course is pretty stressful and it really wasn't possible for us to eat enough fruit and vegetables, especially during office hours," says Christian Lein. Sometimes he was simply too lazy to eat after work. But it was precisely this convenience that gave rise to the two students' business idea. .

This is the story of Daily Five

But it was a long road before they finally took the plunge and founded the company in August last year, Lein says. Although fruit powder has been around for some time, it is generally used to refine muesli, for example. "Turning the powder into a complete smoothie was more difficult than we thought," says Lein. The first attempts were "rather less outstanding". They ordered 50 different powders and experimented with them. At some point, they found a manufacturer who liked the idea - so they were able to move their development phase to the laboratory.

In the end, the founders of Daily Five decided on three varieties: a berry smoothie, a smoothie with exotic fruits and a smoothie with a high vegetable content. Three of the five desirable daily portions of fruit and vegetables are thus covered, says Lein. "The ingredients are all types of fruit and vegetables that everyone knows - not just any so-called superfood, which we view with skepticism." After all, smoothies are not a lifestyle product, but a solution for anyone who doesn't manage to consume enough vitamins. But are instant smoothies really the healthy solution for anyone who doesn't like fruit? We put them to the test.

Testing the Daily Five smoothies

We took a closer look at the smoothies and divided them into the categories of packaging, smoothie shaker, taste, ingredients and price. Here are the results.

The packaging of Daily Five in the test:

Nine whole days passed between ordering the smoothie starter set and delivery. When the letter carrier finally brought the package to our front door, it looked a little battered. Daily Five does not consider itself responsible for this - orders are always fully processed within 48 hours, emphasizes founder Lein.

The package includes both a shaker and seven smoothie portions. Both the shaker and the smoothie sachets were packaged in cardboard - certainly for protection, but it might be possible to save paper here. Some components of the smoothie shaker were individually wrapped in plastic. As a little extra, Daily Five has included an A3-sized poster that shows the seasonal fruit and vegetables for each season in a kind of pie chart. The poster looks nice and is sure to look good when customers pin it on the fridge, for example. .

Testing the smoothie shaker from Daily Five:

The starter set includes the so-called smoothie shaker. This is basically a glass bottle that has a removable sieve at the opening and in which the start-up has placed a so-called shaker ball. This is a ball that consists of a stainless steel spiral and is designed to ensure that the smoothie is more airy and the powder mixes better. However, as it is annoying to quickly rinse this shaker ball by hand, some of the test smoothies were also prepared without it - which also works well.

The shaker is surrounded by a black rubber cover that is open on three sides. It appears that this cover can be removed - for example, before the shaker is put in the dishwasher. But beware: the cover is glued on and once removed, it can only be reattached to the bottle with great effort. Otherwise, however, there are no problems cleaning the shaker in the dishwasher.

The smoothie shaker costs 18.99 euros individually, which is no bargain. Co-founder Christian Lein says that the smoothie can also be prepared in a normal water bottle.

Regardless of whether you use a smoothie shaker or a normal bottle, the preparation process is always the same. First pour in 250 milliliters of water, then add the powder and shake firmly for thirty seconds. If you use a smoothie shaker, it's best to press your thumb on the lid and make sure it doesn't open. Unfortunately, this is what happened in one case - and "making a quick smoothie" quickly turned into a 15-minute kitchen clean-up. Nevertheless, this experience also allowed us to test whether spilled smoothie can be washed out of clothes. The answer: Yes, it can.

The taste of the Daily Five in the test:

While typical supermarket smoothies are more of a treat, Daily Five is designed to focus on vitamin intake. "Our products are not quite as sweet as the smoothies as we know them," emphasizes founder Christian Lein. After all, the instant smoothies only consist of fruit powder and not apple or orange juices, which are already quite sweet.

In fact, the test shows that the smoothies taste less sweet than their competitors from the supermarket chiller cabinets. However, there are differences depending on the variety - and whether the smoothies are mixed with water, milk or plant-based milk.

Berry: The first variety in the test is the berry smoothie. This consists of banana, sour cherry, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry, date, beet and elderberry powder. Berry is the best tasting variety of Daily Five - and fortunately, unlike the other varieties, it is included in the starter set not twice but three times. Although the smoothie is less viscous than its supermarket competitors, the raspberries, blueberries and strawberries in particular provide an intense berry flavor. Blended with cow's milk, the smoothie even has a pleasantly thick consistency and a slight sweetness. The berry variety also tastes good when mixed with oat milk, although there is a slightly sour aftertaste.

Exotic: The Exotic smoothie consists of banana, mango, pineapple, carrot, date, passion fruit and acerola powder. It was tested once mixed with water and once with oat milk. In the combination with water, the carrot powder in particular stands out in terms of taste, while the mixture with oat milk gives the smoothie a little more sweetness. Despite the good taste, the consistency is a little off-putting in both blends - there is one ingredient that is not liquid and feels a little like it is frozen when you accidentally bite into it.

Greens: This variety consists of banana, mango, pineapple, spinach, carrot, acerola, barley grass, date and spirulina powder. Unlike the other two varieties, the taste here is reminiscent of other ready-made products made from powder. In addition, the taste is not as intense and even disappears completely when the smoothie is prepared with milk. In addition, the powder does not disperse as well when mixed with milk.

All three smoothies were also tested by a second person, who is a huge fan of conventional supermarket smoothies. The second tester, who drinks smoothies purely for pleasure, was quite critical and said that if he had the choice, he would only buy the berry smoothie. On the other hand, some users on the Trustpilot review platform were downright enthusiastic about the taste of the smoothies, with one even praising the lack of sweetness - which shows that these vitamin-rich drinks are also a matter of taste. Unfortunately, the odor of the powder is a slightly negative feature of all three varieties.

These are the ingredients of Daily Five:

The advantage of freeze-dried fruit, explains founder Christian Lein, is that the vitamins and nutrients are retained. The fruit and vegetables are shock-frozen immediately after harvesting, after which a special vacuum container is used to remove so much air that a strong vacuum is created. As a result, the water contained in the fruit escapes as water vapor at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. The liquid content of the fruit is then greatly reduced to around five percent, which concentrates the ingredients. This means that the fruit and vegetables shrink, but still contain many vitamins and minerals. The downside is that freeze-dried fruit also contains a lot of sugar and is less filling than fresh fruit.

All three varieties contain less sugar per 100 milliliters than many conventional smoothies. For comparison: the "Triple Pink" smoothie from the True Fruits brand contains 10.7 grams of sugar per 100 milliliters, while the most sugary of the three Daily Five smoothies ("Exoctic") contains 6.7 grams. The Daily Five smoothies also have slightly fewer calories than the comparison smoothie from True Fruits - the Exotic smoothie has 41.2 calories per 100 milliliters and the Triple Pink smoothie has 53 calories. The calorie and sugar figures only apply to the mixture with water, otherwise you have to add the milk.

But what about the promise that three of the five types of fruit can be replaced with the Daily Five smoothies? According to the Food Information Regulation - an EU regulation on food labeling - the reference amount for daily vitamin C intake is 80 milligrams. The Berry Smoothie contains 120 milligrams per serving, the Exotic Smoothie 290 milligrams and the Green Smoothie 420 milligrams of vitamin C - so at least the vitamin C requirement would be more than covered. Daily Five therefore fulfills its advertising promise. But be careful: the smoothies cannot fully meet the need for other vitamins - users still need to plan at least two portions of solid fruit and vegetables into their daily routine.

How much vitamin requirement is covered by the comparison smoothie from True Fruit remains an open question - because the amount of vitamins is not made as transparent as with the Daily Five smoothies.

Are the smoothies worth the price?

The liquid vitamin supplement is not cheap. The starter set with seven smoothies and a shaker costs 34.99 euros. Since the smoothies - at least in the test - can also be mixed quite well without a shaker, you don't really need one. A pack of seven without a shaker is also available in the online store for 24.99 euros.

By way of comparison, the pink True Fruits smoothie costs a total of 17.43 euros for seven bottles of 250 milliliters each. Two 750 milliliter bottles and one 250 milliliter bottle cost just 10.47 euros in total. This means that you can buy the same portion of smoothies - a total of 1750 milliliters - for less than half the price.

Founder Christian Lein is aware of the high price. "Freeze-drying is by far the most expensive way of preserving fruit and vegetables, but it also has the highest nutrient content," he explains. In addition, they are currently still ordering the portion bags in small batches - which is quite expensive because the fruit powder is normally produced in large quantities. "The more we sell, the larger the quantities we can order - and that can also translate into a lower price," he promises.

That is the Startbase conclusion:

The instant smoothies can actually be a useful support in everyday life for anyone who is too lazy or stressed to eat fruit or vegetables five times a day - albeit not a particularly cheap one. At 24.99 euros, seven smoothies with a volume of 250 milliliters cost significantly more than comparable products from the supermarket. However, conventional smoothies often consist largely of apple or orange juice. This is where Daily Five scores with its powder made from freeze-dried fruit.

The smoothies may not be as sweet and tasty, but they are all the more effective when it comes to replenishing your vitamin levels. While the berry variety tastes really good, there is still room for improvement, especially with the green smoothie. However, the smoothie shaker - basically a glass bottle with a few extras - is easy to replace with a normal water bottle.