Calories in Mango Milkshake

One glass, one recipe: 180 ml of milk, 50 g of mango flesh and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Fifty grams is a few cubes, far less than the cheek of a mango, so this is flavoured sweet milk more than it is blended fruit. The mango shake sold at juice stalls in season is built the other way round: thick with pulp, often made from tinned sweetened pulp, and topped with cream, ice cream or dry fruits. Those versions are not what the 202 kcal describes. It describes a thin home shake in a tall glass.

Carbohydrate supplies 51% of the energy, fat 37% and protein 12%. Almost all of the 25.7 g of carbohydrate is sugar of one kind or another: the tablespoon that is added, the mango's, and the milk's. Fat, at 8.3 g, comes from the milk alone, since mango has almost none. The milk also supplies the 6.1 g of protein. So more than a third of the energy in a mango shake has nothing to do with mango or sugar; it is the fat of the milk it is blended with.

A glass of this mango shake is about 10% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 12% of a woman's. In mango season it is often an extra, taken after lunch or with an evening snack, and that is how two glasses and 404 kcal slip into a day unnoticed. It does give 6.1 g of protein and the calcium that milk carries, so as a replacement for an evening snack it earns its place. As a dessert after a full meal, a few slices of the mango itself would give the taste for far less.

Mango shake is a seasonal habit, and the habit matters more than the single glass: one a day through the mango season is a steady addition of sugar and milk fat. A glass has 25.4 g of sugars and 8.3 g of fat, all of it milk fat. People with diabetes are often unsure about mango; the right amount for them, in a shake or as fruit, is for their doctor or dietitian to set.