You may not spend your days scoffing pizza and cheeseburgers, but there are many foods that sound pretty healthy, even diet-friendly, but when you delve a little deeper, they are quite the opposite.
Wonder around your local supermarket and check out the nutrition labels on many of the products available — it’s enough to put your head in a spin.
Mostly, I blame food manufacturers, with their bold-faced claims, highlighting whatever good points they can dig up, and using tiny type to hide the less beneficial. You’ve seen it all before I’m sure, with claims like “organic,” “natural,” or “vitamin enhanced.”Sometimes though, it’s because of our own misunderstandings about what is healthy, and not health.
Overrated ‘Health’ Foods
Here are three so-called health foods, that have done little to deserve their prestige:
1. Muffins
Don’t be tricked by the word muffin, it’s often just a giant cupcake, minus the frosting. Even bran muffins may sound healthy, but often there’s little more in their ingredients than refined sugar and white flour.
If you must eat something along those lines, go for a wholegain English muffin, with a scrambled egg, sliced tomatoes, and mushrooms.
2. Nutrition Bars
Many of the popular brands of nutrition bars are high in saturated fat, refined sugar, and hydrogenated oils. Some of them even contain the calorie equivalent of a candy bar.
A better option would be an apple and some peanut butter, or you could try making your own “power bar.”
Here is a recipe adapted from Enlightened Cooking:
Easy Whole Grain, Fruit and Nut Energy Bars
Ingredients:
3 cups puffed whole grain cereal (puffed wheat or Kashi)
1/2 cup chopped nuts or seeds (or a combination)
1/2 cup chopped dried fruit
3 tablespoons ground flaxseed
1/3 cup natural nut butter (e.g. peanut, cashew, almond)
1/2 cup honey
Method:
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 9×9-inch square metal baking pan foil; spray with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a large bowl mix the cereal, nuts, dried fruit and flaxseed; set aside.
- Place the nut butter and honey in small heavy saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, whisking constantly for about 1 minute until bubbly and smooth.
- Pour hot mixture over cereal mixture in bowl, stirring to blend (mix well to coat all of the cereal). Transfer mixture to prepared pan. Using a large square of wax paper or foil, firmly press mixture down into pan to firmly compact.
- Bake until just golden around edges, about 10 minutes. Cool completely. Remove bars using foil lines and cut into 16 bars or squares.
(Nutrition per 1 bar serving: calories 121; fat 6.0g (sat 0.8g, mono 1.8 g, poly 3.1g); protein 3.2g)
3. Commercial Smoothies
Some of the commercial smoothies available use ingredients like full fat yogurt, ice cream, fruit drinks, syrups, and heaps of sugar. You can expect 500 calories plus for many of the options on the market.
Instead, go for a home made green smoothies by blitzing up some fresh or frozen berries, a frozen banana, low fat natural yogurt, ground flax seeds, and some baby spinach leaves.
So, what would you add to this list of so-called ‘health’ foods?
Pasta sauce is easy to make at home, and can be made in large batches and frozen, so you can avoid the sodium issue. I would guess that, in general, it’s one of the less-processed processed foods, since its mostly puréed and cooked, which we would all do at home, anyway.
I CAN TELL IMMEDIATELY AND AM PUT OFF MANY TIMES BY THE FLAVORS WHEN EATING OUT. SINCE I STARTED TO SELDOM USE SALT AND NEVER USING SUGAR EVEN IN TEA, THE SWEET DRINKS AND SALTY FOOD IS OVERPOWERING TO ME IN MANY CASES. IT’S HARD TO GET A GOOD MEAL UNLESS ALL INGREDIENTS ARE FRESH AND WITHOUT THE SALT PRESERVATIVES SO I CAN TELL THEM TO HOLD THE SALT AND OTHER BAD ENHANCERS.
Wellness Detective agrees with your points completely. I was misled in thinking a carrot muffin was a healthy option and was so proud of myself when I had muffins for breakfast! Another type of food that people mistake for healthy and have lots of, is dried fruit, which is high in sugar. It is alright in moderation. When out and about, and on the go, if you don’t have time for preparing a smoothie, I would suggest purchasing a juice made of greens/carrots, instead of a smoothie.
Bottom line is knowledge is power, especially when it comes to teh food we eat. I advocate sticking with basic nutritious foods and reading the labels on the products you choose to purchase. Look for those products whose ingredients are actual food as opposed to things you can’t pronounce, and from those choose the ones which best suit your nurtitional needs.
I sometimes like to put pasta sauce on my black beans and rice. Seemingly this would be healthy, since it includes tomatoes and other vegetables. The problem with it is that it is very high in sodium as well as being a processed food.
I also agree. I have read that manufacturers hide unhealthy chemicals and other ingredients under the guise of seemingly bland names. So, we now have to learn all the new labels for unhealthy items.
I’m with @Susan in that “light” salad dressings aren’t great for you … and for that matter, a lot of salads are high in calories even without the dressing.
Other sneaky sugary “health” food include granola bars, flavored yogurt and instant oatmeal.
Kim
It seemed obvious for me except those nutrition bars. Not a long time I realised about all that sugar it had inside. I was kind of surprised.
Now I use it sometimes before my workouts…
I’ve got a pet peeve about things like fat-free or sugar-free Coffee Mate, or “light” salad dressings, that contain bad-for-you ingredients like partially hydrogenated oils.
In general, if you make it yourself using simple ingredients like the frozen mango I use in my breakfast smoothies (and avoiding stuff like fat-free cream of mushroom soup in your casseroles), it’s going to be healthier!
Good additional suggestions, Spectra. It’s annoying how products like these deceive so many people, just because of a few fancy claims on the label.
Yes, no doubt there are good products out there. My personal preference, though, is something like nuts and seeds or dried fruit. Very portable and convenient when you need a snack away from home, or wherever.
That would be so enlightening, Lori, wouldn’t it?
Very enlightening.
When I crave vitamin water I pour a 12oz can of V8 Fusion into 1 quart of water. Tastes like vitamin water and is all fruit & veggies added to the water. Yes: calories. Yes: 2 servings of produce.
Its sad that they can get by with this but I guess people wouldn’t buy it if they were honest about all the chemicals and additives that are put in your food and what the stuff really does to your body.
Being a Type 2 diabetic, I’ve learned that low fat often mean more sugar to give that “mouth appeal” that changing the fat content causes. The manufacturers have to add more of something to make up for the change in taste. I check everything when it says zero fat or low fat on the label.
When I compare the product to the regular one, the sugar content often goes way up, or something else changes that is not good for my health.
I totally afree with you on that. Except I love Aqufina’s vitamin water. Its sweetened with stevia and only 10 cals a bottle and I read the ingredients and it really is not loaded with sugar. Check it out.
I went to a “Wellness Expo” today. Most every table was pure bull#$#%^ praying on the uneducated consumer with weight loss new years resolutions. Anyway there were two things that stood out for me. Nutrition bars. There were two nutrition bars that were really sound on the ingredients and calories carbs/fat/protein ratio. I am not going to advertise their brands here. My point is there are some nutritionally sound bars out there. You just have to wade through the crap first.
vitamins are good for healt
I would add a few others to the list:
So-called “healthy” prepackaged frozen meals–they’re usually full of preservatives and sodium and aren’t all that filling. They may be good in a pinch, but it’s not like it’d be that much harder to make a simple stir fry or something simple like that.
Vitamin waters/nutritionally enhanced water–either they’re full of sugar or artificial sweeteners and a bunch of herbal supplements that are probably not that great for you. At the very least, they won’t be very effective for weight loss.
There are probably others, but these are the ones that stick out to me.
Typo should be this am. but no matter when leave these so called “natural,health foods” right where they are.
The am. at a local store I checked ingredients for sugar on a health? bar. There were 7 sugars plus unpronouceable ingredents. Read labels folks.
The other week, I was thirsty, didn’t feel like water, and almost bought something called ‘Healthy Thirst – Pink Ginger’, assuming it was something like ginger beer. It turned out to be carbonated grape juice with lashings of sugar and some lab-created ginger taste. There was nothing ‘healthy’ or even ‘gingery’ about it. So no, I didn’t buy it.
But where do food companies get off lying like this? Imagine if you bought a jacket whose advertising said “there’s nothing better than pure wool” only to find it was polyester. Yeah, the company didn’t actually SAY it was pure wool, but they implied it. As a customer, you would complain that you’d been tricked.
Yet food manufacturers can almost say whatever they want and it’s caveat emptor, all the way.
I couldn’t agree more! You used some great examples in your post and I am always telling my clients to beware of eating meals out of their home because often times even menu items that appear healthy are laden with sugar, salt and saturated or trans fat.
I once went to a lecture at Harvard’s Department of Nutrition where a nutrition researcher from a big food company mentioned that every time their sales fell, they added more sugar or salt to their products and sales spruced right back up. You need to be really careful when eating out and always check the labels for these ingredients.
Dr. Tom Halton