Just when you thought you were eating right…
By: Taren Vaughan
Truly changing your eating habits is not something that happens with ease. It takes a lot of self control, patience and researching of different foods. Pushing that plate away as soon as you get full is tough. And jumping on the scale every five minutes to see if you dropped a pound will drive a person crazy. As frustrating as those things may be, finding the right foods to add to your diet is even harder to do, especially with all the misleading labels attached to foods.
Check out some foods that don’t live up to their “good” name:
Muffins
Not many of us have time to make a full course meal for breakfast. But we know we won’t make it to lunch without our stomachs growling uncontrollably. So we search for the next best thing, a muffin. The one thing that always slips people’s minds when it comes to a muffin is that it is a type of bread. And when there is bread, there is sugar too. A single muffin from the corner store can contain over 400 calories. Being packed with fruit doesn’t take away from the fact that muffins are loaded with sugar.
Low-fat yogurt
Yogurt receives so much praise for being one of the healthiest snacks around. It is also coined as the natural remedy against vaginal yeast infections. But is it as pure as some think? Many yogurts contain significant amounts of sugar in addition to the few fruit flakes that you might find towards the bottom of the container. Hence the term “low-fat”, most people would think that this choice is much better than the breaded muffin mentioned above. Low in fat doesn’t mean low in sugar. Might want to check the labels carefully with this one…all yogurts aren’t good yogurts.
Turkey sausage
Turkey sausage links are the popular substitutes for the pork-filled ones, with a slight difference in taste. Many people resort to eating this type of sausage because it has been deemed to be healthy. Better for you than pork sausage, however these bird links are not clear of fat and salt. Turkey sausage, turkey bacon…it all contains similar things unless you’re dealing with sliced turkey breast, not smothered in gravy of course.
Diet sodas
Here we go again with the word trickery. Diet sodas may not contain the endless amounts of sugar that regular sodas have but they do have a lot of something, salt that is. Diet sodas often have a high concentration of salt in them and are topped off with a sweetener that makes most people cringe. Throwing the word “diet” in front of it doesn’t make it healthy. Neither does adding “zero” behind it. The salt concentration in diet sodas has been said to affect the kidneys and cause high blood pressure in excessive drinkers.
Smoothies
The thought of a strawberry and banana blend with a dose of vanilla yogurt would surely hit the spot around this time of year. Smoothies are noted as health beverages by a lot of people. But just like milkshakes, it’s the extras that are added that cause them to be unhealthy treats. If it weren’t for the extras, smoothies would be just fine. Topped with whipped cream and loaded with sugar though, most smoothies straight out of a shop are not the best thing to grab after a long workout at the gym. All that hard work you put in burning off calories will definitely go to waste.
FTF…they can have you packing on pounds just like the rest.
Source: WebMD