Supposedly Healthy Foods you Should be Avoiding
Leading a healthy lifestyle is a growing trend in many households, but you may be surprised to know that some supposedly 'Healthy' foods aren't as good for you as you first thought.
Low Fat Yoghurt
When you remove the fat from a yoghurt it will become very bland and manufacturers will add sugar or artificial sweeteners to try and make the yoghurt tasty again. This will often mean your low-fat yoghurt has the same amount if not more sugar, than your standard full-fat yoghurt. Check the sugar and fat content on your yoghurts and if you're not happy with the taste you can always add crushed berries or bananas to sweeten things up.
Shop Bought Smoothies
Like a lot of the foods in this blog, shop bought smoothies will contain a lot of sugar. Fresh homemade smoothies already contain a lot of sugar but shops will often add more sugar and artificial flavouring to make your drink taste even better. Remember if you are making homemade smoothies or juices stick to the 80/20 rule which means 80% of the smoothie or juice should come from vegetables and 20% should come from fruit.
Head over to Juicers.ie to read their blog on Supermarket vs Homemade Smoothies and Juices.
Granola and Cereal Bars
Health gurus and exercise fanatics seem to be talking about granola most of the time. Yes, granola can be healthy if you make it yourself. Again most shop bought granola has a crazy amount of added sugar. A single bowl of sugary granola can have an astonishing 600 calories.
If you are buying granola make sure you choose wisely and look for granola which is high in fibre.
Cereal bars have the same issues as granola, but often cereal bars have oil, chocolate or nuts added to them, which increases their fat content to be equal to sweets. Try and look out for ingredients like oats and whole grain in your bars.
Instant Oatmeal
Single serving packets that you can buy at the supermarket aren’t good for you because once again sugar is the main culprit of instant porridge. You will benefit more from buying a bag of porridge and flavouring it yourself. You can add fruit and spices like cinnamon and nutmeg to make your breakfast super tasty.
Packaged Turkey
Turkey is a great low-fat meat, so using leftover turkey is great, but buying the packaged turkey slices is not giving you any benefit at all.
Packaged meats can be filled with salt and preservatives so its best to look for the meat which doesn’t have too much sodium in. Generally, if it has less than 350mg of sodium you should be ok.
Dried Fruit
A fairly innocent snack you may think, but sulphur dioxide is used to preserve the best before date. Dried fruits like cranberries and pineapple will often have sugar added to them, so maybe hold back as it can be easy to overeat these snacks.
Skimmed & Low-Fat Milk
This type of milk takes out a lot of nutrients that makes milk healthy. Manufactures put synthetic vitamins to try and replace the calcium lost. This drink isn’t really doing anything for your body so its best off drinking whole milk or finding other alternatives such as almond milk.
Even though a food may say healthy or only so many calories, do Remember to always check the packet if you are ever unsure.