When trying to eat healthy you have to do research.
We have to be vigilant and read the labels.
Just because it says "healthy"... that means nothing.
That was just years of gaslighting.
Also, just because it says "diet" you can't have 10 of them.
RedditorJoltyJobwanted to dissect what's on the menu.
"What food do most people think is healthy but is actually unhealthy?"
I love fruit. But... some fruits are just sugar. Now they tell us.
No Juice
"Jamba juice."
versionii
"Can confirm this. I used to work there and most of the smoothies on the menu are made with frozen juice concentrate which was just liquid processed sugar and multiple scoops of sherbet. Not sorbet. Sherbet."
Coconut_Less
Joseph Sikora Drinking GIF by PowerGiphyNudes
"Naked smoothies/juices and flavored yogurt."
blaynevee
"Looking through the various yogurt's nutritional information while trying to find a good High-protein Greek Yogurt recently was very eye-opening. The majority of them were pretty much just softer ice cream."
mordahl
Not Free
"Some people think 'Gluten Free' means 'healthy.' Not automatically, it doesn't. This is NOT about people who MUST follow a GF diet."
notthesedays
"As someone with celiac disease it’s astounding how often I have to explain this to people. Gluten free diets are no healthier than regular diets. Gluten is just a single protein being omitted from your diet. The difference is you’re probably eating way less bread, or you’re just generally more anxious about eating so you might lose weight as a result."
Willow5331
Less Fat?
"I'm shocked how many moms think Nutella is better than peanut butter."
I-amthegump
"When it first came out in Australia they advertised it 'less fat than peanut butter' and 'less sugar than jam' so that sounds great..."
"Until you think about it, peanut butter is high in fat but low in sugar and jam is high in sugar and low in fat. So of course Nutella has less fat than peanut butter, it's got to make room for all the added sugar. And of course it has less sugar than jam, it's gotta make room for all that palm oil."
Azzulah
Same for apples...
"Granola bars. They're chocolate, oats and sugar for the most part. Oats can be healthy by themselves. But a granola bar is unhealthy due to all the sugar, chocolate and stuff along with them. Same for apples. Apples are healthy, apple pie, not healthy."
SinisterMeatball
Snacking Hey Girl GIF by Nature ValleyGiphyThe truth about granola bars has been out there forever. Beware...
Bad Products
"Cereal."
Confident-Laugh138
"That's because when I was kid the food pyramid posters were printed by the American grain council. They said we needed a couple of servings of both meat and vegetables and like 9 servings of bread and various grain products."
RUfuqingkiddingme
cereal GIFGiphySugar No!
"Juice. Most packaged juices you get are super high in sugar."
PhreedomPhighter
"Ha. One of the reasons why I switched providers last year for my prenatal care was because the first one told me, in all seriousness, I needed to drink three cups of milk and two cups of juice per day. I was like, say what now???"
Lindsaydoodles
"Same with ketchup 25% of it is sugar."
GetOutOfTheWhey
Check the Bag
"Veggie Straws."
supernaut32
"This is actually a pretty good response. A surprising number of people didn't check the back of those packages to find that they're just Pringles that included a little bit of vegetable dust in the potato chip mix. People actually think they're just eating salty crispy vegetables."
no_comment12
Unsafe
"Anything 'natural' doesn’t immediately mean healthy. At least in the EU when a product is natural, it doesn’t need to go through all the testing that is required for other products. This doesn’t mean that the product is safe, as many natural products can be harmful."
Adriana-meyer
Dirty
"Panera Bread...healthy 'clean' ingredients. It's full of salt, sugar and processed crap."
Carrann823
12. Panera for the Win!GiphyJust because it says healthy or diet doesn't mean it's true. Lesson learned.
People Explain Which 'Healthy' Foods Are Way More Unhealthy Than People Think
I think I just stick with carbs...
Getting healthy and staying healthy is always going to be a stress in life for moist of us. With amount of miracle diets and pills and exercise regimes is amazing how we're not all stick figures blown down by small gust of wind. One of the main problems with staying healthy is often lack of knowledge, especially when it pertains to our diets. There is no miracle and most of the foods we believe are healthy are not; half the time it'd be smarter to just eat an entire pie. It would be more enjoyable that's for sure.
Redditor u/Filmologic wanted to know what foods we're better off skipping and just eating the chocolate by asking..... What "healthy" food is actually way more unhealthy than most people think?Get Undressed.
GiphyThose salads at fast food restaurants. It's mainly the dressing. CalcifersMyHero
Between dressing, deep fried 'crispy' chicken, croutons and cheese that salad is a seriously dense calorie bomb
Think of it this way. If you took that handful of lettuce out what have you got on your plate? Hugh_Jampton
Drink No.
Bottled fruit juices. Tartokwetsh
Really depends on what you put in them. Yogurt and berries don't magically change how healthy they are just because you put them in a blender, but if you start adding juice, higher sugar fruits, etc, that can changed pretty quickly. neobeguine
Low is High.
"Low Fat" or "Fat Free" foods would taste terrible if left as is, so manufacturers add a lot more sugar. awesome_opossum1212
If a food is labeled as "Low" in one of these, it most likely has extra of the other two. remberzz
Iced.
Don't know if anyone thinks Nutella is healthy any more but they were advertising as such for a while before getting in trouble. It's literally chocolate icing. GenerallySalty
Fun fact! Chocolate icing has less fat, calories, and sugar then Nutella. nagol93
General Mills.
Cereal. They tell you it's part of a complete breakfast, but this lady i used to work with worked at General Mills. They had to monitor the sugar content in the cereals to ensure it did not go past 49% I think, or else it legally became candy. Not a perfect answer, but with so many cereals trying to promote health, you need to remember this. Commander_Shepard_
Not so Zero.
VitaminWater has over 32g of sugar per bottle. It's essentially sugar water. So not only is it gross tasting but it's not even good for you. JeromesNiece
"The zero on the label refers to how much water is in it, which is zero. If you want zero calorie water, try Diet Water Zero Light, it has only 60 calories." -Paunch Burger Quintex78
Just Candy....
GiphyI have a friend with an insatiable sweet tooth and she started eating fruit snacks to replace candy and I had to tell her "these are literally just candy..." I'm honestly shocked she doesn't have (pre)diabetes yet, her sugar intake is insane and she's 37. Walknasty
Bad Crunch.
Granola bars- I have no idea where the healthiness perception of these things come from, but they're basically just empty carbs and sugar.
If you're on a hike, yeah they're a great option to keep you going, but when I see people snacking on them at the office, I'm just like "why." Shuckles116
I think the healthiest part of a Nature Valley bar is the crumbles that fall to the floor, preventing you from consuming them. bacon-is-sexy
Bacteria.
I brought in a bottle of Kombucha to my micro lab and took a sample under the microscope. It was like house of a thousand corpses. There were 5 maybe 6 alive bacteria but they weren't living their best life. They were hardly moving. Many bacteria corpses though. (and yes I made sure to check the expiration date, keep the bottle chilled in the correct temperature, i didn't shake or agitate it, I wanted this to work). We also took some Activia yogurt under the microscope and saw lots of happy little bacteria being helpful little probiobros. theWildBore
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Don't you just want the relief of eating your favorite food without guilt?
Unfortunately it's a pretty well known dichotomy in life that food that is delicious is also incredibly unhealthy. Like, yes, I do want onion rings for the tenth day in a row, but I should probably take a break.
Though...sometimes our favorite foods surprise us.
u/ZestyClock asked:
"What 'unhealthy' food is healthier than people think?"
Here were some of those answers.
Poppin' Corn
I love popcorn! A lot of people think it can't be good unless it's drenched in butter, but there are so many healthy popcorn toppings to add to home-popped popcorn.
Ranch: dried dill, dried chives, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper
Dorito: Nutritional yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, paprika, chili powder, salt
Churro: Powdered sugar, cinnamon
BBQ: Paprika, chili powder, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder
You can pre-mix them and keep them to sprinkle on popcorn. A little goes a long way, a tablespoon of the seasoning mix is more than enough for like 4 cups of popcorn (except for the churro one, you need like 2 tablespoons of sugar to taste it)
Tater
Potatoes. Most folks love to fry their potatoes or otherwise eat them with large amounts of things like butter, cheese, bacon, & sour cream. While still not the most nutritious veggie in terms of vitamins & minerals, a simple plain baked potato is under 200 calories and is fantastic for helping big eaters feel fuller with smaller meals.
Staying Freshhhhh
Dietetics and nutrition student/intern here... And my pick is frozen vegetables. There are many people who say fresh produce is the way to go, but many times they are picked before they are ripe to be shipped to the grocery store. Frozen vegetables, on the other hand, are picked at peak ripeness so they tend to have higher concentrations of antioxidants and other micronutrients (other than those that are destroyed by heat when thawed) that would be found in less amounts in fresh produce. So if you can't get your produce locally, frozen vegetables are a great option and they last a long time! Always check labels for added ingredients but most of the time it's just the vegetable!
Grains Grains Grains
Everyone gives white rice a bad rap, saying it'll make you fat... And then you look at Japan, the country with the lowest obesity rate among industrialized countries, where they eat, on average, 82 kg (180 pounds) of white rice per person per year and think MAYBE it's not the white rice that's making people fat.
Tomato Tomahto
Chips and Salsa is considered "junk food" by many. But really it's just the chips that are usually unhealthy.
Salsa is usually really healthy. Especially homemade because it usually has no sugar.
Try replacing the chips with something healthy. Thin cucumber slices with a little bit of salt works really well.
Different Nutrition For Different People
"High calorie" food.
It's only unhealthy per se if you need to lose weight.
That doesn't necessarily make all of that stuff unhealthy though.
It's like everyone forgets underweight people or people who exercise a lot exist.
Lots of people treat those words like synonyms and it's so incredibly misleading.
And to add to that - "serving sizes" are a terrible concept when some people eat 3-5 meals a day and other people 1 or 2.
Crack
Eggs. they are high in nutrients and protein. Many people are convinced they are bad for you because they contain quite a bit of cholesterol, but they raise HDL, the good type of cholesterol.
The bad cholesterol, LDL, is found in butter (and other foods.) Not all types of cholesterol are bad and some people don't know that.
Eh...What's Up Doc?
Carrots. I have had two very large people tell me I needed to be careful with carrots because they have so much sugar. I don't think I ever saw either of them with a carrot. Soda? Yeah. Candy? Yeah. Carrots? Nope.
Yup, my partner considers carrots and fruit "junk food" due to their sugar content and doesn't buy them. I mean yeah, they contain sugar, but if I want something sweet it's better that I eat a peach or two with all the vitamins and fibre that they contain instead of cookies or something!
Actual Celiac, Can Confirm
Gluten. People literally have no reason not to eat gluten, it is just protein that comes from wheat. For some reason everyone things they have a "gluten intolerance" now, which is so stupid it hurts my brain.
It sucks for actual celiacs too, because often "gluten free" does not guarantee that it's safe for them to eat, because stupid restaurants will prepare the GF dough on the same workspaces they prepare the normal dough.
Small
Chocolate. A plain dark chocolate bar isn't unhealthy at all. Same with a scoop of ice cream.
Sweet potato fries aren't that bad if they're not drenched in salt and dipped in mayo.
Any "junk" food that you've made at home, like pizza, or stuff you've baked yourself is pretty okay.
I think the bigger problem is that this crap tastes so good that it's hard to limit the portion. You should be able to have a small treat every day, but most people have trouble with the "small" part. I know I do.
The Hops
Beer was safer than water at many points throughout history, particularly in medieval Europe through the onslaught of the bubonic plague. ... A Belgian monk named Arnold famously persuaded people to drink beer in place of water, putting an end to the plague that had devastated the local area
That's A Ton Of Twinkies
Pretty much all food is just fine. In moderation.
So if you want to go crazy and have 2 pieces of cake one day just know that you should probably eat extremely light meals the next day.
For the most part unless you eat nothing but junk food every day (meaning low in nutritional value) you will be just fine. Hell, you can even lose weight if you eat nothing but junk food.
So let's say you eat just Twinkies.
The average male could eat about 12 Twinkies a day (and ONLY those Twinkies) and still lose weight. That would change depending on your initial size of course.
You won't feel good doing this for several days, but technically you could do it. I would also add in vitamin supplements so you don't deprive your body of the necessary nutrients.
Or just do 5-6 pieces of chocolate cake (roughly) would be equal.
Not All Popcorn Is Created Equal
Popcorn... according to Denise Austin a handful of popcorn has more antioxidants than a handful of blueberries... great for me since I pop popcorn all the time.
This does not include microwave popcorn.
Chocoholics Anonymous
Chocolate
Studies show that eating one square of dark chocolate a day can lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of stroke and heart by as much as 40 percent. Chocolate reduces LDL (or known as "bad" cholesterol) and promotes flexibility in arteries and veins. This is because dark chocolates contains heart protective antioxidants called flavonoids which like other antioxidants, do their work in the body by corralling cell-damaging free radicals and metallic ions.
Normal chocolate and milk chocolate is also quite healthy but due to the amount of sugar inside of them they are also not quite healthy. So, in conclusion, you can eat chocolate, but not a lot because it is unhealthy if consumed in large amounts
TL;DR : Dark chocolate good for you, but don't eat it a lot
Fats Are Not Fattening
Pretty sure full fat milk is better for you than semi skimmed, and far better than skimmed.
"Fat free" is a phrase pushed by sugar companies to make you think it's healthy.
"Fat free" yoghurts have more shit in them than full fat and is ironically worse for you, but hey, no fat must mean I stay slim and can attract hot guys right?
Semi skimmed milk has sugar in it.
And if there's one thing I hate more than lying, it's skimmed milk. Which is water that is lying about being milk.
It's Also A Vegetable
A fully loaded pizza. It covers all of the food groups in one meal.
Meat group: Ground beef, sausage, pepperoni and so on.
Dairy : Cheese
Vegetables: Tomato sauce and heck the veggies on top as well.
Bread/grains: The crust.
So in moderation pizza done correctly is actually a well rounded meal.
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