10 Unhealthy Foods that sound healthy, but aren’t

We may have already made the switch from white bread to brown bread in a conscious bid to eat healthy and save our diet. But have we thought the brown bread we pick up every time from our local general store could well just be brown color bread?

We are a nation of dieters. We try the new fads and the new products. We listen to the promises of fast and easy weight loss. We also have so many food options that confusion on what’s healthy and what’s not is the norm – from cookies with vitamins to drinks that will help us lose fat.

Despite the number of hours at the gym we wonder where we are going wrong. Well, the reason behind this is foods we think are healthy, but are actually not.

I love food. I also love unhealthy food, unfortunately, and in attempt to help myself and others with trying to eat healthier, I made this list to make people aware that what we might think of as healthy, might just quite the opposite.

Health drinks:

There are hundreds of “Health” drink options on the market today. We can find drinks filled with vitamins, probiotics and even fiber. But how do they truly stack up when it comes to meaningful weight loss.

If they’ve got more than 1 to 2 ingredients, my advice is to skip it. That’s because any drink with various ingredients is likely to either have added calories in the form of simple sugars, and if it’s sweet but has no calories, it’s got artificial sweeteners, which aren't great for our waistline, either. Recent studies are linking artificial sweeteners with vascular events and even increases in metabolic syndrome. When it comes to drinks, think simple – water, coffee, tea – and cheap!

Brown Bread:

After it slowly sunk in that white bread is bad for health as it is made of all-purpose flour and can lead to obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes, we made a reluctant transition to brown bread. Now, it turns out the brown bread locally available is no more than regular white bread colored brown by using chemicals. By having brown colored bread regularly for breakfast we are doing our body no good, worse still if we are exercising as well.

White Rice:

Devoid of nutrition, white rice is nothing but a refined grain that has been stripped of its vitamins, minerals and fibre. Cooked white rice is all starch that easily converts to glucose in our body and shoots up our blood pressure, or gives a tummy bulge. White rice should especially be avoided by those who are carb sensitive as even a little bit of rice could make them feel full, and even fat. Also, white rice leaves us hungry too soon as our body takes very little time to break it down and digest it.

Granola:

For most (but not all), a teeny tiny amount of granola will give us a wallop of trans fats and sugar – both have been shown to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke – and calories. Plus, the portions are so small that we tend not to be satisfied with the initial bowl and continue to fill the bowl until the milk is gone … and then add a little more milk, what I like to call the vicious cereal cycle.

Foods Labeled "Fat-Free":

Fat-free does NOT mean calorie-free. Just because a food contains no fat, that doesn't make it a health food. (Think gummy bears.) Of course, there are many very healthful fat-free foods (like most fruits and vegetables), but always check the nutrition labels when buying packaged foods to be sure we're getting a nutritious product and not just one that's fat-free. Calories, sodium, fiber, and vitamins and minerals are all aspects we should consider in addition to fat.

Flavored yoghurt/milk:

Our local dairy shop will first produce a strawberry-flavored yoghurt cup when we ask for yoghurt. Such is the hoopla surrounding every food that's flavored. Its novel and apparently healthy. But it is only preposterous to think that they contain real fruit pulp and probably as good as plain yoghurt. All our strawberry, blueberry and mango flavored yoghurts are loaded with sugar and chemicals to get the desired color and sweetness, for real fruit pulp can never be that sweet. The same goes with flavored milk.

Breakfast cereals:

We have been stocking all sorts of breakfast cereals for a while now due to our busy life. But reconsider a moment. Not all breakfast cereals on the market are low-calorie, or the least bit healthy. When buying breakfast cereals, be extremely picky about the ingredients of our pack; check for the sugar content, artificial coloring, salt, fibre and fat content. It is always advisable to steer clear of the sugar-frosted, chocolate-coated varieties as we don't want our first meal to do anything but pump sugar into our body.

Ketchup:

Despite containing the antioxidant lycopene (antioxidants greatly reduce the risks of mutations in our body, and the risk of developing diseases like cancer), ketchup contains loads of sugar (as high as 26% carbohydrates, according to Wikipedia), and also a lot of salt. Most of the ketchup we eat is processed and non-organic, so the lycopene levels are much lower than what it could be from the amount of tomatoes used.

Vegetable Oil:

Like some of us learned in Chemistry class, fat is supposed to be healthier the more liquid it is, therefore it’s commonly believed that all vegetable oils are healthy. And hey, they’re from plants, too! So this sounds about right. It is actually a general rule that the fat is more healthy the more liquid it is, since the “healthy” double bonds in the unsaturated (or good, if you will) kind of fat will decrease the melting point. However, what most people forget is that ordinary butter can be liquid too, if it’s just heated a little. The “oil” used for frying in fast food restaurants, is most commonly palm oil, an almost purely saturated (unhealthy) oil. It’s semi-solid at room temperature, but is of course liquid when heated and used for frying, and it’s certainly not healthy. If more healthy oil had been chosen for frying, those tasty fries wouldn’t have been bad for us. Not at all, as long as the potatoes are of good quality. “Then why don’t the fast food restaurants use the healthy kind of oil then?” we might ask ourselves. The unhealthy stuff is cheap, and the fast food companies tend to care more about their money than our health.