AVOID THE DECEPTION OF HEALTHY CHOICE MEALS
A Healthy Choice product may seem like the quick fix needed for dieters with no time to cook, but the name of this brand inaccurately reflects its actual content. Rather than filling your belly with nutritious vitamins and minerals, Healthy Choice meals fill it with sodium, sugar and plenty of starch.
Some popular Healthy Choice items I’ve watched dieters purchase include “Fresh Mixers,” which offer a variety of pasta flavors boasting about their whole grains and low calories.
For example, the microwaveable dish known as “Rotini and Zesty Marinara Sauce” does contain 28 grams of whole grains. But when I flipped the package over to peek at the nutrition facts, I noticed it also packs a whopping 500 mg of sodium.
The Problem with Sodium
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the recommended amount of sodium people consume per day should not exceed 1,500 mg. Do you think one-third of that maximum recommended amount should come in one 300-calorie packaged product?
It makes sense that the AHA also said processed foods (like this one) make up 77 percent of the sodium we consume.
According to AHA, our bodies only need small quantities of sodium to replace the amount we lose throughout the day. Reducing sodium intake leads to numerous health benefits like lower blood pressure and the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
Hidden Added Sugar
Healthy Choice “Fresh Mixers” also contain unnecessary added sugar. Although nine grams may not seem incredibly alarming, consider why it exists in the food at all. Do noodles and pasta sauce really need that many grams of added sugar to boost the flavor?
According to added sugar guidelines by the Mayo Clinic, eating too many of these sweeteners hiding in processed foods can lead to problems like tooth decay, poor nutrition, weight gain and increased triglycerides (which may cause heart disease).
The Mayo Clinic also offered tips to reduce sugar in our diets. One particular tip stood out to me: “Eat fewer added-sugar processed foods, such as sweetened grains like honey-nut waffles and some microwaveable meals.“
Carb Overload
Another problem with this Healthy Choice product includes its abundance of starch and lack of vegetables. Yes, whole grains make up the pasta, and the company did sneak some tomato paste in there, but what kind of health food consists of carbs, carbs and more carbs?
Many of us already know the Food Guide Pyramid suggests we consume three to five servings of vegetables each day. Does eating a bunch of sodium, sugar and carbohydrates really amount to a “healthy” choice? How will you keep yourself healthy when your diet lacks some of the most essential nutrients?
Shop Smart
Although we love the convenience, we should try to steer clear of packaged “health foods” as much as possible. There are worse products than Healthy Choice items lurking among those supermarket shelves, so stay informed when shopping for on-the-go meals.
Keep an eye on nutrition labels. Remember to pay attention to amounts of sodium and added sugar, and make sure to fortify your body with plenty of fruits and vegetables.
Call me crazy, but I’d take a hot serving of all-natural oatmeal with freshly cut strawberries over cold, nutrient-deprived cereal any day. Special K may seem healthier than the sugary cereals advertised toward kids, but always remember that “less sugar” or “lower in calories” does not translate to “healthy.”
TRUTH ABOUT PACKAGED JUICES AND SPLASH PRODUCTS
If you wanted a juice drink full of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, you could’ve had a V8. Get it?
Although a V8 product may seem like a safe bet for packing in your daily servings of fruits and vegetables, watch out for V8 Splash juice items and their numerous grams of added sugar.
Where’s the Juice?
Back in my juice-drinking days, I made sure to always stock the fridge with V8’s Tropical Blend flavor, my personal favorite. Now that I actually pay attention to those nifty nutrition labels on my food products, it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about how much of that sugar water I used to consume.
To my immediate dismay, I realized high-fructose corn syrup claims its spot as the first ingredient in V8 Splash Tropical Blend. The rest mostly consists of different juices from concentrate, which simply means manufacturers put the juice through a heating process to evaporate out the water and make the product more suitable for storage. However, don’t overlook the little side note: contains 10 percent juice.
That should make you angry. If you pay for fruit juice, why in the heck do they only give you 10 percent of the good stuff?
Pour Some Sugar on Me
One of the first things dieters should look for in any type of beverage includes sugar content. V8 Splash serves as a perfect example for the reason why.
Remember those summer days in your childhood when you would help Mom make grape Kool-Aid by dumping in cups of sugar along with a purple packet of more sugar? Can you believe a serving of V8 Splash Tropical Blend actually contains MORE sugar than a serving of grape Kool-Aid?
With 16 grams of added sugar, grape Kool-Aid falls short of V8’s whopping 18 grams per eight fluid ounces. How did V8 get a reputation as a “healthy” juice, while Kool-Aid remains known to dieters as a sin in a glass?
Keep it Real
Next time you pay the supermarket a visit, slide past the juice aisle and stick to fresh produce to get your fruity fix. Real fruit contains only natural sugars, and they pack in a whole lot more vitamins and minerals than packaged beverages ever could.
HEALTHY BREAKFAST
For many people, a healthy breakfast includes a big bowl of cereal in the shape of flakes or “O’s.” Dieters seem to swoon over Special K cereal due to its promise that consumers can lose weight by taking the “Special K challenge.”
Do me a favor. Take a peek at Special K’s nutrition information and tell me how many of those ingredients you actually recognize.
The Problem with Cereals
By the time your breakfast cereal hits the shelves, it has already gone through so many processing procedures that hardly any real nutritional value remains.
The first two ingredients in Special K cereal, rice and wheat gluten, provide most of the structure for those flakes you see pictured on the box. Have you ever seen rice in the shape of a flake before? I don’t think so. The abnormal shape indicates manufacturers put the food through a process called extrusion, which depletes a ton of the nutrients right out of the product.
Sally Fallon, the co-president of a nutrition education foundation, reveals more information on the food processing industry and how factories mess with our cereal products. Fallon’s post also includes the results of a scary study conducted on rats. The research indicates eating processed cereals in large quantities may actually cause serious harm to the human body.
Red Flag Ingredients
I’m sure you recognize the next ingredient in this “healthy” cereal: sugar. And following not too far behind? High-fructose corn syrup. These two diet-killers should always set off alarm bells when listed as some of the first few ingredients in processed foods.
After that, Kellogg’s might as well start listing off ingredients in a foreign language. Basically, the manufacturers threw in a bunch of vitamins with complicated names to artificially “enrich” the cereal and make it seem nutritious. One might ask, “And what’s so bad about that?”
If Granny Wouldn’t Approve, Don’t Eat It
Michael Pollan, a journalism professor and the author of ”Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” stressed the importance of kicking processed foods to the curb in an article called 7 Rules for Eating. His first rule: “Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”
Doesn’t this advice make sense? Why would you put substances into your body that shouldn’t exist in food in the first place? Especially things that sound like they belong in a science lab!
Don’t Let Them Fool You!
