Top 10 Unhealthy “Health” Foods! Mind Over Munch

Hey guys! Today I'm going to talk about deceivingly unhealthy foods. That is foods that are marketed to be healthy, that we might think are doing our body good but actually might be doing the opposite. Let's get right to it. First up is yogurt. Now yogurt can be a healthy snack but it is deceiving. It is super important to read the nutrition label when you're picking out yogurt or anything really. But yogurt especially can be packed with sugar. So here I have picked up a fruit on the bottom brand and it has a whopping 32 grams of sugar. And some of that does come from the fruit but most of it is actually added sugar and you can tell by comparing it to the no sugar added varieties. And if you think about it 32 grams of sugar in this is more than an 8 ounce can of coke so just saying. Even Greek yogurt varieties can have a lot of sugar so it's important that you look at the nutrition label yourself to decide is it a healthy choice. I advise buying plain Greek yogurt and then sweetening it yourself so you aren't at any risk at all. Next up salad. Salad is always healthy right? Wrong! If you are making your own salad you are obviously in control of what goes into it but if you are purchasing a pre-prepared salad or getting a salad from a restaurant then you are not in control of what goes into it. Pre-made salads tend to have higher fat and calorie ingredients included to make them more appealing. Especially the dressings. The dressings can sometimes be a few hundred calories and 10 to 15 grams of fat and just a few tablespoons of the dressing. This salad alone, it's a turkey bacon cob salad has 23 grams of fat. It's only 290 calories but 23 grams of fat which is likely from the bacon and the dressing. And when you get a salad at a restaurant, a lot of chain restaurants you think the only thing you can get is a salad but really a lot of them are over a thousand calories in just the salad. You might as well get the burger. Next up is smoothies. Now similar to salads if you make your own it can be a healthy choice but a lot of these pre-packaged mixes are really terrible. This packet, this strawberry packet, all you have to do is add fresh strawberries, milk and ice. So what is even in here if there's no strawberries, milk or ice? The only thing it can be is sugar. Sugar and corn syrup solids are the first two ingredients on this baby. There's 15 grams of sugar in one serving but this packet contains three servings. So if you consume this entire packet you have 45 grams of sugar in a smoothie. Not necessary and it's added sugar, not natural. The only thing you need for a smoothie is delicious fresh fruit and if you need a sweetener you can use a natural sweetener or a no calorie sweetener. You don't need to be using regular sugar. Trail mix. Now trail mix can be healthy unless you're like me and all you can do is eat all the M&M's. The problem with trail mix is that almost every item included is high in calories and or fat because it's basically nuts and dried fruit. Nuts and seeds and dried fruit all do offer nutrition but we want to consume those things in moderation because they are very calorically dense. If you can limit yourself to an honest serving which is about a handful then go for it. But if you're like me and you can't then you might want to buy the pre-packaged trail mix snacks even though they're a little bit more expensive or portion them out yourself or make your own trail mix. And my personal favorite way to up the nutrition and the volume is by adding popcorn to my trail mix because that way I get to eat a little bit more. I don't add a lot of extra fat or calories but I get to enjoy it. Bread. A lot of breads are lying to you. We often think we're getting whole wheat but we aren't just because it says the word wheat on the label or if it makes a health claim doesn't mean that it's true. If you want to learn more about choosing healthy bread check out my very old episode on how to choose bread where I take you to the store and actually go through the process of choosing breads with you or you can check out my more recent how to choose tortillas episode. Frozen dinners. While they are convenient and they make claims at being healthy choices a lot of these frozen dinners are very deceiving. In fact the ones that claim to be healthy are the most deceiving. So there actually are options out there that offer lower calorie and lower carb meals. So I have picked up a lean cuisine and a healthy choice and I even got the extra healthy, relative term, ones being organic, non-GMO, nothing artificial, blah blah blah. But what's really terrible about these babes is the sodium. So yeah, this meal is only 190 calories. It's only 8 grams of carbs but it is 600 milligrams of sodium. That's like half of your sodium for the day. Really you should try and maybe even get less than that. I'm not going to tell you how much sodium to be consuming but if the recommended amount is 1500 and this is 600 in just one little dinner meal, this one is 690 milligrams of sodium. Almost 700 milligrams of sodium for 280 calories. They have added so much salt to make this taste good and truthfully this isn't going to fill me up. I'm going to finish eating this and then I'm going to have to eat something else anyways. Another thing to note about these, they look like they're packed with nutritious ingredients and vegetables. There's 4 grams of fiber in each of these which is just frankly not very much for vegetables and 7 grams of sugar. Why does there need to be sugar in my black beans and rice? Muffins! I love muffins too. Big time. Too bad they are literally one of the worst things you can consume. Of course depending on the muffin. It is one of those foods that sounds healthy. Tons of health claims, whole grains, bran, fiber. The problem with muffins is really the size. Now this muffin when you read the nutrition label, it is 200 calories per serving. Well that would be nice if this entire muffin was one serving but there are three servings in this muffin meaning this entire muffin is a whopping 600 calories. It also contains 11 grams of fat per serving so that's 33 grams in the entire muffin. 23 grams of carbs, 13 of which are sugar. I actually thought it would have been more sugar than that. So that's over 66 grams of carbs in this muffin. Anyways the point is a prepackaged muffin like this is generally a pretty bad choice. You can find muffins that aren't terrible for you or you can make your own right but when you're doing a prepackaged version you always want to check and especially don't get tricked by the serving size. Next up fat free or sugar free products. Now here is the problem with a product that tries to claim it is free of a macro or micro nutrient. When you take something out you have to put something else back in to compensate for the flavor or the texture. That is why when you look at the ingredients list of a fat free or sugar free option and you compare it to its traditional counterpart you will see that the ingredients list is much longer because they have had to add in a bunch of extra stuff to make this cheese fat free. Now it sounds like an oxymoron fat free cheese right because cheese is pretty much fat. That's what makes it flavorful and delicious but when you take that fat out you have to put something else in it to make it palatable. If you look at the nutrition for both of these items yes the calories and fat are obviously much less in the fat free variety but an interesting note is that there are zero grams of carbs in the regular cheese and there are two grams of carbs in the fat free cheese. That is because they have had to add something, one of these ingredients or some of these ingredients that are listed that I don't know what they are contain carbohydrates or carbohydrates to add flavor, texture, whatever it may be to compensate for the fact that this is gross. So be sure to always read the label for those macronutrients as well as micronutrients like fiber and sodium. And always look at how long an ingredients list is when you're picking sugar free and fat free options. Granola! Another one that seems healthy that is touted to provide energy and be great for active people. They've got oats and nuts and dried fruit and all these healthy ingredients but they're also generally packed with sugar and have very little fiber and when you're looking for an energizing snack you usually want the opposite of that. Granola is also very calorically dense because of those ingredients even though the base of the ingredients are healthy again similar to the trail mix you want to consume them in moderation. I wanted to point out granola they trick you with the serving size. Sometimes it's a quarter cup which is nothing, sometimes it's a half cup, three quarters cup, two thirds cup, whatever it may be. I've even seen the same exact brand where one variety is a third cup and another variety is two thirds cup because it looks better. So you need to look at the serving size. Think about how much of that granola you're going to want to eat in a serving because you might want more than a quarter cup. I know I do. And we've come to peanut butter specifically the reduced fat peanut butter. Now a lot of people try to avoid peanut butter because it is higher in fat but you think about it, it's made of nuts and nuts are inherently higher in fat. The truth is the reduced fat variations aren't really that much lower in fat and we go back to the same issue we talked about with the sugar free, fat free options. When you take something out you must put something in. So when you compare the nutrition here first of all the calories are actually exactly the same for the reduced fat and the regular peanut butter. The fat is only four grams less and the carbs are almost double because they have had to add so much into this to make it reduced in fat which didn't really do you much good because it's still the same amount of calories. It also has a much longer ingredients list. The second ingredient is corn syrup solids. Who wants that? For me when it comes to all of these situations I generally prefer the item with less ingredients because I know that means it's probably been less processed. I think peanut butter is one of those things that it's delicious the way it is, why mess with it? Just consume it in moderation. So there are ten of the unfortunately many deceivingly unhealthy foods out there. My best advice is for you to learn how to read the nutrition labels yourself so that you can go to the store and decide what information you want to absorb and what health claims you need to filter out and forget about. These companies want you to buy their products. Remember that. If you've been eating some of these thinking that they're healthier choices you are not alone and I hope that this video can help you make the change so that you can start to see the progress you've been waiting for. Please give me a thumbs up if you found this useful. Have a fantastic week. I will see you on Thursday so don't forget to subscribe and remember it's all a matter of Mind Over Munch.