I’ve come to realize that labeling foods as ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ is generally unhelpful.
Eat a diet that’s rich in nutrients, fiber, and enables you to maintain a healthy weight, while allowing yourself the occasional indulgence. It leads to a much happier existence when you don’t have to worry about eliminating certain foods entirely from your diet.
There’s a lot of food out there that claims to be healthy meanwhile it’s stacked with carbs and sugars - most fruit smoothies / juices for example. Orange juice is considered healthy but has more sugar than coca cola.
Stuff like veggie sticks are basically just potato chips processed differently for the same nutritional result. Lots of health cereals have loads of sweetener and sugars (cheerios) while promoting heart health. Granola bars are basically candy with their macro profile. Tuna salad can also be misleading because of its mayo content, not to mention the mercury presence albeit minimal.
Cheerios and just about every “ heart healthy grain cereal” as they are loaded with sugar. All commercial fruit juices as they have added gum, some have preservatives. Heart healthy canola oil. “ smart butter” with no butter but contains hydrogenated oils and waxes. Beans are supposed to be “ proteins” and become a replacement for proteins yet most of it is carb. Whole wheat bread when 33% is bread flour and usually enriched and the packaging just says whole wheat.
Not a food item, but a concept… the more you try and reduce calories, the harder it becomes to meet your bodies nutrient requirements. Eating more nutrient dense foods is a better strategy than just blindly cutting calories.
Nutella and most commercially made peanut butters. Way too much sugar. Nutella in particular is practically frosting–not sure how people thought it was healthy to begin. (Yes, people really did think it was healthy or at least not-unhealthy.)
Aluminum foil & flexible plastic are more dangerous in the kitchen than people realize. A lot of common produce has been chemically treated, see The Dirty Dozen (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/07/pesticides-fruits-vegetables-dirty-dozen/9470237002/)Since you mentioned tuna, it can commonly contain species that are not in fact Tuna at all. Most fast food is made from cows that are too old and withered to keep producing milk from the dairy industry, and a lot of extra bits and pieces get ground up to make things like McDoubles. Many coffee creamers are loaded with palm oil that’s contributing to deforestation - specifically rainforest areas.
I could go on. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with what to avoid. I’m to the point where I just try to use raw, whole foods as often as possible. It gets boring but the rabbit hole of processed foods makes me nauseous before I can eat any of it lately 😅
Honey. It’s extremely easy to “overdose” and get your daily limit of sugar x 5 in one meal.In fact honey is usually 80% sugar so if you don’t weigh it, you can easily eat 80grams of honey -> 64 grams of sugar in one go.
If you can control yourself, honey is indeed healthy.
Packed cereal, those are full of sugar. Oats and nuts are faaaaar better alternative.I remember when i was a kid and my mother fed me nesquick cereal every morning before school. Felt sick and barfed even from those. Mok wrote me off as a fussy eater lol. Disgusted for life.
Definitely Lenny & Larry’s “The Complete Cookie”! The only thing complete about it is completely full of sugar and calories (and some fat). The cookie is advertised as 16g of protein, but that’s only if you eat the entire thing. The serving is half the cookie, so you would have to eat the whole thing (400 cal) to get 16g of protein. Otherwise you’re only left with 8g. Good for bulking tho 🤷♂️
Recipes for “healthy” cakes using a ton of honey instead of sugar. Because honey is healthy so you can freely put a cup of honey into cake.Similar with coconut oil as replacement for some other oil (here we commonly use sunflower oil). It’s healthy! So have this 2000kcal piece of cake, it’s healthy, honey, coconut oil, dark chocolate and i.e.rye flour.
Juice is a good one, there’s so much sugar in an orange juice, you’re way better off having an orange. Think of how many oranges it takes to make 1 glass of orange juice.
It’s crazy that this is still regarded as healthy.
I think “low fat” and “fat free” are still commonly thought of as healthier. Obviously, too much fat – or “bad” fats – can make it really easy to eat too much since it’s calorie dense, but fat isn’t bad and when it comes to processed foods, the low fat/fat free versions often add a lot of extra sugar to compensate for the loss of flavour.
There’s a lot of food that’s touted as healthy that’s not as healthy as hyped. There’s also a ton of food that is fine to have even every day and isn’t gonna kill you.
Similar to politics, i see a lot of polarizing views on food. Juice isn’t the healthiest because it lacks fiber, for example. But that doesn’t mean it’ll instantly make you diabetic. Juice can be good for hydration actually. After a tough workout.
Tons of sugar is bad for you. I think I read the average American eats like 60 pounds a year. Good news though, I very seriously doubt a few teaspoons of sugar in your coffee every morning is gonna hurt you if you eat an otherwise healthy diet.
I see a lot of people people acting like any and all added sugar will like instantly make you obese and diabetic. That’s not really the case. If coffee is your only source of added sugar every day, you’re still probably consuming drastically less than the average American.
Same with juice it’s like it’s not the best for you sure but in combination with a super healthy diet you’re probably fine having it if you like it.
Other unhealthy(ish) foods would be white rice, extremely ripe bananas, green juices, honey, maple syrup. Maple syrup and honey are not better than sugar. They’re just sweet carbs. Which is totally fine to use them in moderation but your body views them the same. Green juices again lack fiber just make green smoothies instead
Agave nectar is not very healthy because I remember reading it’s like pure fructose which is metabolised differently than glucose-fructose combination sugars. I’m not a doctor or scientist. So feel free to correct me
I may get downvoted for this. Conventional, pasteurized dairy doesn’t compare even a tiny bit to organic dairy. The health of the animal and the processing methods of milk can categorize dairy as either one of the healthier foods in the world or one of the worst foods for you. If you’re consuming milk, yogurt, butter and cheese produced from conventionally-raised cows that are fed a steady stream of antibiotics, your dairy intake may be playing a role in antibiotic resistance. Not just for you, but also for your family and everyone else in your community. A study published in 2010 pointed out how over the last two decades, there has been a development of antimicrobial resistance as the result of agricultural use of antibiotics and this directly affects the treatment of diseases in humans around the world.
People really need to stop talking about nutrition in terms of what’s “healthy” or “unhealthy”. Nutrition is simply too subjective and needs to address many different needs at the individual level.
There’s just no such thing as “healthy” or “unhealthy” food - there’s healthy/unhealthy diets.
The most processed “nutrition-less” garbage can be an essential part of a single person’s overall diet.
-Yogurt - Be careful, many are loaded with sugar
-Smoothies - make your own with fruit/veggies only. Jama Juice and similar places tend to have copious amounts of sugar.
-Fake meat. They are loaded with chemicals and sodium
-Coffee drinks. Like salad, all about what you put in them. Some of those Starbucks creations have a TON of sugar.
-Sugar free drinks - chemicals
-Cooking oil spray. They really are not ZERO calories
Skim milk is considered healthier than whole milk, when in fact whole milk is more satiating and has more vitamins and nutrients that are lost when the fat is removed. Dairy fat is not harmful to health.
Chocolate even if it’s dark chocolate. I’ve long given up arguing with friends who are chocolate lovers, that it’s not on the same level of healthy as say, green tea. They point to media-driven/ industry-supported narratives that overestimate potentially positive aspects of chocolate on cardiovascular health, as proof that chocolate is healthy.
The amount of flavenols that you’d have to eat to equate with other healthy foods is enormous. But most importantly, the studies that purport to show chocolate as healthy do not actually show chocolate consumption to be the cause of positive biomarkers of health. The positive studies show high dosages of compound in chocolate to be beneficial. Caveat being you’d have to eat loads of it to even achieve a level of those compounds at active let alone effective dosages.