Often we eat something that we think is low in calories and good for us, but when we read the package label there is a major (not so good) surprise waiting for us. Here are few examples of foods that appear to be healthy, but that you should probably avoid in your quest of losing weight and to get those muscles.
I love Yoghurt – especially Greek-style yoghurts. It offers more protein than other yogurts which is important to me for my post workout meals. It also has less carbs than other yogurts and if you buy the 2% or low-fat/fat-free version you bypass a lot of unnecessary calories which is good. So, grocery stores are now offering more and more Greek style yogurts, but you really have to read the labels. Costco had one of those try before you buy promotions, but when I look at the label the small yogurt cup had a total of 34 grams of sugar. What good is fat-free or low fat if it comes at the price of 34 grams of sugar. However, there are Greek style yogurts out there that offer taste and good health benefits without the extra sugar. Read the labels.
Do you like Granola Cereal? It looks so yummy and it must be healthy, right?! Well, unfortunately in most cases it is not that good for you as you might think. Most Granola cereals are loaded with calories and fat. You can easily boost your breakfast calorie intake to 700-900 calories by eating a solid portion of Granola Cereal with milk. That is already a huge hit against your overall suggested daily calorie intake.
Diet Sodas – enjoy the real deal just with less calories. It is true that diet sodas have less or no calories. However, studies have shown that the sweetener used in diet sodas increases the cravings for real sugar dramatically. The University of Texas Health Science Center discovered that people who drink artificially sweetened beverages (Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, etc.) gained more weight than those who didn’t have these type of drinks. So, get rid of these and reduce your risk of gaining weight when you actually want to lose it.
Serving sizes – the best thing to compare meals and calories. Ehm, this is plain wrong. Nothing regulates what a serving size is. Each manufacturer can define its own serving size for a specific food. The results are often unreasonably small serving sizes which in return means lower amounts of sodium, fat, sugar, and overall calories. The consumer is mislead and might eat actually much more of the food because of this. I looked at some pretty nice looking Italian 5 Cheese Lasagna at a grocery store. Each serving had only 300 calories, but then I checked how many servings this container actually would have. The number was 17! I looked at the size of the food container and this would feed maybe 2 average people and you would be splitting roughly 5,000 calories between these 2 average people.
Conclusion: Are you surprised about these hidden diet traps? You think are eating healthy, but in reality you are not. It is no surprise that the food industry does not want you to know about these issues and many other ones I have not even talked about in this brief article. Definitely make it a habit to read the food labels when buying food. Look at the definition of a serving size that should be printed on the label. Some foods are simply bad for you and they do not get better by making the serving size smaller.
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