This is an interesting piece on different foods that are perceived as healthy but are actually high in calories and loaded with fat and/or sugar. I must admit, I LOVE all 9 of them and always thought of myself as "eating right" when I ate them. Of course, everything in moderation...but come on, a bran muffin? What harm could a scrumptious, moist, keeps-ya-regular bran muffin do? I've created hyperlinks for each of the food items below so all you have to do is click on them to find out what's "bad" about them and what they recommend as a substitute or click HERE for the full story:
- Bran muffin
- Chicken Caesar salad
- Tuna melt
- Chicken wrap
- Turkey burger
- Fruit smoothies
- Granola bar
- Pasta salad
- Yogurt with fruit on the bottom
QuoD: What are YOUR thoughts on eating right and what's considered "good" or "bad" for you?
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4 comments:
I have to confess that Chicken Caesar Salad is my travel day stand-by...I can always find one in an airport & the lettuce is usually green. My trick is to do dressing on the side, and I don't really use more than 50% of what they give me.
On the rest of these, I think the trick is to make it yourself. Then you know what's in it & where everything's coming from...
To answer the actual question (ha!), "good" is anything in moderation and lots of variety. "Bad" is an overdose of anything (except broccoli)!
Don't bring me no bad news! I scrambled to read about the foods on the list because some are my favorites too.
I breathed a sign of relief however after reading the entries.
Question: Why do purveyorss of "health" demonize foods? IMHO, there are no bad foods. All things in moderation. Eating should be a joyful, pleasureable experience.
It's important to arm ourselves with the nutrition facts so that our choices are informed. There's nothing inherently wrong with granola or granola bars.
Kashi's TLC bars are a good example of an excellent food choice. They are high in fiber (4-5 grams for 1 ounce), high in protein (7 grams for 1 ounce) relatively low in calories andsugar (140 calories and 5 grams, respectively). Also fruit smoothies made with plain non-fat yogurt, frozen fruit and a splash of skim milk or oj is an excellent food choice -- high nutrition, low fat, calories and sugar.
My weight watchers facilitator, Tanya, encourages us to make conscious informed decisions about the food we eat. She says long-term success depends upon us striking sustainable balances. Thinking of foods we love as bad seems like an exercise in futility.
If you go for the bran muffin at breakfast, have a vegy salad with no-fat dressing for lunch and a similarly modest dinner and keeping moving!
Thanks for the tips, emmy and kath! I agree, it really does boil down to how something is made and how much of it you eat. Although in fairness, I must say that the way they present each of these items is pretty much how they're found at restaurants/malls/fastfood places and even how they're made in most family recipes. It's hard to break eating habits that have been ingrained since childhood. In my family, the basic ingredient in most meals was either butter or lard and frying was the preferred cooking method. Darn, my mouth is already watering for some of my grandma's butter cookies and fried chicken! Time to go running...
hey --
also a tanya disciple, i agree with michelle. there are no bad foods -- you can have a bite of anything you want! maybe even two. but it's that THIRD donette that gets you into trouble. ooops -- did i say donette?
i was suprised to see turkey burgers on the list though, and then to see that they can have 50g of fat. wow! i note that they say "depending on the type of ground turkey and toppings used" but still. i tend to think of turkey burgers as inherently "healthy", but i plan to be a little bit more skeptical.
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