Things disguised as healthy...

[marshmallowmamma]

A light hearted post but what are some things that are portrayed as healthy but aren't really ? My list is as follows...

Flavoured water
Most yoghurts
Yoghurt coated raisins
Most cereals
Fruit juices

Obviously we need to live a little but give us some that yiu think are purely just marketed to reel us in

Again. Much if this is misleading because it depends on your diet, what else you’re eating and health needs.

I have protein shakes.
I eat brown rice.
I eat hummus.
I eat bananas.

For me, none of these are unhealthy. The obesity crisis is caused by the vast amount of crap people eat. Not fruit

Pretty much anything free from - sugar free, fat free etc. They are always loaded with total crap. In most cases you're better off just eating the real version but minding your portions.

Bang on point!

This thread is ridiculous. I'm not an anxious person but this is going to really worry some people! The foods that have been claimed to be unhealthy are ALL FOOD! Fruit, fat, non fat, dairy, nuts, vegan food. Ffs. Get a grip.

Some of the ideas on this thread are bizarre.

Too many people seem to be equating healthy as low calorie. Which is completely ridiculous. Anyone who says fruit is unhealthy because of the sugar content really has a problem. Like anything, eating just fruit or too much fruit is bad, but the sugar content in a piece of fruit does not make it intrinsically unhealthy.

Ditto brown rice or any of the other things randomly identified on this thread.

I haven’t seen it do anything to pans? Tip: once it’s run out you can refil if with normal oil and continue using it as a spray.

Yes.

No artifical substitutes.

I try to eat as cleanly as possible. I don't eat anything with added sugar and try to keep natural sugars to a minimum. I have lost weight but I can tell from looking at my overall health that what I'm eating is 'healthier'.

I don't worry so much about fat but I only eat healthy fats such as butter and olive oil etc. I avoid seed oils and vegetable oil.

I sleep better, my energy levels are better, my skin is better...

I'm far healthier now than I was when I ate 'healthily'...

Low fat sprays mess with my pans... because dh uses them and has the heat set to full. It's not the oil in itself. It's the law I of fat and high heat that destroys them.

The name of flavoured water is hilarious, as are people's idea of what it is. They assume that it's water that has a tiny bit of something added to it to make it taste nice but somehow magically that doesn't mean it has any sugar or anything bad in it

Flavoured water is just that though. Flavoured water. Not a soft drink. The one from Volvic has 98.2% water, 1.3% lemon juice, apple extract, lemon extract and ginger extract. No sugars and no salt.

I always distrust anything that claims to be healthy, fat free or with sugar substitutes (because whatever they replace sugar with tastes vile)

I only get them occasionally for the calorie counting, if I'm using a teaspoon+ I just use measuring spoons. Plus I couldn't get the bloody lid off the last one so I gave up 🤣 they don't want you to reuse the packaging clearly.

Maybe in the same way that brown rice is apparently less good for you than white rice! This thread is full of misinformation

It isn't less good for you. It just isn't good for you if you happen to be prediabetic or diabetic. Wholegrain bread puts my blood sugars up just as much as white bread. It's all carbs. Which are fine if you're not diabetic.

40% of the UK population over the age of 60 are thought to be diabetic or prediabetic.

Virtually anything processed will be less healthy than a freshly cooked alternative.

Food manufacturers aren't performing a public service, they exist to make money for their shareholders. They do that by making you want to buy more of the thing they've manufactured and achieve this by designing products that override your body's natural signals about feeling full, and telling you it's healthy. Make what you will of the fact that it's these same commercial organisations that fund most of the research into health.

I've just had a bowl of granola, which was delicious but I'm under no illusion that it's healthy. Just good for getting me through the morning hours on my feet.

Ever since the unjust demonisation of butter in the 1980s I've not bothered to check what's considered healthy and what isn't though tbh.

Seed oils and vegetable oils being marketed as healthy is our biggest health disaster, probably ever.

they literally make the body sick. Cancer, obesity, chronic illness. look at any culture that introduces them….within a decade they are sick.

and they are in everything

meanwhile good old butter, a staple for centuries, has been vilified.

this one will reveal itself within the next decade or so but in the meantime…..disaster

chriskresser.com/how-industrial-seed-oils-are-making-us-sick/

Incredibly high in sugar. Most people won't eat the amount of fruit in one go that's in a smoothie. So the sugar raises glucose levels very quickly.

I listened to a documentary a few years ago by a doctor talking about how damaging the advent of "low fat" dairy products has been, particularly for people trying to lose weight, people with diabetes and so on. The fat is replaced with carbohydrates which are so bad for us.
I have had to explain all this to DH, as he has mild diabetes. It isn't just about reading labels, it is understanding what they actually mean.

Smoothies is a weird one, especially feeding them to kids. I love a smoothie but it's just sugar again, it's not the same thing as eating an actual piece of fruit
I dont see anything wrong with giving a smoothie to a teenager who won't eat breakfast. I made mine with full fat Greek yogurt, Avocado, spinach, chai seeds or flax seeds, banana and water. It was better than goi g to school empty.

Look up soulandcourageweightloss on Instagram. It’s the best account for looking at this kind of thing. Really opened my eyes to companies like the ones who do the ‘skinny’ bars and how they suppress the portion sizes to make their products look lower calorie. When actually they are exactly the same as most similar products and if you want a small chocolate bar, have a freddo or something instead.

And the slimming companies who engineer their points systems to mean their own products are much lower in value than equivalent foods.

Nowhere near as huge a problem as obesity.

The one from Volvic has 98.2% water, 1.3% lemon juice, apple extract, lemon extract and ginger extract

I just looked up the volvic one on their website and it says, “sweetened with a bit of sugar”. Not sure which flavour you’re looking at but, for the lemon and lime, it’s 2.3%.

If you think that’s not damaging your teeth then you’re kidding yourself.

The Beyond Meat / anything vegan meat replacement food is a con too. Marketed as healthy but in reality a monstrosity of industrialised slop with no nutritional value

Exactly... smoothies are getting a lot of flak on here as well but it's not the same as drinking coca cola, they do have a lot of vitamins.

The advice can be misleading because it's tempting to read a thread like this and think 'Oh well I may as well just drink coca cola and eat coco pops if it's all the same'... but it's not.

Best comment! 😂

So true! And so any people think it’s a healthy alternative

Exactly. People think that the vegetarian and vegan alternatives to meat are super healthy but often they are very highly processed with lots of additives and similar. Often not healthy at all.