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Top 10 Over-Hyped Health Foods Ever!
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7. Low-fat Salad Dressings
Regardless of what the mainstream media has been telling you, fat is good for you. Really. It is true that fat has more calories than either carbs or protein, but it also helps your absorb more vitamins from the foods you eat. Fat also makes your meals more satisfying. Fat free or low fat salad dressings don’t make you “healthier,” they only make your salad less nourishing to your body. Find out fantastic fermented salad dressing recipes.
8. Whole Wheat Bread and/or Pasta
You frequently hear nutrition “experts” advising people to eat more whole grains, including whole wheat bread, pasta, and cereal. These are still processed carbs whose health benefits have been highly overrated. There is a great deal of difference between the unprocessed whole grains and these refined wheat flour products.
Wheat flour products have very few vitamins and minerals. The closer you can stay to the natural state of a food, including wheat, the better it is for you. Rather than eat whole wheat pasta and bread, try barley, millet, and whole oats.
9. Vitamin Fortified Water
Although drinking vitamin water can improve your hydration levels, and maybe even add a few nutrients to your body, they really aren’t that much different than sodas. Read the label and you will find that not only are these vitamins synthetic and are very hard for the body to absorb, they are also generally filled with sugar.
Many times we are talking about GM sugar in the form of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). That hardly sounds healthy. Rather than drink that sugar filled vitamin water, drink good old plain water and eat some fruit with it. You can also squeeze the juice from a piece of fruit into a glass of water.
SEE ALSO: Top 10 Super Affordable Superfoods
10. Granola
We aren’t kicking granola to the curb entirely. It does have some health benefits. Granola is high in fiber and the nutrients from nuts, seeds, and rolled oats is considerable. However, (you knew that “however” was coming, didn’t you?) too many granolas are filled with sugar, honey, even chocolate chips and candy!
You can get the same health benefits from a bowl of muesli sprinkled with some seeds and nuts. When you exchange this for granola, you will not only save some big bucks, but you will be cutting out sugar, honey, and even hydrogenated oils that are used as a preservative in many granolas.
Sorry if we burst your favorite health food bubble! Take heart! There are healthy alternatives to everything on this list, so you are sure to find a healthy substitute instead.
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freedomdove
Jun 8, 2015 at 1:53 am
Rather than entirely skipping many of these things (like yogurt and granola), I like to just make my own, DIY-style. Homemade versions of (organic sourdough) bread and yogurt and the like are really good and are much more healthy than their store-bought counterparts; the main difference being that you can control the ingredients and use the highest quality possible. Recipes abound on the Internet for “homemade such-and-such”, even handmade butter (instead of the margarine).