Top 7 Health Food Lies You Must Know About (Part I)

Are you confused about which foods are really healthy? Each day we are so inundated with health food lies that we have become immune to them. To make matters worse, the government makes it easier for food manufacturers to falsely label food products because there are many loop holes in labeling laws. At the end of this post, you will be able to spot and smell a health food lie when you see it.

While many people have the common knowledge that fast food, sweets, and other common junk foods are not good for our health, it is the so-called healthy foods that are tricky to identify. During the little time that I spend watching t.v., I see so many health claims from the food industry that I decided to create a list of the most common ones and show you how to detect a health food lie.

Now, for our list. Pay careful attention because I want you to be able to spot these health food lies the next time you visit the grocery store.

1. Cereals are Healthy

This is a common lie that a lot of people generally believe to be true. Cheerios is probably the most popular "healthy" cereal because of their heavy marketing slogan which claims that it "can lower your cholesterol." Notice how the word "can" conspicuously made its way to their slogan. That means that there's a possibility that it can lower your cholesterol but it's not for sure. When I researched the ingredients of Cheerios online, I found out that most ingredients contained "starch" in its name and the third ingredient is sugar. This means that Cheerios is basically made up of mostly carbohydrates with a little bit of fiber and protein. Don't get me wrong, if you used to eat bacon and bagels for breakfast or not used to eating breakfast at all, having Cheerios for breakfast is a relatively healthier option but it's not the cereal of choice for optimum health.

If there is one cereal that I would recommend to my clients, it would be Fiber One Cereal but I would only recommend the Original Bran flavor and not the other ones because it has the highest fiber content and has zero calories from sugar. The ingredients in this cereal are mostly made from bran which is the part of grains that contain the most fiber which in turn gives our bodies the most health benefits.

2. Sugar Free

Besides diet drinks and other zero calorie drinks our there, most products that are touted as "sugar free" are usually high in fat and carbohydrates. You can mostly see "sugar free" claims on candies, salad dressings, and baked goods. For example, Hershey's came out with a new line of sugar free chocolate. When you look at the nutrition information for their Sugar Free Special Dark Chocolate, you can see that 5 square pieces (one serving) of it contains, 15 g of fat with 9 g of it coming from saturated fat and 23 g of carbohydrates. That's a whopping 140 calories from fat alone. This signals a red flag in my head so I'd rather have 85% dark chocolate than eat this so called "special dark chocolate." It makes me wonder what makes it really special.