In my quest for being healthier and making better choices for me as well as my family, I have been trying some new foods, some pre-packaged, some not. I make sure we eat more fruits and vegetables, that alone is hard to do as my kids are not loving their vegetables! In an effort to counteract that lack of certain nutritious intake, I bought vitamins which they now take daily.
I have gotten them used to eating low-fat and sometimes no-sugar items for certain sweets such as ice cream, ice pops and juices and some snacks. The one thing that seems to be hard to do sometimes is to buy anything that doesn’t have fructose syrup in it or hydrogenated soybean oil or those items that tend to be really not good for you!
I found that the following foods are definitely not as good as I thought they were! If you haven’t seen this article, I am listing the five foods and will link to the
time.com article at the end of this writing.
(1) Syrupy Sports Drinks
They are high in sugar and sodium! I don’t buy these too often, but I have on occasion. I had no idea that they weren’t as good for you as they seem to be! I realized that yes, they had a high content of sodium but I always thought this type of drink was good for you because it replaces the electrolytes in your body or something like that. I also usually would have a bottle of Gatorade for stomach upsets and it has come in handy.
(2) Sugary Cereal Bars
There are some that are good for you; I buy the low fat, less sugar variety. But there so many of these that now have the yogurt coatings that I would swear was good for you! They unfortunately use hydrogenated soybean oils! The article also said that some of these are just sweetened cereals repackaged into a candy bar wrapper! And the worse one to buy is the Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Blueberry Yogurt bar! There is no fiber, it’s very sweet and you might as well be eating sugar!
(3) Fatty Instant Meals
Such as frozen meals and those pre-packaged lunches. These were amongst the variety of foods I’ve bought previously, especially during the summer break because it was easier for the kids to handle on their own! But according to the article, even the turkey versions can be bad for you!
(4) Super-Sweetened Milk
Such as chocolate milk and even strawberry milk! I usually buy the powdered versions, cocoa mix or chocolate mix so the kids can make their own. But the article says that “A container of Hershey's Vanilla Cream Milkshake, for instance, has 560 calories and 77 grams of sugar.” When and I do buy the liquid versions I usually opt for the low-fat variety!
(5) Unhealthy “Health” Snacks
These are gourmet potato chips and dried fruits. They may sound nutritious and even be called organic sometimes, but they are really tastier than they are healthy. The salt content is very high and the chips are often fried! The dried fruits are usually high in fructose and are the same as eating candy!
As I child I enjoyed drinking chocolate and cherry milk (we didn’t have strawberry milk in Jamaica) with much abundance. We didn’t worry about sugar contents and such. Times have changed! But then again, in those days, we were very active children, there were no video games and computers and other things that kept our interests for too long or that would keep us sedentary! I think as we get more advanced technologically, our society move less physically and are less inclined to be active. The many overweight children and adults in our society is proof of this. We have to continue to be more aware of what we should and shouldn't eat and above all else, not let this overtake our enjoyment of life!
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