“Healthy” Foods…
I saw over the weekend quite a few posts about the chemicals, etc. that manufacturers put in “diet” food to make it palatable while still conforming to the low-fat, low-cal, low-whatever rules people have when they are trying to deliberately lose weight.
It really got me to thinking about the kinds of stuff that I eat. Because, let me tell you, I am a “pre-packaged” kind of girl.
Now, I know that farmers market fruits and veggies and organically grown wonderfulness and eating local and, you know, grinding your own flour to bake bread from scratch is the current “healthy” vogue. But, well, I think I’ve mentioned before that I am pretty lazy. I see no reason to grow my own broccoli and corn and carrots and mushroom and pepper when the Wal Mart sells a frozen “stir fry” mix that has all that stuff in it already, just perfect for me to toss in the microwave.
Am I really losing anything buy eating frozen vs. farmers market veggies? Maybe so, but I think it is, for me, a worthwhile tradeoff so that I don’t have to do all that washing/peeling/chopping/etc.
But frozen veggies aren’t really what these other posts were getting at… it was more of the chemicalized food products like the “lite” dairy products that have to have thickeners added to make the mouth-feel even remotely close to what the actual product is supposed to be. Are these things “healthy”? Or are they, at least, neutral? Or are they actively bad?
I guess it can kind of depend on how you react to these things.
I, for one, hailed the invention of Splenda as a miracle from the gods. I LOVE things sweet. I drink 3 or 4 cups of hot tea a day. Before Splenda, I would use sugar in them. (I never could stand the taste of the pink or blue packets). But… I use 3 packets of Splenda — that’s like 6 teaspoons of sugar per cup! Before Splenda, I would be REALLY jacked up on sugar by the end of the day. Now the tea is just a caffeine hit. So, is that good? Because I’m no longer subject to these sugar rushes? Or bad, because the Splenda is “chemical”? I don’t know… I just use the packet and hope for the best.
I do that with most of the things I eat. I love Gardenburger patties — I eat them most nights for dinner. But sometimes I see stuff about how too much soy like this in your diet might be bad (something about cancer)… But… but… I LIKE them! And they are tasty and high in protein and low in calories and really get crunchy on the foreman grill, and I don’t want to not eat them! So… I just eat the patties and hope for the best.
On the other hand, the concept of “Fat Free Half and Half” makes me both laugh and gag at the same time. Ummmmm… half and half, by it’s very definition, CANNOT be fat free. Also, whatever they make that stuff out of is TEH NASTY! And if you try to heat it, it gets all lumpy. Yikes! But I suppose that out there somewhere there might be someone who likes it (hey, I am addicted to non-dairy powdered creamer, who am I to talk?).
So… is there anything you eat that labels itself as “healthy” and you have an inkling that it might not be as good for you as it says? (And if so, why do you decide to go ahead and eat it anyway?)
Did you just climb inside my head and steal all my food-based paranoia?
I’m totally a pre-package eater as well. I firmly believe that society will not begin to eat healthier foods until they figure out a way to make convenience foods as chemical free and “whole” as possible. The current reliance on additives scares the living begeezuz out of me and I can’t help but wonder what a lifetime of ingesting those chemicals and letting them mingle in our bodies will do to us (with cancer being my biggest fear).
I think diet foods are a sham and low fat doesn’t help you lose weight anyway, so why eat that crap? If you’re going to eat processed foods, you may as well eat the real deal! I’ll have to give some thought to what “healthy” foods I eat that raise questions in my mind. I don’t think there’s all that many “healthy” foods in my diet as it is.
Great post and good questions.
Peace,
Shannon
I drink Diet Dr Pepper with whatever artificial sweetener they use, and I go through about a case a week of it. I’ve heard that using that much artificial sweetener can be really bad for one, but I’ve been drinking diet soda of one kind or another for the last 30 years, so I’d think if it was going to affect me, it would have done so by now. My husband drinks Diet Coke (and a lot more of it than I drink of DDP) and has ever since he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes 16 years ago.
For me, personally, you have to pick and choose which things you’re willing to give up and which ones you’re to take a risk over…………..
I drink diet soda simply because if I drank the same amount of sugared soda, I would be curled up on the floor with a severe tummy ache
Hubby can’t have aspartame, so we buy Shasta diet with Splenda. I save having soda with sugar or HFCS for occasionally (rum and cola is not good with sugar free cola). I love Splenda, I can’t drink my coffee without it. I could use sugar, but sugar and me first thing in the morning is a bad thing, so Splenda it is.
I usually avoid anything that says “lite” or is packaged as a “diet” food, tho I do love Skinny Cow ice cream bars simply because they taste delicious and are satisfying. Most of the “diet” or “lite” foods are a scam as Shannon said. To replace the mouth feel of the missing fat they load it up with HFCS in most cases. Sure it is “low fat” but it has as much or more sugar as the full fat version and is usually no where as satisfying to the palate.
As for prepackaged, I am the queen of cheats when it comes to using pre-packaged gravy and sauce packets. Yes I COULD make my hollandaise from scratch, but there are times I really don’t want to fuss with dividing eggs for the yokes (like on a work night), so I loves me my Western Family brand hollandaise packets
Prepackaged foods have a place and I am not about to give them up.
I think whatever you choose to eat/do/think is your prerogative. There’s no good vs. bad. Plenty of people do all sorts of crazy things, as long and nobody gets hurt, I’m cool with it. That said…
Anyone who likes diet drinks please consider watching the documentary “Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World” I talk about it here: http://www.notblueatall.com/archives/sweet-misery-a-poisoned-world/
I have witnessed the side effects and have taken great pains in informing those I love.
And I love you all, but please stop with the aspartame! <3
Don’t know if this counts since it’s not a processed food… one of my favorite things to eat is a cold pasta based tuna salad that my Dad used to make and I’ve changed up to match my husband and my tastes. On paper it is practically diet food at about 320 calories per 8oz serving. And it is super cheap also, can make maybe 14 or so pounds of it for about $12 in my area.
The healthy food police would have nightmares over it though, because it is basically nothing more than two boxes of radiatore pasta — not whole grain because whole grain is way too strong flavored for this, it drowns out the parts that actually taste good — and chopped veggies, eggs, and tuna… coated in about 2 cups of mayonnaise. Real mayo, full fat and everything. Sometimes I even make it myself out of RAW EGGS lol… I’m a food rebel!
So does that count? Because, if you look at just the calories and most of what is in it (the base veggie mix - diced carrots, onion, tomato, bell pepper, cucumber, celery and radishes — and if my husband won’t be eating it I throw in peas lol) it’s all healthy mostly unprocessed stuff. But it’s also mostly mayo and white pasta, which are evil demon foods as far as the health police are concerned.
As far as the artificial sweeteners thing… I have to avoid them like the plague. Haven’t found one yet that doesn’t trigger some sort of reaction, possibly psychosomatic though. And they all have aftertastes that just taste really bad to me.
I’m a mixed consumer. Half of what I buy is fresh food from farmer’s markets, because I’m so bloody lucky that they opened up right outside my office once per week, the other half is pre-packaged stuff.
Just thinking about what I consume, the pre-packaged stuff tends to be the basics. Rice and pasta dishes and sauces. Plain frozen veges (just cut up and frozen, nothing else) for convenience sake. Things that I can crawl home from work, heat up and eat.
However I don’t buy anything that is low fat or sugar, because I simply don’t like the taste. No, wait… it’s more than that… I’m disgusted by the taste. I hear Splenda being praised to the heavens, yet I think it tastes like butt compared to cane sugar. Low fat yoghurt is so foul compared to Greek style full fat (which is now available in supermarkets anyway) that I’d rather drink my own bathwater.
often times the “diet” version of ice cream popsicles are just a smaller portion of the regular product.
I try to avoid anything with chemical sweeteners because I don’t like the way they make things sweet - you might want to try Stevia - it’s a plant extract and comes in a sugar form - and it’s more intensely sweet than sugar, so you don’t need a lot.
I am very disturbed by low/no fat sour cream and other fat dairy products.
and, people need to remember that low/no fat and low carb doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
to get low carb, often the fat, sugar and salt is higher than the regular version
low/no fat also pumps up the sugar and salt
often a product will have several forms of sugar from corn - so you don’t really know how much there is when they list 4 different kinds of sugar under different names
also, what is in the food is less important than what it turns into in your digestive system - carbs (flour, rice, corn, starches) are broken down into simple and complex sugars.
so while there may be three tablespoons of actual sugar in that bowl of pancake batter, those 2 cups of flour will also convert into sugar.
Eating a fatty product will make you feel fuller for longer and may reduce what you eat in total for the day - as fat is the last part that the digestive system breaks down.
in any event, any day that you eat more calories than you burn off through movement, you will gain weight.
it doesn’t matter if the calories are from packaged foods or whole foods.
Not necessarily so - some days I consume more calories than I burn, some days I burn more calories than I consume. It averages out in the long run (for me) because my weight has been stable, within 10 lbs +/-, for the last 10 years or so. That’s one of those general statements that assumes that all bodies burn calories in exactly the same way, which is not true at all.
You can only say what works for your body, I can only say what works for mine, neither of us can say that what works for either of us will work for anyone else - to either maintain, lose, or gain weight. Our bodies aren’t bunsen burners and the laws of thermodynamics only apply to a certain extent to human beings and their metabolism. Individuality and genetics have a way of throwing a monkey wrench into that machinery every time.
I’m a Splenda addict, and so far have not had any adverse reactions to it. Unlike with Aspartame, that I now claim to be allergic to, because it makes me feel I guess tired..I dunno, perhaps malaised would be more of a proper term. By the way, if any of you have tried looking for a gum or breath freshener free from Aspartame, I’ve found that Tic Tacs is one of them.
I’m rather paranoid of what I’ve heard regarding major cereal companies putting BHT in their cereal, it may cause Cancer. However, another person said it was used in makeup that came with a warning not to eat it. Now of course, you’re not supposed to be eating makeup, but maybe the point was to not eat it specifically cause BHT was in it. I don’t know, to be honest I might be being overly concerned about this. Still, I don’t understand why they’d do this when cereal was just fine before BHT.
Well, I only buy cereal at Whole Foods. On that note, I also am someone who is a lazy cook, and loves to microwave. I’ve found Amy’s Organic foods to be delicious, and they have no questionable chemicals in them. They are a vegetarian company, so if you want meat with any of their foods, you’d have to provide it yourself. Including chicken for their no chicken, chicken soup. Their mac and cheese is delicious, and I particularly love it because they make a version with soy cheeze that is dairy free, as I’m lactose intolerant.
Eat food. (Not edible food-like substances)
Not too much. (Finish when you get full)
Mostly plants. (Self-explanatory)
Dieting is stupid. Making wise choices about what you put in your body is smart.
If you eat well, you feel well, and you have more energy to do the things you love!
Also, when you feel well you are happier, and enjoy the people you love more.
I know that pre-packaged foods are convenient and feel good for a short time. I used to eat little else.
Then when I found myself tired all the time, cranky etc, I realised it might be what I’m eating. I started cooking simple food, basic recipes that don’t take too long. I also made some basic changes to what shelf-items I considered to be “food”; ie, if it has shit in it I can’t pronounce, it’s NOT food!
I feel SO much better now. I haven’t lost any weight, but I’m definitely healthier - and I didn’t set out to lose weight either, so I’m extremely satisfied with the results - literally!
Give it a go, it can be a bit tricky at first but it’s SO worth it!