To be candid, there is a lot of false information going out there when it comes to the so-called healthy foods. The world is constantly influenced by social media, people, and advertisements that don’t always provide accurate information. Then, there comes a change in the perception of foods. Product labels provide some of the most misleading information because there is misplaced information about what all the real and the fake actually mean.
Unfortunately, some of the favorite meals, snacks, and drinks that we think are really helpful are in fact unhealthy.
We live in a world where we eat things we don’t understand. There is a lot of controversy out there about which foods are healthy, and which are not.
Below is a list of 12 foods that are generally popular and common but very unhealthy. If you want to avoid chronic disease and also shed some extra weight, then you shouldn’t eat much of these foods. In many cases, the best choice is to ignore them totally. In this short article, you have a list of them so as to stare clear.
Pizza
Pizza is the one of the world’s if not most popular junk food, though a little expensive. This is not too surprising because it tastes superb and it’s easy convenient to get and eat.
Though tasty, the problem with commercially made pizzas is that they are made with pure unhealthy ingredients.
The dough is usually made from highly refined wheat flour and the meats on them are usually processed. We sure do know this is harmful to the body. Pizza is also extremely high in calories and this equally causes overweight gradually. You should most definitely avoid processed meat too!
White Bread
Bread is made from flour and generally from wheat. Wheat contains protein gluten.
It is then advisable that people who have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity to stay clear of all wheat-based bread.
However, if you tolerate gluten, most commercial bread is unhealthy for you. This is because more than 90% are made of refined wheat and this is low in some essential nutrients and empty calories and it leads to rapid spikes in blood sugar.
Fast food
We only know fast food is bad to eat for us but we don’t know the reason. The main reason is that of the trans-fats and other harmful additives that are used to make the food taste nice. The problem is not only in the trans-fat, but that the portion sizes (trans fat) multiply those harmful contents and before long, you would have a week’s worth of trans fat in just a meal.
Deep Fried Foods
The name may not be familiar, but you should know what phthalates are. That’s because we unknowingly eat the class of endocrine-disrupting chemical toxins. Phthalates are similarly used like BPA in plastic food and beverage wrappers and packaging—and they are not relenting. In 2016, an Environmental Health Perspectives study found that people who ordered fast food often had dose-dependent higher levels of phthalate compounds than infrequent fast food eaters.
Another study in Environmental Health connected higher exposure to phthalates with metabolic syndrome, a disease also commonly associated with weight gain and increased levels of inflammation.
Frozen Meals
Yes! Frozen meals are fast and quick or may help to lose weight. The negative is that they are laden with hydrogenated oils which in turn mean they contain trans-fat in some amount. To be on the safer side, check the label of the product you are getting for hydrogenated oils.
Since you’ll most likely be microwaving these meals, you’re also adding to their unhealthiness, further destroying any nutrients they might contain, and processing the ingredients even further. Also, manufacturers soak fish in a bath of sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP). The negative side effect of adding STPP to fish significantly increases the levels of sodium in your food—which can contradict the countless positive heart-health benefits of consuming fish in the first place.
Luncheon Meats
Because of what the processing of red meat goes through, most luncheon meats contain extra sodium as well as nitrates. There are over many reasons to avoid luncheon meat, or at least to read the labels before you order to make sure that you are getting meat that isn’t loaded with additives.
Some other major concerns are the bacteria listeria which can pose a problem for pregnant women, sodium nitrate which is potentially cancer-causing, and added oils and sweeteners which add to the fat and carb count.
Bottled Coffee
When we usually reach out for a bottled coffee beverage, we get more interested in how under-caffeinated we are and less about the contents of the label. Unfortunately, some of these sweet drinks are filled with more added sugars than you should consume in an entire day, as recommended by the FDA. You should consider bottling those bottled coffees.
Margarine
Margarine in the late 1800s took the world by storm by substituting the inexpensive butter when chemists learned how to harden liquid oils. Nutritionally speaking, it has less saturated fat than butter because it’s made from vegetable oils, not animal fat; all in all, it depends if you want to rely on cows or chemists. While trans fats have since been removed from margarine mostly, it’s important to note that most contain highly processed fats that would never be found in nature.
Vegetable oils
Vegetable oils fall into the most common household foods you should never eat. Along with margarine, vegetable oils like canola oil are highly inflammatory and are not healthy by any slight of imagination. They are partially hydrogenated, are usually genetically modified and have been linked to several chronic diseases like Atherosclerosis, Cancer, Liver problems, Diabetes, Reduced growth, Heart disease, and Obesity amongst others.
Canned green beans
Canned green beans are said to be consistently contaminated with some of the most dangerous pesticides, according to Consumer Reports. In fact, eating just one serving of the united states grown green beans a day is a high-risk alert, due to the toxicity of the pesticides typically used on the crop.
Because the toxicity of the chemicals tends to be far more than others, Consumer Reports note that taking one serving of green beans from the United States is 200 times riskier than eating a serving of a U.S.-grown broccoli.
Besides, canned green beans contain bisphenol A, a synthetic estrogen. Estrogen effects include hormone imbalance, male and female infertility and breast and prostate cancer.
Artificial sweeteners
You’d think to be artificial means fake sweeteners, would be used carefully by people. Unfortunately, many doctors usually recommend them because they are supposedly safe for diabetics because they are low on the glycemic index.
Ironically, latest research has shown that artificial sweeteners cause a disturbance in gut flora and can actually cause diabetes. Adding insult to injury, sugar substitutes like artificial sweeteners have been linked to allergies, brain tumors, seizures, cancer, headaches and a lot more
Processed Cheese
Regular cheese is healthy and it is advisable to take in. It is loaded with nutrients, and a single slice of cheese contains all the same nutrients as an entire glass of milk. Yes, you heard right.
However, processed cheese products are entirely different from the regular cheese. They are mostly made with filler ingredients that are combined and woven to have a similar look and texture as cheese.
Cheese is healthy, but processed cheese is not. Be careful to choose the right cheese, read labels, and make sure that the cheese you’re eating is actually cheese.
External sources in this article include the websites Bembu1https://bembu.com/most-unhealthy-foods/, Healthline2https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/20-foods-to-avoid-like-the-plague#section3, Eatthis3http://www.eatthis.com/unhealthiest-foods-on-the-planet/, Draxe4https://draxe.com/health-foods-you-should-never-eat/, and Spoonuniversity5https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/19-misleading-foods-that-seem-healthy-but-arent, as referenced below.
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