HEALTHY SNACK FOODS! Are they really as healthy as we think?
3pm – Mid afternoon munchies have hit! You crave something sweet, yet you have been sticking to your new ‘healthy lifestyle’ for a few weeks now and don’t want all your hard work to go to waste. So instead of binging on that delicious chocolate chip muffin, you decide on a ‘natural’ muesli bar that you picked up from Coles earlier on in the week. You bite into it and it hits the spot; it’s sweet, full of healthy grains and nuts and tastes awesome. YUM!
However, let us take a closer look at what are really in those ‘perceived’ healthy foods that we can buy from the ‘health food’ isle.
These ‘Nature Valley – Honey n Oat’ bars sound very healthy. The clever marketing scheme behind them includes all the right words – Nature, honey and oat. There’s absolutely nothing bad about that right? Wrong! Taking a closer look at the food label you will notice that a serving size is 2 bars, which contains 29g of carbohydrates. Now not all carbs are bad for you, however, it is the ‘hidden sugars’ that are! So of this 29g of total carbs in one serving, a whopping 12g of that is pure sugar! Sugar offers us no nutritional benefits at all, except for rapidly increasing our blood glucose levels to stop us from fainting (if we are susceptible to that sort of thing).
Also, if you take a closer look at the ingredient list you will notice some pretty significant concerns also. Now the ingredient list on the back of a product is listed from the ingredient that occurs MOST to LEAST. For example these bars contain the highest percentage of whole grain oats (notice we don’t know WHAT that percentage is), and the least being natural flavours. What is the ingredient that is of abundance directly after oats? SUGAR! So what we do know is our ‘perceived’ healthy ‘Nature Valley – Honey n Oat’ bars are full of sugar! The ingredient ‘honey’ doesn’t fall onto the list until sixth! So these bars should really be called ‘Sugar n Oat’ bars.
How about our healthy alternative to ice-cream? Frozen yoghurt!! Surely we can eat much more frozen yoghurt compared to ice-cream because it’s better for us, correct? Oh I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Again, lets check out the nutritional facts on the back. As you can see for one serving of frozen yoghurt (75g), 12-13g of that is carbohydrates, and of that 11-12g of that is sugar! Now when we analyse the ingredients list you will notice that there are berries and fruits included, now these contain ‘natural sugars’, however, you will also notice that there is extra sugar added. It is unfortunate that we are not informed as to the percentage of sugar that is added to our foods, so that we can make more informed judgments as to the types of foods and how much we want to consume.
Therefore, the moral of this story is that sometimes our ‘perceived’ healthy foods are not as healthy as they may appear. Before you decide to buy muesli bars, milk drinks, fruit juices, flavoured yoghurt, sports drinks, yoghurt covered nuts and fruits, take a look at the food label and ingredients list and make a more informed decision for yourself. Don’t buy into the marketing ploys of ‘all natural’ and ‘98% fat free’. Take the time to read exactly what is in your food so you know EXACTLY what you are putting in your body. Your future self will thank you for it!
