Unhealthy Food Habits

All of you have unhealthy food habits that you have adopted, maybe unknowingly? Manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon to promote their dismally unhealthy products as healthy! You buy their trickery easily! To be healthy in today’s economy means that you must be savvy. These tricks will quickly destroy your daily meal plan!

Here are some of the biggest areas that you are being played in the food arena! Add these to your growing list of Lifestyle Solutions:

• The Salad Extravaganza: Super salads full of croutons, bacon, crunchies, nuts, seeds, cheese, and topped with that creamy dressing, might be almost a day’s worth of calories and fat. Not healthy! See my Super Salad Meal Chart!


• Salad Dressings that are creamy and not low-fat or fat free are diet disasters, and take a salad from healthy to hurtful.


• Fruit smoothies sound healthy? Check out the statistics of Jamba Juice! Most fruit smoothies are calorie laden. There are very few smoothies that will work within your healthy meal plan! Make them at home with non-fat plain yogurt, fresh fruit, and protein powder, and size them small!

• Drinks with sugar! Avoid all sweetened sodas, sports drinks, and sweetened teas. The huge bottles will not fit any meal plan, and most of you don’t count drink calories. Sports drinks that are touted as healthy, are far from it! Water is best!

• Regular fat milk products. Many people still drink whole milk products, because they taste better. Your tastes buds can learn to love less fat, and the calories savings can add up to weight loss with no work!

• Nutrition Bars are everywhere and the latest greatest health invention? Have you really looked at a bar’s ingredients? Many are super caloric, and full of sugar and a list of unheard of ingredients. Eat a candy bar. They taste better! Be educated!

• Diet Drinks often mislead. How many of you buy the supersized meal, but top it off with a diet soda. Diet sodas help you justify overeating. Well I am overeating, but I am saving with a diet soda? What? The entire meal must fit your meal plan! Plus, they are full of chemicals, and the research is still ongoing on whether they mess with your bodies hunger hormones? 

• Costco Muffins are deadly because of their size. Is it a muffin or a small cake? Most muffins are so super-sized that they contain up to half of your daily calories. They are full of fats and sugar and you will experience that dreaded sugar spike. Don’t be tricked by these diet bombs, especially Costco baked goods that contain no food labeling on their bakery items. If there is no product labeling, there might be a very good reason for that!

• Food Bakery Labels are also very savvy. Many advertise a portion as half of a baked good. I am sorry, but no one eats half of a muffin, cinnamon roll, or donut. Do not be tricked into believing store bought baked goods are not too bad!

• Healthy Sounding Wraps or Burritos that are full of grilled chicken, sauces, cheese, black beans and all kind of goodies that can quickly add up to over half of your daily calories. Costco’s Turkey/Havarti Cheese Wrap was almost 1000 calories!

• Sausages and Hot Dogs are often full of fats and calories, besides all of the extra additives. Check the label, and be extra savvy because many are labeled by weight and not by quantity. There may be 4 hot dogs, but 7 servings? What? That means you have to take the calories x servings/number of hotdogs, to know the calories in one hot dog! Crazy trickery!

• Products labeled Multigrain, or Whole grain must say 100% whole grain, or 100% whole wheat to be useful to you. Whole wheat is refined white flour that might make you believe it is healthier?

• Products containing mayo should always be avoided. There is no excuse not to use low-fat or fat-free mayo. Why eat tons of extra calories? Bring store bought potato/macaroni/coleslaw products home, run them under water to drain the calories away, and add fat free mayo. Unwanted calories are washed away, but the flavor remains!

• Fruit flavored Yogurts might seem like a great dessert, but are full of sugar and calories. Look for low-fat and fat-free varieties with less sugar that are plain. Add your own fresh fruit for a treat. Plain non-fat Greek yogurts with fresh fruits are a great choice.

This unhealthy food habits list, could be a never ending list! Just want you all to develop the healthy diet habit of questioning your food, and not trusting your health to others! Your health is of no concern to marketers. They are out for your money only!

If you feel that there is a glaring product on this unhealthy food habits list, that I have missed like products labeled light, let me know and I will include it! Your meal plan is your guide. If products do not fit into your daily meal plan chart, do not purchase them!

For some more unhealthy food habits and what to do about them, please check out my list of 100 Unhealthy Diet Habits that Weigh You Down, and their offsetting Healthy Diet Habits.