9 Foods You Think are Healthy but Aren’t

There are many foods in today’s supermarkets that aren’t as good for you as you might think. Before you bite, get the facts on some of these masters of disguise, but remember: All sorts of foods and drinks can fit into a healthy diet when you enjoy them responsibly and within moderation. Just make sure you’re reading labels and not being tricked into thinking the foods you’re eating are better for you than they really are.

Vitamin-Enriched Water

Vitamin-enriched waters put two good things together to make healthiest drink ever, right? Sounds good in theory, but vitamin waters contain far more than their name implies. Yes, they can give you your daily dose of nutrients, just like a multivitamin, but it comes with a side of sugar and calories you may not have known you ordered. A single bottle of vitamin-enriched water usually contains 2.5 servings or more when you read the nutrition label. That means you’re consuming more than twice the calories and sugar listed on the label when you drink the whole thing. Water it down: Water should be your drink of choice. If you don’t like the flavor of plain water, spruce it up without calories by adding lime, lemon or orange wedges to your glass. Save the vitamin and electrolyte-enhanced waters for long, intense workouts that last 90 minutes or more.

Granola

Granola can be deceiving. It appears to be filled with the whole-grain goodness of oats. What’s so bad about that? It’s what you don’t see: all the added fat and sugar that turned those healthful oats into granola. This applies to granola bars, too. They may have a reputation as the optimal snack for healthy eaters, but many are made with added chocolate, sugars, and “chicory root extract,” which is mostly inulin, a sugar made from plants that is also a source of soluable fiber. Inulin, which is largely undigestible, adds both sugar and supplemental fiber to make granola look healthier than it is. Get a grip on granola: Not all granolas deserve a bad rap. Read those labels (sugars should not be in the first two ingredients) so you know what you’re eating.

Spinach Wraps & Pasta

Spinach wraps and pastas definitely add a decorative flair to your meal, but that’s about it. The actual amount of spinach in these green tortillas and noodles is trivial compared with what you would get if you added your own spinach leaves to your wrap or pasta dish. This super green is added more for color than for nutrition, and most often, the flour used to make the pasta or wrap isn’t whole grain, either. Spruce up your spinach: Add fresh spinach leaves to your pasta dish or wrap if you want to benefit from the B vitamins, fiber, iron and calcium found in spinach. Choose whole-grain (not spinach) pastas and wraps for your meals instead.

Broccoli & Cheddar Soup

It may boast the super food “broccoli” in its name, but this creamy concoction is usually less than soup-er for you. Besides a load of full-fat cheddar cheese, what you won’t see is all the melted butter and cream this soup contains. All three of these ingredients are high in unhealthy saturated fats. And just because broccoli is in the name doesn’t mean you’re getting a serving of vegetables when you slurp down this soup. Slim down your soup: Order a cup instead of a bowl, or make it at home using healthier substitutions like evaporated skim milk and less cheese. Don’t forget to add a real serving or two of vegetables to your meal; this soup alone won’t help you meet your daily quota.

Veggie Chips

Veggie chips seem like they would be a much smarter choice than regular potato chips, but it turns out most brands are about equal in calories, fat and nutrients to regular old chips. Consumer Reports states that the main ingredient for almost all veggie chips are potatoes, merely supplemented with vegetable powder or puree. Veggie chips only contain about 10 fewer calories per serving than your average potato chips. Chuck the chips: Snack on fresh, crunchy veggies for fewer calories and more nutrients than veggie chips

Muffins

Muffins may look like the perfect breakfast or snack, but in most cases, they’re little more than a small cake (i.e. dessert). Not only do they resemble small planets in size, but they are also loaded with calories, unhealthy fats, refined flour and added sugars. Bran muffins can trick you into thinking they are healthful because the word “bran” is in the name, but these monsters can contain 500 calories or more and very little else in the way of nutrition! Blueberry muffins (or other fruity varieties) contain a fraction of a serving of real fruit. Muzzle the muffin top: Share these goodies with a friend and watch your portion sizes. If fruit is what you want, avoid it when it comes in muffin form.

Pretzels

Pretzels, although a better choice than greasy potato chips, provide little more than calories. Yes, you can buy them fat free, but they’re also free of any significant amount of vitamins, minerals, fiber or protein. Even pretzels labeled “honey wheat” struggle to pack 1 gram of fiber into 8 twists. If you’re crunching on salted pretzels, you could be adding an extra 815 mg of sodium to your diet with each serving. Power up your pretzels: Choose whole-wheat pretzels for more fiber and filling power or pair your twists with some healthy protein (like cheese or peanut butter) to avoid spikes in blood sugar that could leave you feeling hungry and lethargic.

Yogurt-Covered Raisins

Wholesome yogurt + fruity raisins = yogurt-covered raisins. These must be healthy, right? Wrong. While both raisins and yogurt are nutritious foods, this packaged snack is anything but. The “yogurt” on the outside is far from the yogurt you know from the dairy aisle. Mostly sugar, oil and some dry milk and yogurt powder, that “yogurt” coating is often a source of hydrogenated oil (trans fats), which you’d never find in real yogurt. A single serving (1/4 cup) also contains about 130 calories. Skirt this yogurt: Get more nutrition for your calories by choosing real yogurt, with or without added fruit. You’ll save fat and calories and avoid the sugar rush of this snack.

Diet Soda

Calorie-free isn’t synonymous with healthy. When you’re downing more than the recommended max of 16 oz of pop per day, you may be doing harm to your body and hurting your healthy lifestyle goals. The carbonated beverage could be displacing much-needed water, which is necessary for hydration, and calcium-rich milk, which provides essential vitamins and minerals. Some sodas could even put you at risk for bone loss. Some research shows that phosphoric acid, found in dark colas, may leach calcium from your bones, increasing your risk of osteoporosis. Ditch the diet: Choose more water, tea and reduced-fat milk, aiming for at least 64 oz of water per day.

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JIM

Apples to Apples

Well another summer is almost over and if you are most people you have put on a couple of pounds over the summer! So if those jeans are a little tighter than you want them to be it’s time to get serious about your nutrition! And you know that we can help you achieve all of your weight and health goals-all you have to do is call us and we will help you design a program to fit any budget and help you look and feel great! And we don’t know if you have noticed but advertisers realize that this is a good time to try to get people to try their products to lose weight because we see more and more weight loss commercials every day. It has made us curious about exactly what the costs of these programs would be for one year. There are so many (and we mean soooo many) diet aids out there so we decided to only go with those that offer meal replacements.

NutraSyXXXm* $2857.40 per year-they also offer a club discount of 15% Oh that’s wrong they increased their prices; ‘about’ $13 dollars a day adds up to about $4745 per year!!!!!!!!

Jenny CrXXg* $3380.00 per year as an average

Herbalife $1835.00 per year (Advanced Program) $2560.00 (Ultimate Program)-the club discount is between 25-42%

As you can see, our programs are actually cheaper than our biggest competitors and we include nutritional supplements they don’t add. We also have targeted products, energy & fitness products, skin care among others so for those wanting results without using a full program, we can help you too! For more information contact us at www.nourish2health.com

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Prices found online after a bit of sleuthing—don’t think they much want you to know how much it really costs per year!

What Do You Really Know About Your Food?

Most of the food consumed in this country passes through a factory or processing plant before ever reaching our tables, and for simple reasons: food needs to be safe, transportable and to stay sellable in the supermarket. Minnesotans want to eat canned peaches in January and working parents want to buy a loaf of bread at the store instead of spending all day baking it themselves. The result is that less and less can be called "unprocessed" anymore. A growing number of voices question whether extreme processing is just making modern food safe and convenient or if it may actually be creating a long-term threat to our society's nutritional health.

"During processing, a lot of beneficial nutrients like fiber, minerals and antioxidants are lost—especially in highly processed, refined-grain products," says Frank Hu, an epidemiologist at Harvard School of Public Health who tracks the effects of food on diseases in the American population. "Manufacturers also add a lot of sugar and trans fats back in to enhance the taste," he says. "So you get rid of the good stuff and add a lot of bad stuff and that's the reason those kinds of foods are really detrimental."

The $450 billion food industry packs superstores full of 40,000 different food items in cans, boxes, pouches and packages. "This food has become so much a part of the culture that we don't even realize it," says Loren Cordain, professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University. "If you're an average American and you're not really too health conscious, you eat these foods every single day, and you've eaten them every single day of your life."

As food journeys from farm to table, most of it, shares one important side trip: a high-heat experience. Besides the obvious cooking, heat is necessary to kill micro-organisms, reduce oxidative changes that cause rancidity and prevent other chemical reactions that may produce off-flavors. Breads have been baked in industrial ovens. Milk and juices are pasteurized in huge stainless-steel vats. Pasta is dried in vast machines that circulate hot air

Along with changing flavor and color, thermal processing takes a toll on nutrients, says food scientist Steven Schwartz at Ohio State University. His laboratory frequently scrutinizes cooked vegetables to determine just what has been lost or gained during processing. In canned peas vs. fresh peas, for example, the nutrient content has faded as much as the color. Vitamins, especially water-soluble vitamins like C and the B vitamins, are heat-sensitive and some leach into cooking water in the factory, which is why steaming or microwaving, not boiling, vegetables is the best cooking method at home. Peas from a can have 72% less vitamin C, 59% less niacin, 56% less B6 and 17% less potassium than the same amount of raw peas. The food industry tries to find the best balance between safety and nutrition, but the longer and hotter the cooking, the more a food will be altered. Frozen vegetables, plunged briefly into boiling water and then cooled, have a much better track record for keeping their nutrients. In fact, they can exceed the nutrition of "fresh" vegetables, depending upon how long produce has been traveling and waiting in the grocery bin.

Taste is also lost during refinement & heating. Manufacturers often try to add it back in the form of salt, also an aid in preservation, but the result is devastating to our health: most Americans get 75% of their total salt from processed foods. Meanwhile processing robs fruits and vegetables of potassium, a mineral that helps to keep sodium's damage at bay.

"Potassium helps to mitigate the adverse effects of salt on blood pressure," says Lawrence Appel, a Johns Hopkins researcher who studies the effects of diet on blood pressure. "Processing tends to remove potassium and add sodium—a bad combination." In fact, while 95% of men and 75% of women regularly exceed the recommended salt intake, most adults consume less than half the recommended potassium, one reason that 50 million Americans suffer from hypertension.

It all started back in the 1960s when the public began to suspect that saturated fat threatens the heart. Manufacturers responded by replacing animal fats in their products with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which were low in saturated fat, extended shelf life, tasted good & provided great texture to processed foods. But these oils contained trans fats, the result of heavy processing to make them more shelf-stable, and trans fats have now been conclusively linked to heart disease & premature death. Harvard's Frank Hu thinks trans fats may be the worst part of eating processed foods.

"One of the most important things to do is to get rid of trans fats," says Hu. "We found a very clear association between trans fats and diabetes & heart disease." By increasing bad (LDL) cholesterol, reducing good (HDL) cholesterol & causing systemic inflammation, trans fats contribute to heart disease. While many food processors are reforming their products in anticipation of the mandatory labeling rule on trans fats in the U.S. in 2006, others continue to add trans fats liberally to their foods. Hu's colleagues at Harvard estimate that replacing partially hydrogenated oils in the U.S. diet with non- hydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent at least 30,000—perhaps up to 100,000—premature coronary deaths each year.

Loren Cordain at Colorado State recently published data that show just how much processed foods dominate our diet today. He found that 57% of most Americans' calories come from only 3 foods: refined grains, vegetable oils and added sugar.

"This mixture is ubiquitous in the Western diet. You can call it a slice of bread, you can call it a doughnut, you can call it a pizza, you can call it a cracker, you can call it a pretzel, you can call it whatever you want, but it's basically a mixture of those same three ubiquitous foods—vegetable oil, refined flour and sugar, with a little bit of flavoring," says Cordain. "Sugars are devoid of any micronutrients, refined oils are also devoid of any nutrients except for vitamins E and K. And then when you tack that onto white flour, you've basically got a diet that can easily produce nutritional shortfalls."

He lists concerns for nutrient after nutrient—73% of Americans didn't meet requirements at last count for zinc, 65% weren't getting enough calcium, 56% were short on vitamin A, 54% didn't consume enough B6, 39% lacked sufficient iron, & the list goes on. What is the future for these people? "They will become a statistic," says Cordain. "If they continue eating those kind of foods throughout their lives, they will become a statistic, if they aren't already."

.No health expert will tell you that eating a heavily processed food on occasion will kill you, but they do agree that relying on them for most of your calories & nutrients is a bad idea. A degree of processing can be found in almost any food at the supermarket. Simply choose among them wisely, suggests Minnesota's Slavin.

Frozen fruits & vegetables should have only 1 or 2 ingredients on their label; make sure the first ingredient begins with "whole" in any bread or grain-related food. When choosing cans, meals-in-a-box or frozen dinners, choose low-salt varieties.

Avoid foods with "partially hydrogenated oil" on the ingredient list & foods that have several layers of processing: refining, drying, freezing, preserving, additives & salt. Instead choose foods that limit processing and contain a minimum number of ingredients, all of which you recognize. Tomato paste, for example, needs only tomatoes, not "tomatoes, high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, natural flavor."

To prevent widespread nutrient deficiencies caused by a national diet dominated by refined goods, the FDA requires that many, but not all of the nutrients removed during refinement be added back, a process called "enrichment." Iron, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2) and niacin (B3), all lost in the making of refined flour, are replaced with synthetic versions at the end of the manufacturing process. Other lost nutrients that we're aware of, such as magnesium, zinc, vitamin E and selenium, are not replaced. "Fortification," on the other hand, occurs when nutrients not naturally found in a particular food are added to that food. Some fortification, such as the addition of folic acid to cereals and other grain products, or vitamins A and D to milk, is mandatory because a nutrient shortfall has been identified as a public-health problem. Other fortifications, such as the addition of calcium to orange juice, iodine to salt, or multiple vitamins and minerals to breakfast cereals, are optional. — Sylvia M. Geiger, M.S., R.D.

Today the trend is to augment your diet with high-quality nutritional supplements so you know you are giving your body what it needs fro health & vitality. Herbalife products are graded at a pharmaceutical grade so you can be sure that you are getting what the label says you are getting.

For more information contact us at www.nourish2health.com

The New Epidemic?

We remember when the articles about serious preventable health concerns were talking about smoking or drinking and driving. Today it seems like every week we are reading about the latest and most significant health concern ever. It's obesity and its not only killing adults, it's the reason today generation of children are projected to be the first NOT to outlive their parents! Is that a wake up call or what?

People these days have poor nutrition, stressful hectic days and get very little exercise; and they pass these things onto their kids. As a result, obesity has become epidemic in North America. And a leading cause of death. The truly sad thing is; this is a totally preventable cause of death!  And the cost to our economy is staggering! Ambulances, hospitals and even restaurants have all had to spend more for equipment to handle the increased weight of customers. And they pass that cost onto all of us. Employers and insurance companies are being forced to take a harder look at obesity as the cost of the obesity-related diseases explodes; the cost of doing business also rises, so the wave of the future is if you are overweight you will pay more of the cost of your insurance premiums or you will lose weight.

So, if you are at all concerned about the quality and longevity of your children's lives and want to set the example for them by getting your weight on track; now is the time to get started on some products that can help you lose that weight, have great energy, become healthier and have everybody asking you 'What are you doing, you look great!' it's time for you to order a Shapeworks program. For about $5.50 to 7.50 a day (depending on the program) , you can have two delicious meal replacements & your supplements. Add up what you now spend now for two meals a day, bet it's more than $7.50! We’d be happy to show you how to eat pie twice a day and lose weight!

Contact us for more information at www.nourish2health.com