"Healthy" Foods That Are Absolutely Lying to You - So Frickin' Mini

Hey, Megan, how's it going?

Hey, Donna.

Good morning.

Do you have 10 minutes for me?

I always have 10 minutes for you, but usually it'll turn into 20, so let's.

Well, put the timer on, girl, because we're doing a mini.

Okay, what you got for me today?

Today I want to talk about health foods that are not as healthy as people think.

Oh, yeah.

The first one that comes to my mind is those granola bars that have.

Pretty much more sugar than any or.

Those meal like meal replacement bars.

You know, like those super dense bars and they're just like protein, protein, protein.

Never mind all the sugar we've got in there.

It's not even only sugar.

I mean, like, if you look at the ones that are even more processed, they're just full of garbage to begin with.

And then of course, there's the sugar.

There's ones that are a little bit healthier, but they're still going to be loaded with dates, which I think are great, but it's still going to be a very high sugar content, not necessarily balanced, and not necessarily much more protein than you would get from eating a handful of nuts, so.

Exactly.

The only time I eat that kind of granola bars or something like that is hiking, where I'm like, okay, I.

Need the sugar and the protein and.

In, in, in, in a format that I can do while I'm walking or walking very quickly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, again, they're delicious.

And if you want to give your kid a treat, you can give them that instead of a Mars bar.

Of course it's going to be better, but it's not a health food per se.

That's all we're saying.

Yeah.

Do you have one?

Yeah, I just bought a bag of trail mix and because that makes me think of it, it's like, I feel like I used to be able to sit down and like eat a whole bag of trail mix.

And I'm not talking the stupid gigantic bags of trail mix from Walmart which has like M M's and pretzels.

Yeah.

I'm talking nuts.

It's got some dried rhubarb.

I think it's got like, like, I feel like the portion size in Switzerland is a bit more reasonable.

Yeah.

And here they actually call it studentenfutter, which means like feeding students would eat when they're just.

Yeah, yeah.

Just brain.

Brain food kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah.

But, but the thing is, you know, there's always a bit of dried fruit in there and nuts, which is actually a really good mix.

I think it's the portion sizing.

Right.

I mean, so dried fruit in itself is not.

Also not inherently bad.

But the point is, is that there's no water in it anymore, so you don't get that feeling of fullness.

So you might overeat it.

And I think that's why dried fruits, for me, are on this kind of healthy, but not as healthy as you think, because if you do not have any kind of portion control or self control, you can definitely overeat the dried fruits easily.

One more thing about dried fruit is that if you don't look at the ingredients, you might not know that there is still, which is insanity, added sugars or, you know, other additives that are really not necessary.

I mean, if you see an apricot, dried apricot, that is bright green, that's got shit in it that you don't want to put in your body necessarily.

Right.

And dried up apricot should be brown, like poop brown.

So there are definitely dried fruits like that are.

That have sulfites added to them, sugars added to them, or whatever else.

And then you're also getting other shit into your body that you don't necessarily need.

Dried fruit on its own again, instead of gummy bears.

Yeah.

Do it.

Yeah.

Obviously better for you.

Same amount of sugar, but just a little bit of fibers, a little bit of whatever else is left in there.

Yeah.

The other thing that I.

So we have a Costco in France now, and I do buy a few things there in bulk.

And one of the things I found that I really liked was this kind of like, seed, like this salad seed mix.

Oh, yum.

You know, so I could just grab a bunch of seeds and throw it on the salad.

And there's some dried cranberries in it.

Yeah.

But I'm now always looking at the ingredients.

And of course it has, like, sunflower oil in it or whatever.

Pick your seed oil.

It's in there.

And then I'm like, you know, but the only.

The only saving grace is I don't, like, eat handfuls of this stuff at a time.

I take literally like two or three little spoons and throw it on my salad.

But still in my brain, what would be better is if I took the same seeds and made my own mix without any kind of seed oil in it.

And that would be the healthier version of that.

But, I mean, it's always like there's a spectrum if someone is just starting off trying to eat healthy things.

And salads are one of the things that they want to eat, or you just really enjoy salads.

Sure.

And that makes it more enjoyable for you.

And it's easy to buy a big bag.

I would say still go for it, because I think that the benefit of eating seeds outweighs the tiniest little bit of seed oil that's on top of it.

Exactly.

And really, it is negligible amounts, because how many of the.

Like, you don't take a cup full and chuck it on your salad.

Right.

You put a table tablespoon, maybe two.

Even so out of that, the amount of oil that's in there is not even a teaspoon, not even half a teaspoon.

So, you know, I think this goes back to.

We've talked about this before on many occasions to say something a food is healthy or not healthy.

Right.

And we're using air quotes when we're talking about this, because the point is, is that a healthy food might not be healthy for everyone because we've got, you know, we check our histamine episode.

But in general, you know, I think it always comes down to portion sizes.

But, you know, portion sizes.

My husband cannot eat a small portion of flavored yogurt.

He absolutely loves, like, a red berry yogurt.

And we used to buy, like a big one kilo tub of this, and he would just burn through that in a couple of days.

Yeah.

And then I said to him, I.

Said, maybe could we try.

Can I buy, like, the natural yogurt with nothing in it?

It's half the cost.

And then let's put our own berries in.

Yeah.

And then we can put our own amount of sugar in.

And then I can add chia seeds.

So that was a good way of saying, here's this convenience food.

But because he eats so much of it, and I don't want him to not eat it because it's yogurt and yogurt.

He loves yogurt, and it's whatever.

And I was like, I will make the effort to make the better version of this for you.

And now we've dialed it in.

We know exactly how much fruit, which fruit, how, you know, we.

We know exactly how much sugar is going into the whole thing.

And it's not as much as I thought you would want.

It's never.

That's the crazy thing.

Yeah, exactly.

And then.

Yeah.

She sees and he's like, good.

He knows he's being healthier.

And yeah, it's not any more cost efficient.

It's actually taking more time.

But it's worth it, because when you look at these flavored yogurts.

You have so many teaspoons of sugar.

In one little thing.

And even the ones that are advertised towards children have even more sugar.

Although they say like less sugar, you know, or, or not even, even if they don't have as much sugar, it's still more sugar than a kid should have or, or even an adult should have in one sitting, let alone in a day.

So yeah, that's a big one.

What's another one?

Gluten free packaged products.

That stuff drives me crazy because I see a lot of people trying to go gluten free or having to go gluten free and they are bombarded with a lot of thickeners and ingredients that were not even in their diet.

They don't even know what they mean.

It's marketed as healthier because it's gluten free.

And a lot of people now notice that they need to go gluten free or want to try it out for the sake of their health.

And then they go for like junk.

It's like vegans that live off of vegan processed food.

Like it's not healthier.

And so you're kind of shooting yourself in the leg going, I'm gonna try and be healthier, I'm gonna go gluten free.

And then you're eating all that crap.

So that's a, that's a hard one for me especially because I usually help, try to help my clients go gluten free for, you know, testing's sake and just never, never satisfactory.

So much easier to make gluten free bread at home.

Yeah, but that just goes to the whole like process thing.

Right.

And we talked about that on another mini when we were talking about the food pyramids.

Right.

And that also goes to vegetable oils.

Right.

Because vegetable oils was on our list and these are also touted in Switzerland as, oh, vegetable oils are good.

Canola oil, canola oil, canola oil or ropeseed oil here or whatever you want to call it.

But in general, again, it's this ultra process.

So for the gluten free foods, I think it's moderation.

You know, if you want to have some gluten free bread at home, as long I don't see a problem with it because I don't think gluten free bread and other bread, it's like as long as, again, moderation.

If you just want to have a piece on Sunday morning with your nice fry up breakfast and that include, you know, that incorporates that and it makes you feel wonderful, that's good.

But I agree Anytime you substitute what I would consider natural foods.

And I'm talking more like what you were talking about with vegans and stuff, where it's like a natural food, like a dairy product or something, where there's very little processing, and then they replace that with something that's completely artificial.

Yeah.

I also feel like that's, like, not.

It's going in the wrong direction.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any last thoughts?

Because we're.

I think we're running out of time.

I gotta go.

I mean, we probably could do another two minis on this.

Like, but basically it really depends on what you're replacing with what.

And.

Yeah, like, how much you're eating it.

As we said about pretty much most of these, so just keep that in mind if you want us to do more of these.

I have a very long list.

Yeah.

And yeah.

Right.

In healthy health foods, just think.

Right?

Just take a second pause and think.

Health foods are things that anything that's labeled healthy probably isn't as healthy if there is not a label on it, AKA fruits and vegetables.

You can't label broccoli, can you?

It's just a can.

They do.

They put it in fucking Saran Wrap.

That's true.

My point is, like, if it's labeled healthy.

This is my husband, he always says this.

He's like, anytime a product puts quality on their label, he immediately thinks it's probably not a quality product.

And I think you should do the same thing with health products.

It's like, this is healthy.

If it says it's healthy, it's probably not as healthy as you think it is.

Yeah, they're just trying to get your money.

All right, Donna, we'll see you next time.

All right, bye.