Cereals aren’t as healthy as you think. Image credit: hello sunrise
To build muscle & lose fat, 90% of your diet must consist of whole unprocessed foods. That’s anything that doesn’t come out of a box like meats, veggies, eggs, fruits, etc. Eating 6 meals/day leaves room for 4 junk meals per week.
You’re already doing that but not getting results? Maybe you’re not eating that healthy. Here are 10 foods you might think are healthy because they’re labeled as such, but which in reality are anything but healthy.
1. Breakfast Cereals. Cereals are labeled healthy & nutritive and recommended for weight loss. Read the labels: cereals are often high in sugar & salt and their vitamin/mineral content is chemical based. Drop that spoon.
Healthy alternative: one of these 7 breakfast recipes.
2. Granola Bars. Granola bars consist of healthy oats & nuts. But they’re glued together with blood sugar raising ingredients like corn syrup. Some bars even contain chocolate chips, making them as bad as candy bars.
Healthy alternative: homemade protein bars.
3. Yogurt with Fruit at The Bottom. Fat free doesn’t mean healthy. Labels tell you they contain added sugars, corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. Same with fat free frozen yogurts which can contain 20g sugars per 1/2 cup.
Healthy alternative: plain unflavored yogurt mixed with fruit cut into pieces.
4. Bread. Convenient and tastes good, but not as healthy as you think. Whole grain or whole wheat means nothing. Dark bread can still contain corn syrup & trans-fats and eating too much bread will make you fat.
Healthy alternative: Ezekiel Bread, but lower your bread intake.
Bread is also not as healthy as you think. Image credit: Harald Schmid
5. Sandwiches. Often labelled “fitness” or “light”, but containing sugar-laden salad dressings, little veggies & proteins and too much white bread. Freshness is questionable and you need the foot-long to fill your stomach.
Healthy alternative: make your own sandwiches.
6. Fruit Juice. Even 100% fruit juice has added sugars, usually fructose. Cans of fruit juice contain up to 38g sugar per 8oz. Excess fructose causes obesity, bad cholesterol, poor appetite control, etc.
Healthy alternative: home-made fruit juice or eat fruit.
7. Sport Drinks. Supposed to help you replenish electrolytes, carbs, etc. But it’s actually sugar water, with up to 30g sugar/serving. If you eat healthy and don’t drink 2 gallons water in 1 setting, you don’t risk water intoxication.
Healthy alternative: water during workout, protein + carbs post workout.
8. Fast Food Salads. Contain sugar-laden salad dressings, croutons made from refined white flour or white floor pasta. In many cases you’re better off ordering a double cheeseburger than a chicken salad.
Healthy alternative: make your own salads.
9. Frozen Meals. Nothing is wrong with frozen veggies/fruits. But a lot is wrong with frozen meals often labeled “light” or “healthy”. They’re processed, high in sugar, and come with sauces & sodium. Avoid.
Healthy alternative: cook all your meals for the day in the morning or evening.
10. Diet Soda. Contain artificial sweeteners like the controversed aspartame. Do your research and decide if you want to take the risk. Start with this & this thread on diet soda in StrongLifts.com Forum.
Healthy alternative: water, water with squeezed lemon, green tea.
Yeah the last 3 are all things I refuse to eat good article
what about peanut butter sandwiches while trying to gain weight?
@YA
If you don’t care about gaining some fat, bread is ok. I love bread, but only eat it as part of the 10% junk food rule.
Bread being “fattening” or not really depends upon your own body responds and shouldn’t be generaluized. Eric Cressey mentioned the somatypes. I am an endomorph and cannot eat that much bread without gaining fat. I know ectomorphs that can eat it all day long. The fact that are bodies respond differently may be the reason that some people lose weight on a low carb diet and other lose weight on low fat (which tends to be high carb) diet.
So how can I decide how much bread is too much? I love bread and just think it’ll be too hard to avoid, it’s everywhere!
Great article. Two things I’ve found helpful are this: buy a bread machine and make your own whole wheat bread to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup found in nearly every bread (and your house will smell awesome), and make your own granola using oats, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, unsweetened coconut, and anything else you desire (bake at a low temp - 250ºF for 45-60 min). Search online for homemade recipes you can adapt to your needs.
I’m curious about nomercy89’s question: how much carbs should I take in, a little with each meal and snack, snack only, pre lunch only ??
Thanks for the great article.
Great points here it pisses me off to NO end when people eat this shit, and make believe they’re eating healthy. Like people who drink gatorade and then complain why they don’t lose fat!!!??!? Gatorade is nothing but soda.
Also with diet soda, if you’re trying to lose weight why not just drink water?!!? Drinking diet soda makes no sense whatsoever.
Great post and very timely. Excellent point about the sugar in salad dressings and the corn syrup in bread (also thanks for the tip on Ezekiel Bread. I learned about it this past year and it is great stuff).
Fat and sugars should be thought of together. In fact I would argue that sugars are much worse for you. I took 6 inches off of my waist this year simply by removing sugars (essentially everything that is high on the glycemic index). I found this diet to be much more important than even my cardio was. It was as easy as removing all processed grains, potatoes, carrots, corn, and all sweeteners from my regular diet (that 10% tip that you give is good point and I started using that as a break for me).
Keep up the great posts!
james
http://musclecircuit.com/best-tasting-homemade-protein-bar/
this article, nr.7 : “spray with pam”
What is pam?
I think you might be generalizing a bit too much and perpetrating some myths.
1. Breakfast cereals are high in sugar and salt - how much sugar is too much? There are lots of cereals around that aren’t “high” in sugar. I haven’t seen many breakfast cereals high in salt.
3. Yogurt with Fruit at The Bottom. Fat free doesn’t mean healthy … seems that you are talking about 2 different things, but again - lots of yogurt with less than 20 g of sugar per 1/2 cup - Fage for example.
5. Even 100% fruit juice has added sugars … no. 100% means 100% - the only thing that could be added to this is water. Maybe you’re referring to fruit concentrate or something else.
6. Fast food salads don’t contain salad dressing - you get the pack of whatever you want and chose where to add it or not - maybe you’re confusing this with salads from salad bars.
It’s a fairly light cooking spray; you can find it (or equivalent) at most supermarkets, AFAIK.
—
My only gripe with this is that the frozen meals one objects specifically to added sodium, which is only an issue if you’re already hypertensive and have seen reduced blood pressure upon lowering sodium intake. Not everyone has health problems with sodium consumption, and it’s not a concern until the problem’s already expressed itself regardless.
@ Koef:
It’s a cooking spray here in the US.
james
When i was starting to lose weight one of the things I learned was that just because something says “fat free” or “low fat” doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good for you. Make sure you’re getting an idea of the whole nutrition picture when looking at your foods.
Great article!
Nice one Mehdi. Great article. Got a question what is Ezekiel Bread? the one in the pic? I havn’t heard before…Not sure where can i get that..
Breakfast cereals are bad because they are made of grains and we did not evolve eating grains. It doesn’t really matter how much sugar is added. Grains are, on some level, sugar.
Yogurt is not the best food for us either, as dairy is a relatively new introduction into the human diet (like grains). But if there is no added sugar or sucralose, it isn’t terrible, either. Any added sugar or sucralose is bad (IMO).
Juice is not good for us because it more easily spikes insulin levels and lacks the fiber found in whole fruits. It is a rare occasion that a human needs 40+ grams of liquid sugar injected into the body, even if there are accompanying vitamins. Just eat fruit.
@Doo
Some will indeed do better on breads than others. From my experience, most people are better off without bread. Check Poliquin’s interview: http://www.t-nation.com/article/bodybuilding/question_of_strength_june&cr=
@nomercy89
Trial & error. Remove bread for a couple of weeks off your diet, and see how you react.
@big_m
How much carbs => it really depends on your goals. For someone who just want to maintain body-weight, max muscle mass, minimum body fat => carbs only post workout. Rest of the day protein, veggies, fruits.
@Mandy
1. Please read the link I provided.
3. Greek yogurt is great. Don’t know why you compare it with yogurts with fruits at the bottom.
5. Fructose is sugar. When liver is full, it’s stocked as fat. Please read the link I provided.
6. You’re smart to remove the salad dressing. Remove also the croutons & pasta if the salad has them, and you’ll be fine.
@hemram4u
Check this thread in the forum: http://forum.stronglifts.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8433
@Bret K
Like your posts, keep posting.
@bug_m
“make your own granola using oats, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, unsweetened coconut, and anything else you desire (bake at a low temp - 250ºF for 45-60 min). Search online for homemade recipes you can adapt to your needs.”
Could you post this recipe? Thanks much!
Man how do you people can live like that ? It’s too much. I mean, I don’t drink soda because it’s garbage, I know. But bread ? Come on, man. Bread is classic. Everyone eat bread. Thinking about that stuff can make you a sociopath or something.
Rissam - check out http://www.allrecipes.com and do a search for it. There are lots of recipes there and you can adapt them to suit your needs. Not sure if I should post a recipe that I got from somewhere else. The website is free, and several people review and leave comments regarding each recipe.
Bread may be a classic, but only for the last 10,000 or so years (perhaps even fewer). During the previous 2+ million years of human evolution, bread was nowhere to be found. Mostly berries and meat and bone marrow and veggies. No wonder very few people are equipped to tolerate the consumption of bread.
Anyway, as Mehdi said, if you don’t mind gaining some fat, go ahead and eat bread. Or, if you are carb tolerant (you lucky *****), eat bread. Consider your goals with the knowledge of what bread actually is and how it affects your body:
Bread is nothing more than a glorified sugar (flour), and that is aside from considerations of what may have been added to the bread (fructose, hydrogenated oils). It is important that people understand that in order to make, at the very least, cognizant and informed bad decisions rather than ignorant bad decisions. Good stuff, Mehdi…
Bread is superior food. Just don’t get those bread-lookalike substance they make at industrial bakeries. Bake your own or get it a good baker. It’s strange to here a Belgian guy writing like that on bread. Compared to any country I have ever travelled, we are spoiled with decent bakers offering a wide range of really tasty and healthy food.
Th foods you mention above are not healthy if you are using for the purpose of weight loss other wise these foods are better than other highly processed refined sugar laden junk foods.
Its your choice what and how much you have to eat.
There is no ideal food in the world to eat.
Don’t you know how to make a simple salad dressing? Prepare the salad ingredients in a bowl. Add some olive oil (extra virgin tastes best). Not a lot of oil, just enough that the ingredients are very *lightly* coated with oil after you toss everything for a few tosses. Then add salt, pepper, garlic and tarragon. Small amounts of each. If you like apple or raisins or nuts in your salad, add now. Toss everything again for a few tosses. Then add just a few drops of vinegar (balsamic, if you like; or lemon juice if you like). Toss everything for the third time. That’s all. Once you get the feel of how much of each ingredient you need, you’ll never buy those sugar and chemical-filled bottled dressings ever again. Guaranteed.
Hooray for being carb tolerant! (woot)
be jealous lol
It’s important to replenish electrolytes for endurance runner. You need Na and K in order to continue electrical signaling of your nervous system. Too much water and not enough electrolytes in your bloodstream will thin your blood too much.
So if you’re an endurance athlete, it does not help to just drink water. That’s why if you’ve gone to races, they offer pretzels and bananas. Pretzels - Sodium and Bananas - Potassium.
I can’t speak for other athletes since I haven’t done enough thorough research, but for endurance athletes, this is crucial.
I think gatorade and similar products have their place for people competing in endurance sports. It can be difficult to consume enough “whole foods” to meet the energy and electrolyte requirements. So this liquid food is useful in that setting, but for most people it it’s just an easy way to get way too many calories without getting any protein or a balanced set of vitamins or minerals.
If you are into endurance sports try products based on Maltodextrin rather than simple sugar - it digests at a slightly slower rate so you don’t tend to get the same energy spikes and crashes you do with pure sugar.
Bread is a fundamental building block of civilization. I have had it with people like bretK citing how we aren’t biologically equipped for it because we’ve only been eating it for the last “10,000 years or so”. Do you realize what the life span was for people at that time? They could have been eating elephant dung and survived that long. Do you take into account geographical differences? Eskimos didn’t find berries and veggies real accessible, so they had a very high fat diet. Other cultures in other areas saw just the opposite. The human body is both highly adaptable and highly individual. The key ingredient of any diet is MODERATION. The zealous adherence to ridiculous lists like this one is nothing more than a recipe for failure. I’m going to go eat some fried chicken with biscuits washed down with Coke Classic as a little treat to myself, and if you think that some homemade granola and water would do as much for your QUALITY of life, you go enjoy that.
Mehdi, #11 might be whole-wheat pasta. Was at a restaurant tonight where the menu pitched whole-wheat linguine as a good choice for people avoiding carbs. Unless I’m very wrong, whole-wheat pasta is just as much a carb from a fat-gain standpoint as white pasta is … isn’t it?
How about sugar-free? They’re probably not healthy since they’re processed too? Right?
@Mehdi
Great article as always Mehdi.
Quick question - will you be posting some recipes anytime soon? I like the one you did with Breakfast, looking for some simple recipes for lunch/dinner for to rotate around within a week.
Awesome posts. I try avoid all these foods and it means I have to workout a lot less to maintain a healthy figure. Bread is better homemade and better still in the evening meal only. You’re so right on ALL these foods… eliminate these and consume raw foods in place and you’re on the way to optimum health. Here is a list of the 20 worst foods in America… scary stuff! http://www.takefit.com/204/twenty-worst-foods-you-could-eat-in-america/
I used to eat bread all the time but don’t for a long time. Don’t miss it at all. What about whole rice, oats?
I once tried to eliminated all grains and used only fruits (mostly apples, pairs, berries) as a source of carbs and gained fat.
I LOVE Ezekial Bread. I think it’s the best as far as taste and health. Am I correct in believing that it’s more healthy than real Whole Wheat Bread? And are all sprouted grains better? It certainly sounds as if it’s less processed…
Also, are oats better than wheat?
Another thought: where does brown rice weigh in on the healthy scale? Better or worse than oats? Wheat? I know that rice generally has a pretty high rating on the Glycemic Index… And how about quinoa? Thanks!
@K1ck
I like bread too. There’s a difference between what you like to eat, and what is good for you. If you don’t care about gaining some fat, continue to eating bread.
@MrDifficult
Moderation is retard. Moderation is don’t eat until your stomach is full. If you eat plenty of green veggies, fruits, proteins & healthy fats, rather than all the carbs people eat nowadays, you’ll never have to count calories. You do need carbs, but definitely not as much as most people eat.
@James
Whole-wheat pasta is as much carbs as white pasta, about 70% carbs. Definitely not low carb.
@Steph
Like sugar-free gum? If it tastes sweet they add something: ask yourself what they add. Usually artificial sweeteners.
@Hibiki Joji
There are some recipes on the blog already, I might add a couple of one, have some ideas.
@Mikeone356
Oats & rice are ok depending on your goals/quantities you eat. If you want to lose fat, I say drop the oat/rice intake. You want to gain weight, up the intake.
@Preston
I would do it like this: quinoa > brown rice > oats > pasta/bread. 3 first ones are a lot less processed than the rest, and quinoa is one of the best foods there is.
@Mr Difficult
“fried chicken with biscuits” - ?? Is that your favorite food combo?
Mr Difficult
Go ahead and eat bread. Again, consider your goals. Just because a majority of people will experience an insulin spike, and likely store fat, from eating bread does not mean you should avoid it. Moderation is especially important as you note. Just don’t kid yourself and think its helping you achieve weight loss or physique-related goals, because it probably isn’t. If you’re gaining weight/strength, it will definitely help (at least with the weight part).
I think you misunderstand my post and perhaps the point of this website. People who are trying to lose weight, improve physique, gain strength, etc. and who are not carb tolerant must watch their bread intake. I don’t know or care what your goals are, but it sounds like quality of life outweighs the above considerations. More power to you. But I will reiterate: bread is not a healthy food source, it is glorified sugar.
As for adhering to lists like the one in the post…well, have your read where Mehdi advocates 10% eating of “junk”? Those items on the list can be consumed — 10% of the time. Bread, unfortunately, counts as junk, as do coca-cola and fried chicken. But again, your adherence to all of this depends on your goals, and some people have different goals from you Mr. Difficult.
What does life span have to do with it? I am not talking about living a long life. I am talking about living a healthy life, which hopefully will lead to a long life. Eskimos are not really the point. Are you saying that eskimos can tolerate bread? I doubt it…as you noted, they did not evolve to eat it. And its true, some people are carb tolerant, which is something I noted in my other post. But your sorrow at having bread declared unhealthy, and your resolve to eat junk food, does not transform those foods into healthy or helpful for achieving the goals of most people who read this website.
Some of this is bullshit.
Bread will not make you fat. A caloric excess will.
Also there’s nothing wrong with salt in the diet, especially for active people. Ever heard of sweating?
MrDifficult I agree with you. Realize a lot of people are being influenced by pseudo-scientists like Mark Sisson and others pushing a so called “paleolithic” diet when in reality there’s no such thing as a paleolithic diet because we live on a big ass planet with lots of disparate geographic regions populated by lots of different people eating lots of different diets.
I’m not going to say that it’s a good ideal to follow the US RDA for carbohydrate consumption but they aren’t going to kill you either. Avoid the refined stuff, make sure you’re getting your EFAs and protein and you will be fine.
And, again, the ONLY thing that makes the body store fat is an excess of calories.
Do you really believe that two diets both a thousand calories over maintenance for a person, one containing virtually no carbs, the other containing say 50% in carbs are going to have different results? Get real. The guy is going to get fat to the same degree in both scenarios, regardless of whether insulin is up or down. However, if he is weight training he will probably gain MORE muscle with the higher carb diet.
I use a much better alternative to sport drinks, but it is easily available only to those of us who live in tropical settings: coconut water (agua de pipa is what we call it in my country). It´s slightly sweet and second to none when you need to feel refreshed and get rehydrated.
Barry
Unfortunately, it is not as simple as calorie in and calorie out (calorie in and calorie out, while a useful guide for especially obese people, is eroding as a tenet of fitness theory, i.e. it is outdated). So, yes, I KNOW that two calorically-excessive diets, one bad-carbohydrate heavy and one very low on carbs, will have different effects. Let me ask you this: Are you saying that a diet where most (or even a smaller percentage, say 30%) carbs come from bread will have the same effects as a diet where all carbs come from vegetables and fruit? That, Barry, would be an incorrect and dangerous assertion.
Read Dr. Barry Sears’ work on the Zone diet. Insulin is the real key — to both fat storage and inflammation. And bread spikes insulin. Moreover, you say avoid the refined stuff. What do you think flour is? Oh yeah, its refined.
Agree 100% about EFA and protein.
Again, its not about living and dying. Many people follow the US RDA for carbohydrates and live long lives. Long, fat lives. Its about goals, and if one of your goals is to be as healthy, fit, strong, and/or have an impressive physique, bread is not a food to consume more than 10% of the time (for most people). Of course there are exceptions, but this will hold true for a majority of the population. I know that I am NOT carb tolerant, and eliminating bread has made a difference in both performance and appearance.
We may live on a big planet, but that does not change the fact that bread is an accidental invention dated between 5,000 and 10,000 years old, or the fact that NO HUMANS on this BIG PLANET ate bread before then.
I think a better article title would have been “Which Ingredients Are NOT Healthy” or “What Ingredients to Avoid in Some of Your Favorite Foods.” There really is no such thing as an inherently unhealthy food.
I think the whole bread-phobia thing is ridiculous. Yes, too much bread will make you fat, just as too much of anything will make you fat. If it fits into your macros, it’s fine.
@bret k - More and more research is coming out that is casting doubt on the insulin = fat storage theory. See work by Jaimie Hale for more.
Eric
Thanks for the heads up. I will look into Jaimie Hale and am excited to read what I find.
I will say that such findings would go against what I have personally observed in my own body. I, honestly, notice a difference (both in performance and body composition) when I stray to “bad-carbs” like bread. But I will take a look with an open mind, knowing that my own observations could be due to something else, or due to my own personal make up.
Again, I suggest Dr. Sears’ Zone books, because even if insulin does not lead to fat storage, it does lead to inflammation, heart disease and diabetes.
Mehdi,
In your 7 breakfast recipes, you mention quark. What is quark?
Thanks and keep up the great work,
Greg
Firstly, I wouldn’t change a thing on that list.
Secondly, like Bret K, I’ve noticed a huge difference since dropping bread and other grains. However, I would say that it hasn’t been an easy thing for me to do. Initially I got frustrated, as I felt that once I cut all that crap out, what the hell was left? Encouraged by my quick results, I persevered and am now at the position where I find it easier i.e. find some decent protein source, chuck in some veggies and that’s it.
Forgetting bread’s insulin spiking attribute; nutritionally, it loses out in a big way to vegetables.
What about those Kashi food products i.e. Almond Flax cereal.? I looked at the ingredients and there are no sugars and artificial flavors.
All this banter makes me want to eat bread and be fat. Doesn’t everyone realize that everyone is different, and telling one guy he’s gonna be fat from eating bread is as ridiculous as some knucklehead saying we can eat all the salt we want because we will just sweat it out? Maybe people just like to her themselves playing expert.
OK, I’m off to eat some soil and wash it down with water.
Oh, and if I hear ONE MORE PERSON reference our prehistoric ancestors…remember…they ALSO figgered out how to COOK MEAT with fire and make clothes when we evolved beyond having our own fur. Go club yourself. ;^)
at least someone has some sense firehiker.
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