Healthy Myths You Should Know About

I visited with a nutritionist for the first time in my life within the last six months. We only met a handful of times, but the things I learned from her (and my continued study) have been illuminating. I found myself thinking 'Why didn't anyone tell me that?!" many times. So here is a list of health myths I want to share with you that I wish I had known years ago.
 

The Diet Soda Lie

If you are a person who loves their soda, of course, choosing Diet of Regular is a great idea.  You are saving yourself a lot of sugar and calories.  But chugging diet soda, with it's promise of zero calories, while dietitng can be a big mistake and here's why...

 

Carbonation is a gas and can bloat your stomach.  If you drink a lot of it some research suggests that it can stratech out your stomach, therefore making it larger and needing more food to feel satisfied.  Carbonation also (generally) has a lot of sodium, elading to water weight gain, higher blood pressure and other harmful effects.

 

Caffeine in diet soda is also a problem (oh, how I used to love my Dr. Pepper 10!).  Caffeine raises your blood pressure temporarily and some researcehrs say that teh constant increase and decreases of that number can but strain on the heart. Caffeine also effects bone density in women.  Not good.

  

The Fruit Juice Lie

Man, when I was young I could really down the orange juice.  I would often think about how 'healthy' I was being.  But fruit juice has TONS of added sugar.  Giving standard fruit juice to your kids is a riisky business and drinking it for weightloss is a bad idea.  Fruit is great and much needed, so ALWAYS buy fruit juice which has NO SUGAR ADDED or 100% JUICE.  It's pretty easy to find these days and they even make juice boxes for kids with No Sugar Added.  Make sure to check the ingredients.  For instance, apple juice should only say "apples, water and asorbic acid".

 

Kid taste-testers for Consumer Reports loved:

Apple & Eve 100% Juice Very Berry AND Apple & Eve 100% Juice Orange Tangerine

 

 

The Meal Replacement Bar Lie

One piece of advice. Check the SUGAR.  There are a lot of protein bars, low-carb bars and energy bars out there, but what you don't realize is they cover the healthy ingredients with LOTS of sugar.  Check the labels. 

 

I have found a great all around bar for low carb, high protein and low sugar is from the Atkins line.  While I don't agree with the Atkins Diet approach to eating a large cheese pizza without the crust or bacon and eggs for breakfast every day, their meal replacement bars taste good and have the best overall nutrition I have found.