Diet & Fitness 

Advertisement

Just how healthy are 'health foods'?

We generally trust that 'health foods' will benefit us in the way they claim to, but just how good for us are they?

• Cereals
• Breakfast/cereal bars
• Pre-prepared salads
• Fruit juices/fruit yoghurt
• Canned soups
• Truly healthy foods

Cereals

We're often told to start the day with a nutritious bowl of cereal. While breakfast cereals contain vital vitamins and minerals, what the experts don't tell us is that they are also laden with sugar, salt and saturated fats.

Nutrition expert Anna Parton says: 'Cereals are a great way to start the day, but be careful to avoid high sugar varieties. Even muesli can have a lot of fat and sugar because of the nuts which will push up the fat content, so not a great choice if you're slimming.' Instead, Parton advises, 'go for porridge or an oat-based cereal to help stabilise your blood sugar.'

Breakfast/cereal bars

Like breakfast cereals, these are full of sugar and saturated fats, shattering their image as a nutritious, low-fat and low-salt nibble.

A nutrition report by Which? claimed that hidden fats in cereal bars made them every bit as unhealthy as junk foods - a far cry from their image as a healthy alternative to cereal.

Parton says: 'They can sometimes have the same fat and sugar content as a chocolate bar! Remember, manufacturers want you to buy their product so just because it says "healthy", it doesn't necessarily mean it is healthy!'

Pre-prepared salads

Pre-prepared and ready-washed salads are a godsend for those of us who lead busy lives, but they are often washed in chlorine, not water.

The chlorine is used to disinfect the salad and kill bacteria, but it also destroys the vitamins and minerals. It can be rinsed in up to 200 times the amount of chlorine found in tap water, although most of the residue is removed to ensure it meets government safety regulations. The chlorine can react with the sap from the salad leaves to create chloramines, which are a common cause of eye and respiratory problems.

Organic salads cannot be washed using chlorine. Countries such as Germany, Denmark, Holland and France do not allow salads to be washed with any more chlorine than is found in tap water.

'I'm not really concerned about trace amounts of chlorine; I'm just pleased that people are having a salad in the first place!' says Parton. 'However, some salads can come with a very high-calorie dressing so "healthy" becomes unhealthy, especially if they are very oily or creamy.'

Delicious     Digg     reddit     Facebook     StumbleUpon

  Get the latest iVillage news on your desktop    Sign up for more iVillage RSS feeds

© iVillage Limited 2000-2008. All rights reserved. | © iVillage inc. 1995-2008. All rights reserved.
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB