Good diet and nutrition is a vitally important part of your wellness. Food is fuel for the body and the better quality the fuel you put in, the better performance your body will give out. It really is as simple as that. In addition, maintaining a healthy weight is important for your wellbeing, and this and only be achieved through good nutrition.
It can be a minefield, however, and many snacks that you may think of as healthy can actually be terribly bad for you. We’ve taken a look at some of the worst culprits and listed them here so that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that these are a healthy alternative.
- Veggie chips. Whilst these seem very healthy – with the word ‘veggie’ built into the product title – they often don’t contain any vegetables at all! Instead, the popular snacks are made from vegetable flour and contain a lot of fat and empty calories, as well as tons of salt.
- Energy bars. Unless you are an athlete training for an event, the high calorie bars are not suitable for you. The energy in them is also often not very effective energy forms, such as fructose, corn syrup and chocolate. Eating one of these is no different (and sometimes worse) to eating a candy bar.
- Low fat peanut butter. Unfortunately, what they take out in fat, they make up for in sugar! This means higher calories overall. This is doubly annoying when you consider that the fats they have removed are actually healthy monounsaturated fat, not the kind you want to try to avoid. Look for natural brands and keep control of your portion sizes.
- Trail mix. Dried fruit and nuts are extremely unhealthy. They are full of fat and calories, thanks to the sugar which drenches the dried fruit, and the nuts are very high in salt content. Some even contain high-calorie additions such s chocolate chips.