“fake’ health foods

A lot of the processed food out there is unapologetic in it being bad for you. They don’t claim to be good for you. The consumer understands it. The manufacturer understands it.  Everyone is in agreement here. Nobody is going to throw a fit if someone says oreos or doritos aren’t particularly healthy. However, there is an emerging category of foods that seem to be marketed toward the health conscious crowd, which are not all that healthy. The food manufacturers seem to be trying to pull a fast one on someone who wants to eat healthy, but may be just starting out and is therefore a little naive. Many of the foods on this list started out as healthy, but through a bunch of food engineering nonsense, are shadows of their former selves. Others are still junk food, just made with slightly less crap ingredients, with a label like “organic” or “fat free” slapped on the box. You could almost compare them to polished turds: slightly better than the original, but only very, very, VERY, slightly. I will go into each in detail and explain what about them is misleading and why they should be avoided. 

Yogurt

The first one that comes to mind and the reason why I wanted to write this blog post. Yogurt. Most of you reading this probably think yogurt is healthy. And yes, SOME yogurt is healthy. But many are only slightly different from the common tub of ice cream you may find in the freezer section. What even is yogurt to begin with? Yogurt is a food produced by the fermentation of milk. This process changes the structure of the proteins, giving yogurt its texture. In its most raw form, yogurt is a fantastic food. It is naturally high in protein, healthy fats, and probiotics (due to the fermentation process), which are great for our digestive system. The problem here is plain unprocessed yogurt doesn’t taste like you may expect. It has sort of a bland, milky, slightly tangy taste. Most yogurt you see at the store doesn’t resemble this at all. They have been heavily modified with added sugar, preservatives, artificial flavorings, and other nonsense to try to make them more palatable. Sometimes they remove some of the protein and/or the probiotics to try to improve the taste, texture, and shelf life. They have taken something that is one of the greatest foods a human can consume, in my opinion, and made it into a glorified dessert. If they marketed it as a dessert, that would be one thing. At least the consumer knows what they are buying. The problem is this is marketed as a healthy option, when it is not. The type of yogurt you want to reach for is a bulgarian or greek style yogurt with no other added ingredients. It should say that it has live and active cultures. (as opposed to those that did have them before they were heat treated to be more shelf stable, thus killing the probiotics) This will be a protein rich option that you can add to smoothies or serve with fruit and/or nuts as a fantastic meal or snack.

Granola, granola bars, energy bars

Most commercial granola, granola bars, and/or energy bars are just glorified cereal or candy/cereal bars in disguise. They often have tons of added sugar, added oils, artificial fillers, flavorings, and binders, and are usually devoid of protein, making them not very satiating. This would be ideal for a cyclist or runner going out for a long ride or run through the mountains, who need easy and quick digestible calories to get through their workout. But for the average person, it’s a recipe for disaster. These items are only slightly better for you than the lucky charms you may have in your pantry. They may have a little more fiber but that’s basically it. Maybe some dried fruit is added for a little antioxidant boost if you’re lucky. They are just calorie bombs with little other benefits. Don’t get fooled into thinking that because it says whole grain on the package it must be healthy. 

Trail mix

Trail mix sort of falls into the same box as the above example. It's slightly better than the granola depending on what is in it. (if it's just dried fruit and nuts) The nuts and dried fruit that most trail mixes have are fine in moderation. The problem is eating them in isolation is just not a very good snack. They are calorically dense and not very satiating making them very easy to overeat. The bigger problem with trail mix is whatever else they throw in there. I’ve seen m&m’s, pretzel sticks, little crackers, granola chunks, cereal pieces, chocolate chips, etc. It's a way for food manufacturers to use up whatever they have sitting on their shelves they want to get rid of. They just throw it all in a package together and voila!... trail mix. Maybe toss an old package of fajita seasoning in there and call it “santa fe trail mix”. Again, this would be fine if it wasn’t marketed as something healthy. If you want to eat a hodgepodge of random stuff thrown together in a bag, be my guest. Just know that like granola, it’s Ideal for active people who need something on the go. It’s not ideal for sitting in front of your computer for 8 hours at the office. Unless you’re hiking ten miles through the mountains, skip this one. 

Pre-Packaged Oatmeal

Oatmeal is generally a healthy option, especially for athletes. It provides sustained energy as well as a bunch of healthy minerals and fiber. It really is the breakfast of champions. (sorry wheaties). I even have a supped-up version in my recipe section. You can check that out here. My issue is with the pre-packaged, pre-portioned ones that come in a colorful box, often with a bunch of added sugar. Those dinosaur egg oatmeal packets commonly marketed to children are a great example. The oatmeal is not the problem. It’s what they added to it. Those “dino eggs” are basically little balls of sugar, artificial flavors and preservatives, and processed oils. This is a common theme in our food system today. I could point out countless examples of food manufacturers taking what is an otherwise healthy option, adding a bunch of sugar and artificial flavors, and then sticking it in a box with a colorful mascot on the cover. If you want a healthy option, go for the real thing, not the colorful adulterated version.

Vitamin/sports drinks

Hopefully nowadays, most of the public can understand that Gatorade is not something that most people should be drinking on a regular basis. It’s basically just artificially flavored, chemically dyed, sugar and electrolyte water. For an athlete performing during hard exercise, it’s a fine option to maintain fluid balance and provide extra calories if the exercise demands that. (The type of exercise that demands it is multi hour long endurance work or multiple sets of hard sprint style activity. Getting on a stationary bike for 30 min does not earn you a Gatorade) But other than that specific circumstance, it’s not appropriate for optimal health. In the circumstance of a sedentary person or even an active person who is not currently engaging in exercise, it’s no better than soda. It’s soda without the fizz and with added electrolytes. 

There are a number of “vitamin drinks” that seem to be marketed as sort of a liquid multivitamin, but in reality they are just Gatorade fortified with vitamins and minerals. We’re back to the same problem with sports drinks. These vitamin drinks are soda without the fizz, with added electrolytes, but also vitamins and minerals. They are going to cause the same problems for someone not exercising.

Fake nut butters

I’m mainly talking about Nutella here, but I’ve seen some other examples of this come up in recent years. I think most people nowadays know that Nutella isn’t that great for you, but that wasn’t always the case. It took a while for the public to catch on. For the uninitiated, Nutella is a chocolate hazelnut spread, like peanut butter. Doesn’t sound too bad for you, right? Hazelnuts are healthy. Let’s take a peek at the ingredients. The first ingredient listed is sugar. For those that aren’t aware, the ingredients on food labels are listed in descending order of weight. The first ingredient is the ingredient most abundant. Sugar being the first ingredient listed is therefore not a great start here. The second ingredient is palm oil. There is more fat in this stuff coming from processed oils than the hazelnuts it claims to contain. This is not a chocolate hazelnut spread, it’s chocolate frosting with a bit of hazelnuts. It’s cake frosting. In supermarkets, it should be found in the baked goods aisle next to the whipped cream and cake mixes, not the aisle with the almond butter. I’ve seen other examples of this crop up. Cookie butter, which is literally blended up cookies. Granola butter, which is just the granola we talked about earlier but blended into a spread. I’ve even seen Oreo butter. Blended up Oreos with some oils and binders added to make it have that peanut butter consistency. All of these are just glorified cake frosting. Have these on a special occasion and treat them for what they are: dessert. 

Pre-mixed fruit smoothies

I’m not a fan of fruit juice to begin with. They’ve basically taken all the positive things about fruit, stripped them away, and left the sugar. Sugar in whole fruit is fine because it's protected by the antioxidants, fiber, minerals, and plenty of other beneficial compounds found in whole fruit. Don’t get me wrong here, juice is certainly better than soda or energy drinks, but whole fruit is what you should be aiming for. At the very least, get something fresh squeezed, without any other added ingredients. It's not great, but it's not terrible for you. Don’t go nuts on it. Some of the pre-mixed fruit smoothies I see on the shelves are another story. I said that if you are going for fruit juice, get JUST the juice. Well, these pre-mixed fruit smoothies often have a bunch of added sugar, fillers, binders, and a bunch of other nonsense. If you want an analogy here, pre-mixed fruit smoothies are to whole fruit juice, what Starbucks’ flavored frappucinos are to a cup of black coffee. To top it all off, they’re often sold right next to the whole fruits in the produce section. The bottles often have health claims about how many different fruits they contain, or all the micronutrients they have, or how rich in antioxidants they are. In reality, these are just processed sugar bombs. Not all that much better than Gatorade. If you can find it, opt for a pre-mixed smoothie that is made with blended whole fruits and vegetables (meaning it still has the fiber) and nothing else added. It will likely be kinda chunky and you will have to shake it to mix it all back up. And even this isn’t better than just eating an apple. Better yet, make your own smoothie at home. If you don’t need to drink Gatorade, you should probably skip the juice as well

Veggie chips

Veggie chips are marketed as a healthier alternative to regular potato chips. They often have pictures of tomatoes, carrots, and broccoli on the packaging, signaling these are made with healthy ingredients. The sad truth is this is just trading one unhealthy food for another. Most of these chips are made in the same way as regular potato chips. Heavily processed, fried in cheap oils, imbued with a bunch of lab-made chemicals to increase shelf life and taste. The only difference is swapping the potatoes for a blend of vegetable powders. Sure it might be slightly healthier, but at the end of the day, it’s still a heavily processed, pseudo-franken-food made in a lab. The main problem I have with these foods is again, people see these as a healthier alternative when they are really not. Just because there are vegetables on the packaging doesn’t make them good for you. I fear people eating these without remorse because they see them as healthy. If people were to eat regular potato chips, at least they would understand what they were eating was not good for them and may involuntarily limit their consumption. 

In a similar vein, baked potato chips are not a healthy enough alternative either. Sure, baking is better than deep frying, but the end product is still heavily processed, full of additives, preservatives, and artificial flavorings. Also the chips are still soaked in oil before baking. You’re still getting the same cooked potato shaving soaked in oil you’re getting with the standard chip. It’s still low in satiety, and devoid of any beneficial nutrition other than raw calories. 

 Protein bars

I really debated whether I wanted to put protein bars on this list. They are certainly the healthiest thing on this list by far. If you had to choose one thing on this list to be your vice, protein bars would be the best choice. That being said, most protein bars are still very heavily processed. They often contain artificial sweeteners, cheap binders, and often really low quality protein blends. There are only a very small number of protein bars on the market that would fit my quality standards. Some brands are ok if you’re on the road or in a hurry, but they should not be a staple of your diet by any means. They are not a replacement for real food, which is going to be better for you 99% of the time. Some of the protein bars I’ve seen, though, are reaching a new standard of low. The Mars candy company recently released a protein bar version of the Snickers and Mars bar. Hershey’s has a line of protein bars now. The manufacturers have basically taken a standard candy bar and added some cheap protein blend to it and are trying to market them as healthy. I see this all the time. Gatorade makes a protein bar that’s not much better than any of these.  Instead of the candy aisle, they are sold next to the protein powder or vitamins in the health food section. If you really need a protein bar, at a bare minimum, the standard is 10g of protein per 100 calories. If the calories are any higher than that, it’s not a good option. The lower the calories the better. The best ones I’ve seen on the market are something like 150 calories for close to 30 grams of protein, and even those ones are full of artificial junk. I would opt for a high quality jerky or biltong any day over a protein bar. 

“Protein” Processed Foods

To sort of go along with the above example, just adding cheap protein to an otherwise crappy, cheap processed food doesn't magically make it healthy. There are plenty of examples of this: protein cereal, protein granola, protein crackers, chips, cookies. If this isn’t a perfect example of a polished turd, I don’t know what is. Sorry to shit in your corn flakes (pardon my pun), but adding a cheap soy protein blend to a batch of cheerios doesn’t suddenly negate all the other processed junk in the formula and somehow make it good for you. Even if they had some integrity and used a high quality, more expensive whey protein, it wouldn’t cut it. It’s still junk. Cereal is cereal. 

Plant-based milks

Along the same line as protein bars, this one is a bit of a grey area. Pure nut milks from something like almonds or coconut are perfectly fine and a great alternative to milk if you have a problem with lactose. The problem with most of the milk alternatives you see on the market is they are not pure. Many companies will add fillers, gums, emulsifiers, or binders to make a more consistent texture and prevent the milk from splitting (this is where the oil begins to separate from water, which can happen if the plant milk sits on the shelf too long). Sometimes they will add artificial flavorings like vanilla or chocolate, or just straight up sugar to make it taste better. They will often add canola or sunflower oils as well, to increase yield. I recommend opting for a brand that has the least amount of ingredients possible. If you can find one that is pure almond or coconut milk that would be ideal.  There are also tutorials on making your own that can be found online that will save you a lot of money if you are willing to learn. 

“Fake” Vegan Foods

This category refers to vegan versions or alternatives to otherwise non-vegan foods. I’m mainly talking about fake vegan animal products here, but I’ve seen a lot of weird processed food products that are marketed toward vegans or plant-based people over the years. Most of these are heavily processed like the rest of this list, and the fact they are technically vegan doesn’t suddenly make them good for you. Oreos and potato chips (depending on ingredients) are technically vegan. The idea behind a vegan diet is plant based whole foods. Opting for a bunch of processed nonsense seems like cheating to me. You’re still supporting food companies that likely sell other products that aren’t vegan, so in a way you’re indirectly going against the principles of veganism. 

In terms of the fake meat products specifically, they are right up there with some of the most heavily processed lab made franken-foods you can find at the supermarket. They often have over 20 ingredients listed on the label, most of which are lab-derived chemicals rather than “food” ingredients. Say what you want about the positive or negative health efficacy of real meat and cheese. If you want to argue about swapping meat and cheese for whole food plant based protein sources, that’s one thing, but you can’t tell me these fake lab made meat and cheese alternatives are a healthier swap compared to the real thing.

Trendy buzzwords 

This last category doesn’t single out any one food, but is more of an educational piece on slick marketing buzzwords many companies will slap on products to try to make them “seem” more healthy. Terms like natural, fat free, whole grain, zero grams trans fat, gluten-free, plant based, etc. You know what doesn’t have these labels? A container of strawberries. A sweet potato. A frozen pack of chicken breast or salmon. Whole foods. Whole foods don’t need health claims because the healthy food speaks for itself.  If you see claims like these on a box, what they are saying is likely true, but misleading. If a heavily processed food is fat free for example, they likely added a ton of sugar to compensate. Low fat peanut butter is a great example. They basically took out most of the fat and replaced it with sugar. You went from regular peanut butter to peanut flavored cake icing. I’d say they made it worse, health-wise. On the flip side, if a normally sweet food is listed as sugar free, what kind of buffoonery did they have to do to it to make it taste even remotely palatable? Crackers or cookies listed as organic or whole grain may indeed contain organic/whole grain ingredients. Great. That doesn't change the fact that it’s still processed junk food. Making junk food out of slightly less junky ingredients is still junk. 

The main takeaway from this discussion is that processed foods are still processed foods. All the slick marketing or ingredient swapping won’t change that. I don’t care how careful you are sourcing the ingredients, a reeses cup is not going to be good for you. Processed foods should be limited as much as possible. Always go for the single ingredient foods with as little processing as possible. Foods are best in their whole food form. Beware of trendy buzzwords and claims that stretch the truth and don’t fall for gimmicky marketing or outlandish claims.