Weight Loss Tip

 

Five Deadly Sins (Ok 5 fat producing foods to think about!)

Try your best to minimise these unhealthy foods from your diet — or eat them on rare occasions only:

1. Rice Cakes

They may have been touted as the ultimate diet food during the low-fat & no-fat craze of the late 1980s and 1990s, but don’t be fooled. Rice cakes can have a glycaemic index rating as high as 91 (pure glucose has a rating of 100), making it the kind of carbohydrate that will send your blood sugar on a roller coaster ride. This is bad for weight loss and for your health.

2. Fat-Free Salad Dressing

Fat-free salad dressings are a perfect example of good food gone bad. Salad dressing is the perfect combination of vinegar (which helps control blood sugar) and plant oils (full of essential fatty acids and sometimes antioxidants). However, an irrational fear of dietary fats has forced food companies to mess around with this perfect blend. The resulting fat-free salad dressings have introduced sugar and high fructose corn syrup, un-pronounceable emulsifying agents, and other food science secrets used to make the unnatural seem natural.

3. Shark

The risk benefit ratio of eating fish (The benefits of omega-3 fats versus the risk of mercury) typically falls in favour of the omega-3 fats and their incredible health effects. Shark is one of the exceptions. Despite having an omega-3 fat content similar to tuna, shark contains almost three times the amount of mercury. Tilefish is another high mercury low omega-3 fish that should be avoided.

4. Refined and Re-Fortified Grains

Unfortunately this rules out a majority of the carbohydrates found on supermarket shelves. Refined and re-fortified grains are grain-based foods like certain breakfast cereals, pastas and rice products that have been refined such that the naturally occurring fibre, vitamins and minerals have been removed. Companies then replace the fibre and synthetic versions of the vitamins and minerals that were initially removed. Sometimes (and this is really sneaky) they put everything back in naturally occurring ratios so that they can still claim the food contains ‘whole grains’.

A great tip - Just eat the real unfortified stuff in the first place.

5. Grits

Another hyper-refined carbohydrate, grits are the small leftover pieces from corn processing. Nutritionally speaking, grits lack significant amounts of vitamins or minerals. They contain a minute amount of fibre and no essential fats. Their flavour is lacking and thus butter or heavy cream is used to make them palatable, bringing together the blood-vessel-destroying, unholy marriage of simple carbohydrates and saturated fat.

Happy eating!