Common Diet Traps

Walk into any big grocery store and you're in for a sensory onslaught: a blinding variety of packaged edibles, each one of these manufactured to send you into a food coma before you ingest a single calorie.

Embellished on nearly every container, bag, or jar is a multitude of nutritional claims, mainly screaming out loud for you to buy them. The thing is, these claims aren't exactly what they seem to be. They're a marketing ploy, pure and straightforward. And as you grow older, you should be more careful concerning the purchases which you make. Ensure that you buy the ones that aren't loaded with sugar or additives for the reason that you're health could pay the big price.

You should know the packaging tactics that make you believe you're buying the right foods for your health but instead attract you into wasting on poor quality. Learn to decode the labels so you can sort out the bad from the good and save a lot of cash in the process. Remember, numbers can be deceiving. A few products claim that they have less amount of fat per gram, and what you don't take into consideration is the term gram. This doesn't amount too much, so to add taste, the manufacturers might replace that one gram of fat with three grams of refined flour and sugar. This is hardly a trade-off.

Also remember that "healthy" logos are bought, not just earned. There's a proliferation of a variety of brands that come from other countries. There are a few that wear the Heart Association seal like a badge of honor, still they have more sugar than you would imagine. If you read the fine print below the logo, it merely meets the food criteria for saturated fat and cholesterol. In other words, it could have a pound of sugar and even then be eligible. How is this possible, you ask? Companies pay for the logo to appear on the product. Therefore, select the unsweetened versions of what you need and merely add cinnamon or honey for the taste. Also, claims that it comes from a good source can be questionable.

Don't be fooled by trademarks offering foods as "good" sources of vitamins and minerals: a serving requires just 10 percent of the recommended daily value of a specific nutrient to actually be eligible. At times, one piece doesn't meet this. You may have to eat 10 servings (or even the entire box and then some) to get the amount you need for the day. If you're devouring boxes of pastries to get your daily requirement, a lack of calcium will the least of your problems. To get what your body requires, stick with nature’s multivitamins: fruits, veggies, low-fat dairy, and lean meats. Whereas with fortified cookies, your calcium comes with only sugar. When you take in the bone-builder of milk and cheese, you also get a healthy dose of fat-burning, muscle-making protein.

Always be cautious since health benefits may just be exaggerated. Canned green teas, for example, might not be as packed with free-radical killers all the time. Too boost your catechin levels, make your own tea and let it steep for about five minutes.

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