Scrape-Off These Foods from Your Food Diary and Choose Healthier Alternatives

Some food items might be a treat for your taste buds but can wreck our body by adding up calories. Breaking up with your favorite foods can be hard but not impossible because avoiding your favorite foods for better health and saying goodbye to your love handles can make it worth it.

Keeping away from sweet and fried foods to trim your waistline is no brainer. The important contributors to weight gain are often hidden and thus, get overlooked. Let’s scrape off these foods once and for all-

Diet Soda

A bottle of soda contains about 200 calories, so the diet version has become more popular. The diet soda, although containing negligible calories, has bad effects on health. Evidence from studies shows that consumption of diet soda increases the risk of several disease conditions like heart diseases, obesity, diabetes and conditions such as dementia and stroke. 

Healthier Alternative: Hence, it’s time to swap soda with plain water. If you are feeling innovative, add some freshly cut fruits to your regular bottle of water. Coconut water is another great choice!

• Flavored Yogurts

Flavored yogurts are often tasty and a filling snack but they are often as high in sugar as a candy bar. To compensate for the lack of fat, they are loaded with extra sugar to make them palatable. 

Healthier Alternative: You should switch to unsweetened yogurt or homemade curd. It contains more protein and has a creamier texture. Layering it with fresh fruits gives a touch of sweetness and is a great snack option. 

• Dehydrated Fruits

Although dehydrated fruit sounds like an ideal healthy snack, it can cause more harm than good. Some of the dried fruits might contain added sweeteners, such as sugar and corn syrup, as well as preservatives. Moreover, dried fruits lack enzymes that are easily available in fresh ones. Dehydrating the fruits make the sugars concentrated and reduces the nutritional value of the fruits. 

Healthier Alternative: Therefore, it is always better to consume fresh, local and seasonal whole fruits.

• Low Sodium Salts

Low-sodium salts replace some of the sodium in sodium chloride with potassium, so they’re a mixture of sodium chloride and potassium chloride. Although potassium chloride has a salt-like taste, there is a reason for sprinkling sodium chloride on our food exclusively for so many years. And that is that potassium chloride could negatively affect your health. Potassium chloride is present in our body’s cells and can help lower blood pressure. Unfortunately, it can also play havoc with your heart. So you should consult a doctor or nutritionist before including it in your diet.

Healthier Alternative: Stick to normal sodium chloride salt and sprinkle less rather than using low sodium salt. Avoid table salt.

• Packaged Foods

Packaged foods can be delicious and very convenient but they can also harm your body by raising cholesterol levels, dehydrating your body, and preventing you from losing weight. Packaged foods contain preservatives and they may promote the growth of cancer cells. Being loaded with chemicals such as colorants and artificial flavorings, these chemicals wreak havoc on your body and disturb the natural balance of your body’s metabolism. By consuming canned foods over the years, your risk for diseases such as Alzheimer’s increases because of the aluminum present in those cans.

Healthier Alternative: Opt for fresh, homemade and non processed food.

Footnote

Swapping for the healthier alternatives is not as difficult as trying to squeeze into your favorite clothes. So break up with the listed foods for a healthier you. These foods not only prevent you from losing weight, but they also put you at several health risks.