This post was inspired by this tifu:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/ww76wy/tifu\_drinking\_water\_gave\_me\_kidney\_stones/
There are many foods out there that are full of the worst possible shit but companies are still trying to sell them as healthy. Granola bars, diet yogurts, gluten free snacks and so on.
Is there a food that you were tricked into eating because you thought it was healthy and then turned out to be junk food?
Fruit juice.
My entire life I thought that fruit juice was just fruit and water so I drank a 1/2 gallon every day at least. 100% juice and not from concentrate.
Now I see that I was just ingesting massive amounts of sugar without the fiber. Oh… and heavy metals. Probably pesticides too.
Kinda ashamed of this one, but it took me until late highschool to realize kids cereal was super bad for you (fruit loops, lucky charms, etc)
I always read the back of the box and saw dozens of minerals like iron and thought it was a super food.
This thread is full of huge misconceptions and sweeping generalizations. I would not take what you read in here as fact or as a reason to change some of your dieting habits. If you are really interested in getting true dietary advice, I would recommend visiting a real educated dietician. There are also great free resources on YouTube such as Jeff Nippard: https://youtube.com/c/JeffNippard
Edit: Don’t let anyone convince you that peanut butter, bananas, tofu, yogurts and sushi are all just “junk food.” Moderation is key with anything, and most food consumption should be looked at formulaically and apart of a balanced diet.
I hate to put this company on blast, but I’m about to they FKED my diet.
There is a brownie/baked goods company on Instagram that touts some seriously tasty brownies with some seriously excellent macros.
Those macros are WRONG. They said there was something like 20g protein, 9g carbs, and 4g of fat.
When a skeptical body builder sent it out for independent testing, they found it was more like 35g carbs, 4g protein, 11g of fat. I was saving my macros every day to eat my brownie before bed and round out my very limited carb and fat allotment for the day. Couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t losing weight.
The company tried to go back at the bodybuilder and say he was wrong, insisted they would send their brownie in the themselves for the same independent testing. They posted their results on Instagram stories - as you know, only up for 24 hours. Never responded to follow up questions, and it quietly went away.
This company is alive and well today on Instagram and they make me FURIOUS. These people are grifters doing grifter s* and they quietly swept their lies under the rug and are peddling their snake oil brownies to this day. It would be one thing if their ratios were off by a few grams here or there. This was deliberate misinformation. The USDA won’t go after them because the company is too small.
Don’t trust ANY products on Instagram.
I used to do low fat yogurts. A lot of low fat yogurts are jacked up with sugar. They’re essentially desserts.
I also was doing peaches and cream oatmeal for a long time. It’s also got a substantial amount of sugar. I am pre diabetic, so I can’t eat it all that much anymore, though I do love it.
Full sugar Gatorade… Shouldn’t be drinking it unless you’re really killing it for a workout IMO. Also had to remove this from my diet.
Finally, canned soups - I had hypertension because of my weight being pretty up there (I was 300 lbs) and my sodium consumption. One can of soup has the potential to be well over 100% of your DV of sodium. Check the labels! I make my own soup now.
I used to switch trains at the Harvard Square T Stop every morning for work in my mid twenties (2009 ish). There was a Dunkin Donuts in the station (of course) and I convinced myself that a coffee and blueberry muffin were the healthiest option I had. After a solid year of this being my breakfast three out of five days, I stumbled across the nutritional information of a Dunks blueberry muffin and came to the realization that it would be “healthier” to eat a Big Mac three out of five days.
Anything labeled sugar free. Once I stopped consuming foods/drinks containing sweeteners and just watched my natural sugar intake (limiting to 1 fruit a day etc.) I felt so much better and had a much easier time losing weight. I don’t understand the science behind it, just empirical observation from my own experience.
At the risk of being slightly off topic, dried fruit. Slightly off topic because it’s not actually junk food or unhealthy, definitely favorable compared to candy in terms of nutrients. I’m more cautious about the portion size now because of the concentrated amount of natural sugars, I also try to avoid those with added sugar.
Those low calorie puffed rice cakes apparently have loads of arsenic in them
Read another post on here today talking about a woman with liver issues as a result of consistently eating pickles (we are talking years here)
Curious to read other comments… Glad that person passed their stone and is feeling better, ha! Watch out for soda waters, they usually have added calcium too.
Diet drinks. Always thought Diet Coke or other zero calorie pre-workout was a “healthy” alternative. Then I realized that aspartame and sucralose were messing with my gut biome, ultimately making me addicted to the zero calorie sweeteners, and likely making me crave real sugar, as well.
I adjusted my turmeric intake after this 2017 article. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5415259/
I stopped taking green tea pills (A healthy, convenient caffeine source, I thought). Then I learned it could destroy my liver. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45971416
When I was 16 I did that horrible “Special K Challenge”. If I remember correctly, I replaced 2 meals a day with the cereal and then had one meal that was mainly low-cal protein for 2 weeks. Talk about ridiculous.
This entire thread is nothing but a huge eating disorder. There’s no such thing as “evil food”. Eating ANY of this stuff is not a problem, as long as you consume it in moderation. People really need to stop looking at food this way, and just learn to be mindful about how you consume this stuff.