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Eating breakfast has been linked to good health, better memory, and lower risk of problems like diabetes or heart disease. That makes breakfast a pretty important meal of the day, right?
But when breakfast foods aren’t as “healthy” or “guilt-free” as they claim, it can be difficult for health-conscious consumers. Here are a few breakfast food items that aren’t quite as healthy as one would think they are.
Make sure you check labels carefully before purchasing these items.
Yogurt is usually advertised as a healthy food. Yogurt can promote bone health, aid digestion, and offers plenty of important nutrients. However, not all yogurt is created equal.
The flavored yogurt that you are likely to find on your grocery store’s shelves is likely to have more sugar than cake or other desserts. They can also contain artificial flavoring, dyes, and artificial sweeteners.
Opt for Greek yogurt, Australian yogurt, unsweetened yogurt, or Icelandic yogurt instead of those flavored yogurts. They’ll offer a lot of benefits, like protein, calcium, vitamins, and probiotics, without adding a ton of sugar or other additives to your diet.
Store-bought granola is obviously more convenient than making your own granola at home, but the granola on grocery shelves is not always as nutritious of an option. The oats will still provide you with fiber and iron, and the nuts and seeds will give you protein and unsaturated fats, there’s still likely a ton of sugar lurking in there, too.
It can be hard to spot the extra sugar in granola, too, since companies know that consumers will check the label. It won’t always show up as high-fructose corn syrup or even just sugar. Instead, it will be hiding under healthier-sounding names, like oat syrup solids, evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup, or molasses.
No matter how much better they sound, they’re still sugar sources that you should be eating less of to stay healthy.
I know that bacon is a favorite of many, so it’s understandable that people might be looking for a healthier alternative to the traditional port option. And sure, it sounds like it might be healthier, right? The reality here, though, is that turkey bacon isn’t really any better for you than opting for the regular stuff.
Just like regular pork bacon, turkey bacon is high in saturated fat and sodium. Turkey bacon does have lower overall fat content when compared to pork bacon, but it’s still high in saturated fat that contributes to heart disease, anyway. And while it contains fewer calories, the difference is so minimal that it’s hardly worth mentioning.
The key here is to limit your intake of bacon, regardless of whether it’s pork or turkey, instead of switching to turkey bacon and eating a lot of it, thinking that you’re eating something healthy.
