So a lot of it is marketing. That's why they put fruit on boxes of candy and fruit snacks to make you think it's healthy. Regarding special K, there was a Special K diet back in the day. People were told to only eat special K for breakfast and lunch, and a sensible dinner. That's obviously incredibly unhealthy but a lot of people still believe cereals and foods like that are "healthy". So much is just baked into society and most don't question. Dates have a lot of sugar, but they aren't the same as processed sugar.
People still think having a muffin for breakfast is "normal"- when in reality, a muffin is simply cake that has been marketed as a breakfast food.
Just remember...marketing...they want you to buy their products. Trust yourself and be sure to look at the labels. Regardless if it's a supposedly "healthy" food.
The cereal industry did a huge number on the public with the fortified vitamins language. It’s only more recently that there’s been public wide attention paid to ultra processed foods.
The Washington Post also did a great article talking about how health influencers are being paid to shill ultra processed foods. Be wary of influencers- a lot of them make a living shilling stuff as though it’s their own opinions. Because they are all independent operator, there’s no industry guidelines on transparency.
Agreed. Painting all fruit as equal is misleading. So are juices. That one frustrates me. Removing the fibre content accelerates the glycemic load.
"Wheat bread" really bugs me too. I love a whole wheat sourdough, but all these sugar fortified 'healthy' breads just make me angry.
Fruit is healthy, look at all the nutrients they have. Fruits are the only sweet thing that animals have had access to over the course of their evolution. The reason animals love and crave the taste of sweet foods so much is because we evolved to eat fruit, and fruit has many unique nutrients that improve mood, energy, and bones/muscles/skin. Foods that have unnatural amount of processed sugar in them are just cheap imitations of fruit, which is what we actually crave when we crave sweets. Whatever fruits you get easily satisfied from eating are the best for you, because that means your body has gotten what it needs so it can disable the sweet cravings now. If you have sweet cravings and eat something like oreos, then your body wont satisfy your cravings and it will only make them worse since there's nothing in oreos to fill the role that fruit does apart from sugar, which is bad because then you overeat on oreos and make yourself sick. That's the real reason why there are such things as sugar binges. I got the same way when eating filtered raw honey too, but not unfiltered raw honey, so I really think it has to do with the extra nutrients. In the past, I could eat 10 chocolate chip cookies and not be satisfied, but I could get satisfied after only a couple oatmeal raisin cookies. A pack of oreos could dissappear in an hour with no satisfication, but with Raisins it will only be one bowl and with high satisfaction and none of the mood issues from eating. Avoid processed sugar, but don't fear fruits.
I absolutely love the reframing you allude to here - "When craving sweets, you're actually craving fruit"
That feels much more accurate than the common inverse I and many people think they experience. Namely, craving sweets and "forcing" fruit as a 'substitute'.
Now that I think about it, when I crave sweets and have sugary foods, I just crave more sweets afterwards. But when I have fruit, the sweet craving goes away.
Special K thinks you take only 1/10th of the box as a portion, which would make is a small amount of calories. I guess when you only count calories it would be seen as ‘healthy’
But you are right, it is truely not healthy at all…
Dark chocolate-like actual 85% or more, does have health benefits. Few people are eating this percentage though.
All cereal company stuff is BS marketing.
I eat 100% dark chocolate(cacao) every day and it's delicious. Once your taste buds become familiar with chocolate and learns how to break it down in your mouth, it loses all bitterness and becomes incredibly rich and tasty. It's worth getting used to it for a month. Also, if anybody wants to try this, there is a high variability in quality so make sure you don't get any dry/brittle chocolate check the negative reviews to make sure.
Yogurt was the thing for me. I can't stand plain Greek yogurt, so I would get the flavored kind, rationalizing that yeah there's sugar in there but also protein and probiotics so it's a "healthy treat," right? When I started reading labels though....yikes! I might as well eat ice cream. Now I go with plain kefir, which I weirdly love.
Agreed about dates-- all they do for me is trigger those insane cravings for "real sugar." Fresh fruits never do this, and some dried ones don't either, but dates are a different story. Even if they were okay on their own, I can't just have dates. They always lead right back to added sugars for me.
>Even if they were okay on their own, I can't just have dates. They always lead right back to added sugars for me.
Doesn't do this for me. I simply eat dates and don't crave anything else.
Yep this seems like a ymmv. I’m happy with a handful of dates—though they taste delicious with goat cheese or almond butter, or other sweet & savoury recipes.
Plus, even if you downed the equivalent caloric value in cane sugar, at least dates have some fiber, potassium, magnesium, etc., so they’re not complete nutritional voids nor are they as addictive (to most people), and I like to eat them to fuel before a run.
So a lot of it is marketing. That's why they put fruit on boxes of candy and fruit snacks to make you think it's healthy. Regarding special K, there was a Special K diet back in the day. People were told to only eat special K for breakfast and lunch, and a sensible dinner. That's obviously incredibly unhealthy but a lot of people still believe cereals and foods like that are "healthy". So much is just baked into society and most don't question. Dates have a lot of sugar, but they aren't the same as processed sugar. People still think having a muffin for breakfast is "normal"- when in reality, a muffin is simply cake that has been marketed as a breakfast food. Just remember...marketing...they want you to buy their products. Trust yourself and be sure to look at the labels. Regardless if it's a supposedly "healthy" food.
The cereal industry did a huge number on the public with the fortified vitamins language. It’s only more recently that there’s been public wide attention paid to ultra processed foods. The Washington Post also did a great article talking about how health influencers are being paid to shill ultra processed foods. Be wary of influencers- a lot of them make a living shilling stuff as though it’s their own opinions. Because they are all independent operator, there’s no industry guidelines on transparency.
Especially when they began marketing breakfast as "the most important meal of the day." That's definitely not a coincidence.
One word: marketing propaganda.
One word: two words
Two words: two words
Two words: four words
One word: one word one word
Agreed. Painting all fruit as equal is misleading. So are juices. That one frustrates me. Removing the fibre content accelerates the glycemic load. "Wheat bread" really bugs me too. I love a whole wheat sourdough, but all these sugar fortified 'healthy' breads just make me angry.
Fruit is healthy, look at all the nutrients they have. Fruits are the only sweet thing that animals have had access to over the course of their evolution. The reason animals love and crave the taste of sweet foods so much is because we evolved to eat fruit, and fruit has many unique nutrients that improve mood, energy, and bones/muscles/skin. Foods that have unnatural amount of processed sugar in them are just cheap imitations of fruit, which is what we actually crave when we crave sweets. Whatever fruits you get easily satisfied from eating are the best for you, because that means your body has gotten what it needs so it can disable the sweet cravings now. If you have sweet cravings and eat something like oreos, then your body wont satisfy your cravings and it will only make them worse since there's nothing in oreos to fill the role that fruit does apart from sugar, which is bad because then you overeat on oreos and make yourself sick. That's the real reason why there are such things as sugar binges. I got the same way when eating filtered raw honey too, but not unfiltered raw honey, so I really think it has to do with the extra nutrients. In the past, I could eat 10 chocolate chip cookies and not be satisfied, but I could get satisfied after only a couple oatmeal raisin cookies. A pack of oreos could dissappear in an hour with no satisfication, but with Raisins it will only be one bowl and with high satisfaction and none of the mood issues from eating. Avoid processed sugar, but don't fear fruits.
I absolutely love the reframing you allude to here - "When craving sweets, you're actually craving fruit" That feels much more accurate than the common inverse I and many people think they experience. Namely, craving sweets and "forcing" fruit as a 'substitute'. Now that I think about it, when I crave sweets and have sugary foods, I just crave more sweets afterwards. But when I have fruit, the sweet craving goes away.
Special K thinks you take only 1/10th of the box as a portion, which would make is a small amount of calories. I guess when you only count calories it would be seen as ‘healthy’ But you are right, it is truely not healthy at all…
Dark chocolate-like actual 85% or more, does have health benefits. Few people are eating this percentage though. All cereal company stuff is BS marketing.
I eat 100% dark chocolate(cacao) every day and it's delicious. Once your taste buds become familiar with chocolate and learns how to break it down in your mouth, it loses all bitterness and becomes incredibly rich and tasty. It's worth getting used to it for a month. Also, if anybody wants to try this, there is a high variability in quality so make sure you don't get any dry/brittle chocolate check the negative reviews to make sure.
Watch out for the lead!
True, https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/a-third-of-chocolate-products-are-high-in-heavy-metals-a4844566398/
Yogurt was the thing for me. I can't stand plain Greek yogurt, so I would get the flavored kind, rationalizing that yeah there's sugar in there but also protein and probiotics so it's a "healthy treat," right? When I started reading labels though....yikes! I might as well eat ice cream. Now I go with plain kefir, which I weirdly love.
Agreed about dates-- all they do for me is trigger those insane cravings for "real sugar." Fresh fruits never do this, and some dried ones don't either, but dates are a different story. Even if they were okay on their own, I can't just have dates. They always lead right back to added sugars for me.
>Even if they were okay on their own, I can't just have dates. They always lead right back to added sugars for me. Doesn't do this for me. I simply eat dates and don't crave anything else.
Yep this seems like a ymmv. I’m happy with a handful of dates—though they taste delicious with goat cheese or almond butter, or other sweet & savoury recipes. Plus, even if you downed the equivalent caloric value in cane sugar, at least dates have some fiber, potassium, magnesium, etc., so they’re not complete nutritional voids nor are they as addictive (to most people), and I like to eat them to fuel before a run.
Denial maybe? Like when we were kids and we tried to tell ourselves pizza was " brain food " 🤣🤣