The Healthy Bee

Starting a diet doesn’t have to be a total change in the food you normally eat, but by making healthy food substitutions you can get started the next time you go to the grocery store. I’ve met many people who believe that low fat foods are going to taste terrible, but from my experience many are very difficult to tell from the original. In this article I’ve listed some suggestions that I use often on how to start making healthy food substitutions in your diet.

Try a turkey or a veggie product instead of the of the beef or pork version. I’ve been doing this for many years now and the alternatives are quite good as well with less than half the calories and fat, sometimes even less than that. Products out there are sausage, bacon, burgers, pepperoni, and so many others.

If you drink milk try to scale down from whole milk. Switch to 2%, 1%, or if you like the taste skim milk. I’ve been drinking skim for a long time to and now I really don’t like the fat in the others, it’s just too thick. There is enough fat in the foods most people eat every day that having fat in your beverage is unnecessary.

Switch to diet soda or cut out soda all together if you can. Let’s say you drink 5-6 12 ounce cans a day, that can be anywhere between 500 and 700 calories in regular sodas. That is a large portion of your calories for the day, and it is all sugar. If you will cut out soda and you will see some weight lost.

Try eating salsa instead of other fatty dips or cream based spreads. Salsa is delicious and comes in about countless different varieties. Most types have no or little fat, low calories and contain vitamins. Next time you are at the store compare a container of french onion dip to a jar of salsa. Salsa is much better for you.

Deep frying foods can turn something healthy into something very bad for you. Take a chicken breast for example, naturally they are quite healthy, but all that oil used in frying just won’t allow it. Instead of deep frying take that that same piece with some lemon juice, garlic, and black pepper, bake it and now it’s still tasty as well as good for you.

If you buy canned produce make sure you read the label first. Many of the vegetables will have salt added to them and many of the fruits have additional sugar. When in doubt buy fresh or frozen produce. Frozen produce can be just as beneficial as fresh with the bonus of having a longer shelf life. If you buy canned tuna make sure to get the kind packed in water not oils, as the oil adds plenty of extra fat and calories that are unnecessary.

These are just a few substitutions you can use in your diet to replace some foods that aren’t very good for you. Remember don’t change everything at once; try to find substitutions you really do like, and then experiment with new ones. Start making these healthy food substitutions and your body will thank you for it down the road.



By: Michael Marquette

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Men and women who are doing their best to stick to a diet and lose weight often look for what has come to be known as healthy food, food labelled as “low fat”, “fat free” or “diet”. Since people don’t always read the labels and since the producers do their best to conceal the effect of such foods, it’s no wonder that some people fail to lose as much weight as possible on a particular diet. Trying really hard to stay away from sweets and sodas is useless when the supposedly healthy food makes it harder to lose pounds.

The biggest problem is the fact that a lot of healthy foods contain ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oil and plain sugar. This is the trick that producers use to sell food labelled healthy, despite it not being so. The words “fat free” is printed in attractive letters on the label, but nowhere does it say that the lack of fat is more than compensated for by the sugar content. While producers have to meet a certain standard in order to be able to call their foods “low fat” or “fat free”, there are no regulations for the word “diet”.

Be careful when buying yogurt and all sorts of yogurt-based desserts because the dairy companies really like to brag about their support of healthier lifestyles. Since people who like yogurt worry about the quantity of fat found in such products, the dairy companies have rushed to launch low fat and fat free versions of their best selling brands. What they are not very eager to tell the world is that desserts need sugar and that “low fat” doesn’t mean “no sugar”. In fact, customers may be very surprised to find that the low fat yogurt may be the equivalent of a candy bar, in terms of sugar.

Energy bars are another problem. People like them because the drastic cut in calories, which is one of the basic features of every diet, puts energy reserves under severe strain. It’s hard to get through the day and does all the things one’s used to do during the first couple of weeks of dieting, when the body is still adjusting to the lower intake of food. Energy bars sound like a great way of getting through the day without eating, but it’s not that simple. The main source of energy for the body contained in energy bars is, of course, sugar.

And let’s not forget fruit juices. A lot of people like to drink their daily helping of fruits instead of eating it, but fresh fruits and fruit juices are not the same thing. Producers need to add various substances to juices in order to keep them from spoiling. They also add sugar to juices, because some fruits are not naturally sweet enough to suit the tastes of customers. It is useless to say that all that extra sugar is not good for people trying to lose weight. The best thing to do is to skip juices and eat fresh fruits.



By: MN Nikk

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