"Healthy" Unhealthy Foods/Snacks

I think of nutrients in foods are synergetic and cumulative. Rice cakes may not have a large variety of nutrients, but they have a pretty good amount of vitamin B3, a bit magnesium (which is one of my target nutrients), a lot of manganese, and some small amounts of other minerals. They may not have vitamin C, but the nice thing is that my diet is not limited to rice cakes, I can eat green peppers for vitamin C, dairy for calcium, sunflower seeds for vitamin E...etc. It less about the specific food I eat and more about how my overall nutrient intake from all foods is doing over time.

I also think of foods as serving specific main purposes. Some foods are better at providing me with a variety of nutrients, some foods are good for bulking a meal, some foods are good for satiety, some I add for the texture for a better eating experience, some I add for the taste, and some I eat simply because they taste good and make me feel happy with my diet. One food doesn't have to serve all of these purposes. It's okay to mix and match. No food is better or worse than others for all purposes and situations.

With that said, there are snacks that make dieting harder for me. A handful of nuts is gone in seconds so the enjoyment is very short lived, doesn't fill me up, and takes up too many calories. I'm better off eating a bowl of popcorn for the calories which lasts longer and fills me up better.

foreverblissful wrote: »

I second the above commenter. Nuts are the bane of me! I over ate nuts last week and realized that 15 servings of nuts only lasted me 6 days at around 340 calories for a non-filling "thing to chew on," it was never supposed to be a full snack for me! Not putting nuts down, I love them, and they have amazingly good fats, and nutrients packed in. For the calorie cost though, I'd rather hummus and celery lol maybe even throw in a slice of cantaloupe. Still trynna find a comparably low-calorie, delicious, filling snack, but so far celery and hummus takes the cake for me.

Salted peanuts and dry roasted peanuts. Sooo delicious. My mouth is watering. Evil little suckers aren’t they?

Dazzlle22 wrote: »

I was wondering, what are some foods/snacks that you know about that are labeled as healthy but, in fact, are not good for you?
For example rice cakes are known as a "weight loss snack" because they are low in calories but they don't provide any nutrients at all and you basically eat on nothing.
Same for the 0% fat yogurt, low in calories, easy to overeat and not filling at all.
What other foods or snacks like this do you know?

I don't find it useful to think about food that way. I don't think foods are inherently healthy or unhealthy. I think it's all about dosage and context.

I'm aiming for certain calorie and nutritional goals every day. If something helps me meet those goals, it's healthy and helpful. In order to be happy, I want to consume foods that are tasty to me, and filling. In some cases, sometimes filling trumps tasty, sometimes the reverse. Other things that matter are social connection (like enjoying the food my best friend made, or celebrating another friend's wedding by eating the cake with champagne), and role of the food (like I might want those rice cakes as a handy low-cal substrate for my tasty peanut butter when I'm low on healthy fats, and don't want to eat the PB off a spoon).

Further, some of the relevant variables, especially satiation and pleasure, are very personal, individualized, subjective, i.e., different for you vs. me.

High on that "different for you vs. me" list, for example, is plain nonfat Greek yogurt. It's a wonderful contributor to my protein macro goal, I personally find it not only tasty, but very filling. It's a staple food, for me: 3 pound tubs from Costco, around one per week, every week. It doesn't need to have that role in your life, but it's true in mine.

In terms of context, there are occasions when I need a quick energy boost, and a favorite thing is a caramel green-apple sucker: Around 60 calories, all sugar. If my protein and fats and fiber and veggie/fruit intake are going to be where I need them to be that day, and I have calories for that energy-boosting high-GI sucker, it's perfect, healthy, I should eat it.

That's how I think about it. There aren't "healthy but unhealthy snacks" in some absolute way. There are foods that are useful and satisfying for me in certain situations, that would be bad choices in other situations. I need to make good choices, most of the time, in the situations I'm in.

Low fat Greek yogurt has almost no calories and so much protein that I can't eat a lot of it, I start feeling stuffed.