Surprisingly Unhealthy Foods [PART 2]

If you haven’t checked out part 1, here it is:

Surprisingly Unhealthy Foods Part 1

Now to carry on….

Sports Drinks

Lucozade Sport

Now this one is more a misinterpretation than any cunning by the companies. It states clearly in the adverts “at the limit of human performance”.

I don’t want to be the one to break it to you but when you go for an hour run round your local park or play football with your mates, you aren’t reaching your physical limits.

It’s designed to replenish your glycogen stores. These get severely depleted during marathons and other intense or long duration events.

Unfortunately children are big consumers of these sports drinks having seen their sporting idols drink then. Parents are quite happy to give their child a sports drink when they’re doing a sporting activity. Even worse, some people who simply drink it without doing any exercise, purely for the taste.

The average sports drink contains 28-32 grams of sugar. Fizzy versions like Lucozade Energy can contain over 40 grams of sugar per bottle.

Not everyone is an elite athlete, stick with water unless it’s over an hour of high intensity training.

Salads With Dressing

salad dressing hidden calories unhealthy foods

Now I’m not saying all salad dressings are high calories, or that you can’t put a single drop on, but pre-made salads can have as many calories as a regular meal mainly due to the dressing.

From my research into popular food stores in London I found the average dressing put about 200 calories on the total content, mostly from sugar and fat.

For those of you who avoid dressing, remember that a salad ideally needs a protein source. This could be either from meat, fish, nuts or dairy.

It’s beneficial to have protein at every meal to sufficiently feed your muscles. Low protein diets slow your metabolism and you’ll find it harder to burn calories – normally the opposite aim for those who opt for a salad.

Be careful of high-calorie dressings and make sure you have a salad with a protein source.

Store Bought Smoothies

store bought smoothies high sugar unhealthy
Fruit Smoothies

Blended fruit can only be good, right? We covered fruit juice earlier, so how about we take a large quantity of fruit juice, add in more sugar, possibly ice cream, and sell it as a healthy beverage?

Most of the smoothies I found in lunch time dining places and coffee shops contained more sugar than a bottle of Coke.

That’s more than 53 grams of sugar, with some topping 75-80 grams per serving. If you had a ‘healthy’ fruit smoothie every day of the year you’d consume around 27kg of sugar. That would add over 100,000 calories to your annual intake.

Avoid store bought smoothies, it’s all sugar.

This is by no means a complete list. It’s a nice sample of the dangers out there of most things that are branded as ‘healthy’ but could be the thing stopping you from losing fat.

There’s a lot of media hype about fat, but as you can see from the list above the main culprit is hidden sugars. I hope this list gives you a better idea of what’s out there. There are nutritional traps set by companies with their marketing and packaging. Hopefully you’ll think twice before trusting any labelling or branding of the foods you eat and drink.

About Fraser_9to5 254 Articles
Site owner. I'm a graduate in Sports Science and have an MSc in Sports Biomechanics. I set up 9to5strength in 2015 as a resource for people interested in strength training, nutrition and fitness. I consider myself a fitness blogger and enjoy creating YouTube videos and trying out workout programs.