I’d elaborate here, but I think that my title basically sums up my question.
Pasta. Rice. Caaaaaarbs.
Granola bars. I always thought they were healthy but it turns out they are no better than candy bars.
Really tough question to answer, because it depends on three things that are very hard to define: healthy, unhealthy, and ‘commonly considered’. Many foods are healthy and useful to the body at a certain level, and unhealthy if eaten in greater quantities… Doug’s example falls in that space IMHO. (And this is from a pasta freak who’s trying to stick to much smaller portions of spaghetti or ditali at any one meal.)
I’m going to go with orange juice. While an eight ounce glass does have 160% of the RDA for vitamin C and 28% of the RDA for folate it also has the equivalant of 6.5 teaspoonsful of sugar. Try broccoli instead. You get the same amount of vitamin C and folate for the equivalant of 1.5 teaspoonsful of sugar, and the glycemic index of broccoli is zero point nothing compared to 50 or so for orange juice.
Salad from a salad bar. You pile on the cheese, the bacon bits (real bacon, not Bacos), croutons, a generous ladle of dressing…but it’s on a some lettuce and other veggies, so it’s healthy! Right?
Bill Door, word!
It is better to expand that to most fruit juices especially for kids. I have little ones and it is appalling how many parents think apple cider is great for young kids yet the manufactured stuff or soft drinks are terrible. Apple cider is sugar water turned dark.
I came here to say that.
Or, at least eat the whole orange instead of just drinking the juice. Still not as good for you as broccoli, but better than juice. I love broccoli and have it several times a week, but it just isn’t an orange.
And a GI of 50 isn’t all that bad, as long as that’s not your average.
OJ is not so bad if you include the pulp.
Cooked spinach is vastly over-rated as a nutritional powerhouse.
Continuing along the lines of what Amp sez, there are *some *Granola cereals that are high in bad fats and low in fiber- exactly the opposite of what one wants in a breakfast cereal.
Nuts. Totally loaded with fat, highly caloric, and if they are roasted in oil and salted, they are worse than candy bars.
I always figured it was those blooming onion appitizer things. Looks like I wasn’t totally wrong :
“The egg wash and deep frying preparation process of the Blooming Onion makes it massively caloric and high in trans fats. A single Blooming Onion with dressing has been reported as containing 2210 calories and 134 grams of fat.[1] A study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest had a slightly lower fat content of 116 grams, but came up with an astounding 44 of them as transfat.”
But are blooming onions “commonly considered healthy”? I can’t imagine any fried/battered food being viewed as healthy.
Hold on, sorry. I read that as “What is the most unhealthy food that is commonly considered unhealthy”
I am not aware on anyone considering a blooming onion to be health food. :smack:
Nuts have good fat. I think having a handful of almonds is better than a handful of M&Ms.
Part of the reason why people smother their salads with dressing, bacon bits, croutons, is becuse the iceberg lettuce is tasteless; you need something to make the salad palatable. Lettuce is almost worthless nutritionally, and has no taste by itself. I seriously wonder why we eat the stuff-you can have a smaller salad, with vegetables that have some nutrition (peppers, tomatos, ounions, etc.); and skip the iceberg-plus-for what you pay for the stuff, it costs more than steak.
Such wonderful news>
I bought a case of “Sweet & Salty Nut Granola Bars” from COSTCO, thinking I was doing the raht thang and all I’m actually doing is eating candy bars. No wonder they tasted so good. 
:smack: :smack: :smack:
Yes. Nuts have lots of calories, so as long as you’re not eating too many, they are a good for you. But that’s true of almost anything-- eating so much of one item that you’re getting too many calories. I would nitpick the amount, though, and say a “fistful” instead of a “handful”. You probably don’t want to eat more than 10 or 15 a day.
I’m going to have to disagree with the granola bar- sure, some of them have high sugar content, and may have a non-trivial amount of fat, but in many cases they’re full of fiber, they’re full of good fat from nuts, and the sugars are often from fruit. Candy bars have higher calorie contents, lots of refined sugars, and no fiber to speak of.
Sure, granola bars aren’t incredibly healthy, but they’re a satisfying treat or snack. It also depends on the type of granola bar- Kashi granola bars are quite different from the 25 cent ones you can buy at the convenience store.