# What is the most unhealthy food that is commonly considered healthy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 22, 2007, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382 "2007-11-22T01:46:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/101 "2010-09-14T20:00:19Z")
**More from _Eat This, Not That:_** [Worst “Healthy” Smoothies](http://eatthis.menshealth.com/content/14-worst-healthy-smoothies?article=1&page=1) [Worst “Healthy” Foods in the Supermarket](http://eatthis.menshealth.com/content/13-worst-healthy-foods-supermarket?article=1&page=1) [Worst “Healthy” Snacks](http://eatthis.menshealth.com/content/worst-healthy-snacks?article=1&page=1) [30 “Healthy” Foods That Aren’t](http://eatthis.menshealth.com/slideshow/30-healthy-foods-arent) > [@robby](#): > > As for bottled water, there’s generally nothing particularly unhealthy about it, but it’s very expensive and less regulated that the water piped directly into most people’s houses. You’re correct that most bottled water is not fluoridated, which can be a problem, especially for children. Bottled water can be good, because regulations on tap water don’t include “must not taste like ass”. I once lived somewhere where the tap water had so much chlorine, it tasted like swimming pool water. Safe, I’m sure, but _nasty_. And, of course, bottled water is a near necessity when you go to parts of the world where water straight from the tap is not safe for you to drink. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/102 "2010-09-14T20:01:30Z")
> [@Jet\_Jaguar](#): > > Maybe not outright “unhealthy”, but certainly falling into the “not as good as you might think” department are reduced fat varieties of food. The problem is fat is what gives food it’s flavour and texture, so when manufacturers take it out they often have to add sugars and fillers and stuff to make it taste right. If you compare the labels, the end product often has only marginally fewer calories (it’s not fat grams that make you fat, it’s calories that make you fat) and a lot more chemicals than the standard, full-fat version, and still might not taste as good. Even worse is when the “fat-free” version has _more_ calories than the original because of all the added sugar and fillers. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/103 "2010-09-14T20:10:55Z")
And you want to especially be careful of those [asbestos-free](http://xkcd.com/641/) products. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/104 "2010-09-14T20:14:48Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > As for bottled water, there’s generally nothing particularly unhealthy about it, but it’s very expensive and less regulated that the water piped directly into most people’s houses. You’re correct that most bottled water is not fluoridated, which can be a problem, especially for children. > > Bottled water can be good, because regulations on tap water don’t include “must not taste like ass”. I once lived somewhere where the tap water had so much chlorine, it tasted like swimming pool water. Safe, I’m sure, but _nasty_. There are taste and odor regulations for tap water, but because they are only aesthetic in nature, they fall in to the category of non-enforceable secondary regulations (at least on the federal level). There are enforceable limits on the residual chlorine present in tap water used in the disinfection process, but the chlorine dissipates over time, and because some residual chlorine must still be present at the tap farthest from the treatment plant, people closest to the treatment plant may get chlorine levels near the maximum allowable. (This is actually why I installed an activated carbon filter on our kitchen tap when we were on municipal water, back when our son was a baby.) The problem with bottled water is that it’s not fluoridated (which can be an issue for children), and the regulations governing bottled water are much less strict than the ones governing publicly supplied water. No intended slight on you, **Anne** , but it’s always amazed me that our civilization has built what past civilizations would give their collective left arms for: a safe, plentiful, potable drinking water supply piped into each home and building, and people disdain that to haul water home in plastic containers. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/105 "2010-09-15T05:21:08Z")
That amazes me, too, **robby** - not only does my city have some of the best water treatment facilities in the world, but our tap water actually does come right off a glacier - and people still buy bottled water here! ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/106 "2010-09-15T06:19:16Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I had noticed in the cereal aisle that the “serving size” for Total is about five times that for Trix, Well, yes, silly Chronos, because Trix are for kids 😃 (This is where the Yank who has lived abroad for, um, a while discovers that that slogan was discontinued so long ago that nobody else remembers it and she stands here listening to the crickets chirp…) ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/108 "2010-09-15T12:50:34Z")
(Sorry, this is an IMHO-ish post, but honestly, this should’ve been kicked to IMHO a while ago since no one really knows for certain what foods are good or bad. Just my two cents.) I think that everyone’s looking for a black-and-white algorithm for choosing good and bad foods. Milk is bad, nuts are good. Don’t eat apples, eat oranges! All foods offer a trade-off between good and bad. Avocados are packed with nutrients, but they’re also packed with fat. We will never have a definitive list of what you should eat and a definitive list of what you shouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/109 "2010-09-15T13:27:43Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#): > > I think that everyone’s looking for a black-and-white algorithm for choosing good and bad foods. Milk is bad, nuts are good. Don’t eat apples, eat oranges! All foods offer a trade-off between good and bad. Avocados are packed with nutrients, but they’re also packed with fat. We will never have a definitive list of what you should eat and a definitive list of what you shouldn’t. We do have a list like that. You shouldn’t eat hydrofluoric acid, or a number of other poisons. It’s just that following that list isn’t sufficient to stay healthy and at a reasonable weight. You can’t eat healthy foods in unlimited quantities and do that. A lot of people would like that to be the case, but that doesn’t make it so. It’s further complicated by the fact that some substances are necessary or beneficial in small or moderate amounts, but poisonous in large amounts. Salt, water, and vitamin A are three examples. You need them in a reasonable amount, but you’ll have problems (up to and including death) if you ingest too much of any of them. ---
**Author:** ![Jet\_Jaguar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jet_jaguar/32/3562_2.png) [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/110 "2010-09-15T14:46:16Z")
Splenda is another tricky one. It’s advertised as being “the no calorie sweetener”, but it actually has a little over 3 calories per serving. Labeling laws are such that if the serving size is small enough, certain things can be rounded down to zero. To be fair, that still is a savings when compared to real sugar (which is ~15 calories for a comparably-sized packet), but it’s deceptive nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/111 "2010-09-15T15:30:25Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > (Why can’t I buy reduced sugar sodas that don’t have aspartame or some other devil’s spunk added to them? Am I the only adult in the world who doesn’t like super-sweet drinks?) Couldn’t agree more. Why are the choices: 1) Super sweet 2) no sweet at all? I go for Gatorade sometimes because it is semi-sweet. Not exactly what I’m looking for though. Peanut butter, how I love thee. Often advertised as a healthy food for kids (it’s a vegetable!), the emphasis should be on the “butter”, not the “peanut.” ---
**Author:** ![Visual\_Purple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5daacb/32.png) [@Visual\_Purple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Visual_Purple)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382/112 "2010-09-17T03:37:22Z")
I third (fourth?) fruit juices. There is good evidence that fructose is more of a problem than other sugars. (Some links here:[High Fructose Corn Syrup: Tasty Toxin or Slandered Sweetener? | Science-Based Medicine](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6501)) Fructose is fruit sugar. Depending on the particular juice–pear and apple juice are the worst IIRC–you’re getting a lot of fructose and not much else. And, per my link, agave nectar is just about the highest fructose thing out there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-unhealthy-food-that-is-commonly-considered-healthy/427382.md?page=5)