Are you perplexed by your weight because you eat "healthy"?

Today's post, filed under "Bad Advertising"  is from Yoni Freedhoff's blog Weighty Matters:

Badvertising: Dole Dark Chocolate Coconut Bites

"Real fruit in every bite".

Must be good for you, no?

And yet looking at their nutrition fact panels I learned two things.

Firstly that despite there being "fruit in every bite", no bites contain any vitamin C - odd given vitamin C is something I thought was found in most "real" fruit.

Secondly that these are pretty much nutritionally equivalent to Chips-A-Hoy cookies though to be fair they do contain 20% fewer calories and 10% less sugar.

Here's a shopping tip for you: If you put "fruit" in a cookie, it's still a cookie.

Eat cookies because you love cookies, but don't let someone dupe you into thinking you're making a healthful choice or that fruit-inclusive cookies somehow are a "better" cookie choice.

Less bad is not the same as good. --YF

 

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I cannot tell you how often I get in the "but I eat healthy" discussion with someone trying to lose weight.

 

You may eat healthy foods (or you may just think you make healthy choices but like Yoni's post indicates -- you may have bought snake oil).  However, if you're eating too much healthy food (as determined by your weight gain), you're still eating too much food!

 

Ratchet it back!  9 bites per day.  Start listening to your body to determine whether you are physically hungry or some emotion is driving you to eat (boredom, anyone?)  9 bites fewer = enough calories to lose 1/2 - 1 pound per week.  Find. Those. Bites.