6. Cold Breakfast Cereals

Everyone knows that sugary kids breakfast cereals are total junk, but most of the other cold cereals that masquerade as health food aren’t much better. Processed foods are never healthy. Cold cereals are all highly processed. Hot cereals are a better bet. Whole oats and quinoa are both wonderful sources of nutrition that are easy to prepare and can be flavored to suit your taste. Whip them up with butter, and add cinnamon, vanilla, and stevia (an herbal sweetener – try KAL stevia) to flavor.

7. Pancakes, Waffles, French Toast, and Other Desserts That Impersonate Real Food

It’s pretty shameless that pancakes, waffles, and, most audaciously, muffins, masquerade as breakfast foods. These are junk foods, plain and simple. They’re no better than snack cakes. They deliver absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. This is especially bad  at breakfast, when we should be fueling up on quality nutrients to power us through the day. If you really like these foods, save them for the occasional cheat meal at IHOP, and when you do eat them, balance out the junk carbohydrates they contain with some fat and protein in the form of eggs, meat, or butter. Alternatively, try making your own healthy pancakes from whole oats, or quinoa.

8. Non-fat frozen yogurt and other non-fat dairy products

We’re guessing that you may have found this list a little depressing thus far, as we’ve been attacking your favorite foods one after the other. But this is one entry we expect will find favor with everyone. Full fat and low fat  ice cream, cheese, milk, and yogurt are much, much better than non-fat varieties. Dairy products are supposed to contain fat, and you simply don’t digest them properly if they do not. In addition, in the case of ice cream and frozen yogurt, fat can actually act as a buffer against the harmful metabolic effects of sugar. Full fat ice cream will do less damage to your metabolism than non fat frozen yogurt, and will do a much better job of filling you up, meaning you’ll end up eating less sugar, which is the real demon to be avoided. If full fat ice cream, milk, and yogurt tastes too rich to you (or if the calories scare you), low fat varieties are generally fine.

9. Regular Pasta

We touched on the idea that pasta isn’t healthful earlier, but so many people eat pasta as an alternative to meat that we wanted to emphasize it further. Most pastas are highly processed foods that deliver concentrated starch, which our bodies rapidly convert to sugar. While not as bad as candy or white bread, pasta can be seriously damaging to cellular metabolism, promoting fatigue and weight gain and eroding health. Whole grain pastas are better, but are still overly processed. Choose brown rice, wild rice, oats, quinoa, buckwheat or amaranth as your grains.

10. Artificial Fats and Artificial Sweeteners

Margarine was invented as a healthy alternative to butter. In time, scientists came to realize that butter really isn’t so bad, and margarine is extremely toxic. As margarine has fallen out of favor, a number of other “heart healthy” butter replacement spreads have popped up. The odds are that with time these will be shown to be harmful too. There’s no way around the fact that unnatural foods injure our health.

Artificial sweeteners are almost as bad as artificial fats. For one thing, they don’t do anything to help people lose weight. Our bodies respond to artificial sweeteners in many of the same ways that they respond to sugar. The reason that sugar makes people gain weight has less to do with sugar having lots of calories (which it does) and more to do with the fact that sugar creates biochemical changes in the body which program fat cells to store fat. Artificial sweeteners have similar effects.
 
In addition, both sugar and artificial sweeteners are appetite stimulants. So while artificial sweeteners don’t directly supply calories that end up as fat, they make up for this by making you want to eat more. Finally, artificial sweeteners are just plain bad for you. The FDA has received more complaints about toxic side effects from aspartame than about any other product in US history. If you need to use a sweetener, try Stevia, which is all natural and has no known toxicity. It still acts as an appetite stimulant, so use it in moderation. Adding Stevia to yogurt and berries makes for a great dessert.