Making healthy choices can be a battle.  In that battle, you are constantly looking at your options of foods and drinks trying to distinguish which option is the healthier choice.  Unfortunately, there are foods disguised as healthy foods that make it passed your inspection.  Here are those foods and drinks that are secretly unhealthy for you.

Certain Juices

Certain fruit juices you buy from the store have as much sugar as certain sodas.  Companies take something that is initially good and healthy, fruit juice, and ruin it with artificial ingredients and sugars.  This takes away the nutritional benefits that freshly squeezed juice can give you.  Instead of buying juice from the store, try making your own at home.

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Some Energy And Granola Bars

When one hears the word “granola”, one often associates it with healthy foods.  Although there are a good amount of healthy granola and energy bars out there, a large majority of them are secretly unhealthy for you.  Sometimes the granola bars you are buying are packed with sugar and can be over 700 calories.  This is due to the additional sugar.  When shopping for granola and energy bars, make sure to check ingredients and the nutritional chart.  When in doubt, the less ingredients the better.  Kind Bars and Lara Bars are examples of good choices that pride themselves in their clean ingredients.

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Smoothies

When made at home, smoothies can be extremely healthy, but buying one outside one’s home is a different story.  Smoothies are one of the most disguised unhealthy foods out there.  At quite a few places, it is pretty much like eating ice cream.  In fact, some places put ice cream or sorbet ingredients into their smoothies.  That delicious fruit colored drink in your hand is pretty much desert.  Would you have ice cream as your dinner or lunch?  No.  If you do decide to have a smoothie for a meal replacement, make sure it is home made. Some smoothies can have over 900 calories in them and are extremely high in sugar.

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Certain Salads

Oh, salad.  It can turn from extremely healthy to unhealthy really quick.  The unhealthy factor comes to what you put on your salad.  All of those toppings and dressings can turn your “garden of eden” on a plate, to a “hell of a lot of calories”.  Make sure to read what is in your salad.  Sometimes the simpler the better when it comes to salads.  The things that make a lot of salads unhealthy are the creamy dressings, croutons, and heavy cheeses.  Some salads even have fried chicken on them.  Putting fried chicken on a bed of lettuce does not make it magically healthy(come on people!) .

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When it comes to making healthy choices, always be skeptical of what you buy.  Just because something says “organic” or “healthy” does not mean it is actually healthy.  Read labels and ingredients and use common sense.  A lot of the times simpler is better.  Stay tuned to part 2 of this series for more foods that are secretly unhealthy.