The Worst 'Healthy' Foods in America

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I read a wonderful article today by David Zinczenko, with Matt Goulding at health.yahoo.com that I wanted to share with my blogfrog community, blogger viewers and twitter friends.

Coming soon to chain restaurants nationwide: Calorie counts on chain restaurant menus and menu boards. To us at Eat This, Not That! this particular provision couldn’t have come soon enough. Case in point: Any of the menu items listed below.

The truth is that it can be nearly impossible to distinguish between a healthy menu choice, and a menu choice that sounds healthy but will actually add hundreds of extra and unnecessary calories to your diet—and potentially saddle you with an extra pound or two every month. You may care about your health and try your hardest to eat conscientiously, but when restaurants offer salads that exceed 1,500 calories and seemingly harmless seafood dishes flirt with 2,000 calories, all that hard work goes to waste—and to your waistline. In researching our newest book, Drink This, Not

That! we discovered the 6 worst “healthy” food offenders. Make the smart swaps listed below, though, and you can lose a few pounds every week—effortlessly—and without ever dieting again.

#6: Worst “Healthy” Smoothie
Smoothie King Skinny Cranberry Supreme (40 oz)
908 calories
2 g fat (0 g saturated)
146 g sugars

It’s hard to pick a “worst” thing when it comes to this drinkable disaster. First, Smoothie King boasts that this drink’s function is to help you “Stay Healthy”—but with as much sugar as in 14 glazed doughnuts and nearly half your day’s worth of calories, it’s clear that this beverage is little more than liquefied sweetener. Second, Smoothie King allows patrons to opt to make their beverages “Skinny,” meaning they’ll leave out the turbinado sweetener. But don’t be fooled by the false advertising: Downing this drink is likely to do anything BUT make you skinny.