Why eating healthy is harder than you think; when "Healthy" is not

You have entered middle age and made a commitment to eat healthier. You go out of your way and even pay extra to shop at a natural food store. You seek out healthy eating choices such as granola. All good? Not so say dietary experts.

“These [health foods] are the foods we naturally look to as we try to lose extra pounds; however, they are the ones that we need to be careful about,” says Dee Rollins, PhD, R.D., dietitian with Baylor Regional Medical Center at Grapevine.

“Everyone thinks granola bars are wonderful and yet if you turn it over and look at the ingredients you’ll see that it has high fructose corn syrup and a lot of sugars,” adds Dr. Rollins.

In fact, the average granola bar contains more than 300 calories and 10 grams of fat—not a healthy snack at all.

As marketers increasingly work to tap into the high margin health food market, buyers need to beware that just because products are labeled "all natural" or "healthy choice" doesn't mean they are good for you.

And bran cereals?

“You’ll find that there’s a lot of hidden sugar, perhaps even some hidden salt, even a little fat in those cereals that you don’t anticipate finding,” says Dr. Rollins.

Meat?

The meat aisle is no safer—a pound of ground turkey can really ruffle a dieter’s feathers, sometimes containing more fat grams than a pound of ground beef.

And you're probably already aware of the deceptive packaging that goes on packaged breads.

But the worst, in terms of deception, is "low fat."

“When they take the fat out they almost always put the sugar in so check the calorie count. There’s probably more calories in a low-fat or low-carbohydrate product than in a regular product,” says Dr. Rollins.

Finally, a few other dietary minefields to avoid:

* 100 percent fruit juice—it’s still full of calories
* all-natural potato chips—made from real potatoes, but still loaded with fat and sodium
* ‘cholesterol-free’ anything—if it’s not an animal product it doesn’t have cholesterol in it at all so keep in mind that usually when you see the label ‘cholesterol-free’ it means nothing.

No one said it would be easy but here's a rule of thumb when reading ingredients:

"...concentrate on three things—sodium, fat and total calories. Then read through the ingredients and make sure things like salt, sugar and corn syrup aren’t at the top."