It is ideally hard to buy fresh and local foods every day directly from the farmer’s field. We use stores to get food for preparing our daily meals.
As you know, we live far away from nature’s direct source of food and have to buy processed canned food products to make our meals. However, not all processed foods are unhealthy.
Processed foods are easily available and can be added to our meals easily. Like chopped vegetables, canned beans and purees, or packaged fruit juices can be accessible easily and include in our dietary plans.
But you cannot avoid the harmful additives and preservatives included in the packaging of processed foods like sugar, fats, chemicals, and sodium.
Here below, we have shown the list of unhealthy and worst processed foods that you must avoid eating.
10 Unhealthy Processed Foods To Avoid
1.Flavored Nuts and Seeds
Store-bought nuts, whether they are coated with soy sauce, wasabi-dusted, maple syrup, or toffee coated, these flavored nuts contain lots of salt and sugar in their packaging. The extra coating of sugar and salt leads to an increase in the weight, risk of type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure issues.
A small amount of such flavored nuts contains lots of bad fat, carbohydrates, sugar, calories, and sodium.
Rather than buying flavored nuts, you can go unflavored versions as they are very healthy for you and have no ill effects on your body.
- Store-Bought Dried Fruits
You might have bought some dried slices of mango, oranges, raisins, or kiwi, for satisfying your sweet tooth. They may contain minerals, vitamins, and fiber, making them the right choice than Skittles. However, these dried spears of fruits are coated with lots of sugar, making it rich in high sugar and calories.
These dried fruits can contain about 30% to 70% sugar content, which is making them unhealthy and source of inviting chronic diseases.
- Fruit Snacks
Fruits snacks are only the name, they do not contain a single drop of actual fruit content. They are loaded with lots of cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Both of these sweeteners lead to increase risk of diabetes, weight gain, and worst for overall health.
Research studies show that 25 grams of fruit snacks packet contain about 11 grams of added flavors and sugar than real fruit content.
- Margarine
Earlier, there was a buzz that margarine is much healthier than that of butter, however, margarine contains loss of trans fat leads to an increase in the risk of heart diseases.
As you may know, trans fats are considered as an unhealthier type of fat than other fat in the market, including saturated fat. Trans fat is responsible for increasing the levels of bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which leads to heart stroke and chronic diseases.
- Packaged Sauce & Ketchup
Researched studies show that slathering too much of store sauces and ketchup onto the burgers, pizza, and fries can be problematic and invites so many diseases. A little spread of ketchup over your fast food can be acceptable, but slathering too much of it can cause lots of health problems.
A small packet of ketchup contains about 2 grams of sugar in it. So to avoid store-bought ketchup and sauce, you can make one for yourself at home.
- Frozen Packaged Dinner
What a relief it gave when we talk about frozen dinner. You just need to microwave and get your dinner ready. However, most of the frozen dinner packets available in the market contain fat, sodium, sugar, and preservatives that are unhealthy for well being.
To avoid frozen processed meals, you can spare 10 more minutes and prepare your dinner with fresh vegetables and ingredients.
- Microwave Popcorn Packets
Popcorns are not unhealthy, however, microwave popcorn bags are as they contain salt and butter into it. The bag of microwave popcorn contains Perfluoroalkyls, a type of chemical that is linked with so many health problems like disfunction of kidney and poor semen.
To avoid them and opt for healthy popcorn alternative, you can simply buy kernels of corn and pop them over the stove.
- Granola or Cereal Bars
Store-bought Granola bars, also known as cereal bars stuffed with grains, comes in boxes. They not only contain lots of sugar and carbs but also not hunger-satisfying as they digest very quickly.
Although granola bars are marketed in a healthy image, they offer lots of nutrients. However, they contain lots of calories, sugar, and carbs in it.
To avoid these store-bought granola or cereals bars, you can make yourself at home with more straightforward ingredients.
- Processed Meat
Meat can be healthy diet options, however, processed meats like bacon, sausage, and pepperoni are not.
Eating these processed meat meals can increase the risk of chronic diseases like cancer, heart diseases, and type 2 diabetes.
- White Bread
White bread is made from refined or all-purpose flour, which spikes the blood sugar levels as like directly consume the table sugar.
The nutrients contained in the whole wheat all are destroyed in making refined flour from it. Thus eating refined floor food products does not contain any healthy content and leads to degrading the digesting system.