Showing posts with label fruit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fruit. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

What is a healthy food?

Doesn't everyone want to know what a healthy food is?  People ask me all the time whether a food is healthy, and I can't give them that yes or no answer that they want.  Here's an example: I had some ice cream on Sunday.  I'll tell you about it, and you can decide - is it a healthy food?

Per half cup: 110 calories, 25 calories from fat.  Okay, not bad: some of the leading brands have up to 330 calories per half cup.  I had 2 cups, or four half cups, or 440 calories.  Oops.

It has probiotics, those healthy bacteria that live in your gut and help your digestive system stay regular.  Good.

It has berries - real strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries.  Good.  They're listed in the ingredients somewhere after high fructose corn syrup.  Not so good.

It's sweetened with sucralose, a non-caloric sweetener.  Good.  It's also sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, brown sugar, polydextrose, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and corn syrup (did those last three look familiar?  The ingredients list label mentioned them twice, too). Not so good.
It has two grams of fiber per serving.  Hey, I ate four servings...that's 8 grams of fiber, almost a third of my daily amount.  Good.

The first ingredient is skim milk, and each serving has 10% calcium.  Good.

It has partially hydrogenated soybean oil, you know, the stuff that's famous for its artery clogging trans fats?  Not so good.

Overall? I'd like to know what you think.  Personally, I think it was a good choice for me.  It was a treat I had planned for, and it was definitely a better choice than a thousand calorie hot fudge sundae.  And I had a salad before it, so doesn't that make up for the six kinds of sugar?