| Health and Fitness

Some foods can't help but be sneaky.
They sit, unassuming, in your refrigerator at home or work and simply send out a vibe that says, "Eat me, I'm healthy." In actuality, they're in the business of deception and lure health-conscious eaters or those in the midst of a weight-loss and exercise plan into a food lull.
The result is confusion on the part of the consumer. Foods they have always assumed are healthy aren't. The drawback of these foods mostly center on the fact that they're processed and high in sugar, not necessarily fat. Sugar, however, has been determined to be just as bone-jarring and unhealthy as foods high in fat content.
One of the bigger culprits is yogurt, which most consumers believe is a staple in a healthy regimen. The safest bet for this popular snack is to choose one that is "light" or low sugar. A regular yogurt serving could have as much as 40 grams a sugar. The recent surge in popularity of Greek Yogurt makes it the more prudent, potent selection in this particular food group. From sugar to fat, salad dressing smell like more than just ranch, Italian and french -- more like a rat.
Dieters love their lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and crutons but what truly kills a salad is the slop that is put on after the fact in the form of fatty dressings that absolutely negate any healthy items buried underneath.

Snacking is another heavy-duty headache for those interested in losing a few pounds but without sacrificing all of their favorite foods. Pretzels make a great, low-fat choice but far too often the weight-conscious men and women of the world opt for fat-free snacks such as potato chips. Sadly, these chips are made with a gut-busting ingredient: Olestra. What seems like a modern marvel of science actually turns out to be a stomach-turner -- in more ways than one. Side effects mainly include stomach cramping. A more sound suggestion would be skipping the chips in favor of celery sticks or a sliced apple. If potato chips are a must, the baked versions prove to be the best option.
From Olestra to Aspartame, diet soda may be the worst perpetrator of them all. Cleverly marketed with the "diet" moniker, healthy eaters hopefully see right through this façade. Any food littered with Aspartame is hardly ones that should be incorporated with any consistently in a daily eating program.
Diet soda, for example, not only eats away at your teeth -- much like tea and coffee -- but the so-called "diet" Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that actually, among other things, makes you hungrier the more you drink.
Those drinking diet cola assume that they're curbing their calories but in actuality are making them search out more snacks and eat larger portions around lunch or dinner.
Large or small, most conscious eaters can spot the good and bad clearly when determining what foods to eat. Sometimes, however, the seemingly black-and-white choices sport shades of gray in the form of foods that flaunt health but are more flagrant phonies.

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