The Junk Food Nutritionist

One of my main goals as a dietitian isn't to get the client to lose weight. I never recommend someone make a New Year's resolution to lose 30 pounds. Instead, I encourage clients to set a goals to form  healthy habits. Healthier habits might result in weight loss, but it's more important to form healthy eating habits than to have quick weight loss.  As we head towards the New Year, here are two healthy habits to consider...

I spent the past month writing a series trying to determine whether or not certain snack foods were junk foods. It made me ask myself, “What is junk food?” The thing is, we all define it differently. 

Over the past month, I’ve looked at several healthy-seeming snack foods and shown you which aren’t as healthy as you might think.  Today, I have one more snack for you…Flavored squeezable applesauce pouches.  You might be thinking, “No way is that healthy. It has to be full of added sugar and artificial flavoring.” But that’s not true. At least, it’s not true for Musselman’sSqueezables . I’d call these a health food. In addition to unsweetened applesauce, Musselman’s Squeezables come in fun flavors: Sour Raspberry, Sour Cherry, Sour Lemon, Strawberry, and Honey Cinnamon.     None of them contain artificial flavors or artificial colors. The Honey Cinnamon applesauce contains honey, but none of the others contain added sugars.  The main ingredient, of course, is apples. The three berry-flavored ones contain raspberry puree, cherry puree, and strawberry puree respectively. The lemon one contains lemon juice. Of course, there’s cinn...

We all need a grab-and-go snack sometimes. Often, a granola bar is an easy choice because it can be eaten with one hand. It doesn't even have to be a clean hand because your hand will never touch it; just eat it straight from the wrapper. But, there are a lot of different granola bar and granola-bar-like things on the market. Their status as health food or junk food varies. Where do KIND Pressed Bars fit? I'd call these a health food! This is a health food because it is made up of only a few ingredients, all of which are healthy foods. KIND's website lists 6 flavors: Apricot Pear Carrot Beet, Pineapple Coconut Chia, Pineapple Banana Kale Spinach, Mango Apple Chia, Cherry Apple Chia, and Strawberry Apple Chia. Those aren't just the flavor names; those are the ingredients. The Mango Apple Chia flavored bar only contains mango, apples, and chia seeds. Although I consider this to be a health food instead of a junk food, I still recommend eating it in mod...

      Lately, I've been seeing a lot of commercials for a reduced calorie orange "juice". So let's look more at fruit juice and fruit drinks. Fruit Juice Counts as a Serving of Fruit MyPlate  food guide recommends 1 ½ cup to 2 cups of fruit for most Americans.  Because fruit and fruit juice have the same vitamins, one cup of 100% fruit juice counts as one cup of fruit.      Health Benefits   Drinking fruit juice is an easy way to get vitamin C. Most fruit juices provide 100% of the recommended amount of vitamin C. Vitamin C is used by the entire body for growth and repair. It may reduce the risk of heart disease, gum disease, and cancer.      Some fruit juices  also  provide small amounts of the B vitamins. On a nutrition label, the B vitamins are often listed by a name other than “vitamin B”. The B vitamins include thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, and folic acid.  The...