The Swine Flu Pandemic – Fact or Fiction?

I would like to reproduce some parts of Dr. Mercola’s timely article regarding the Swine Flu pandemic which is gripping many countries right now.

It is a very long one and you will find the full length article here but I chose to just focus on two main parts which I am quoting below.

As a natural wellness practitioner, I am concerned at how many people are in a panic to buy flu shots “just in case…” and the morning news reported that the drug stores are now out of stock of this so called precious vaccine.  Who benefits?  Read on….

Why a True Bird- or Swine Flu Pandemic is HIGHLY Unlikely

While in my opinion it is highly likely factory farming is responsible for producing this viral strain, I believe there is still no cause for concern.

 You may not know this, but all H1N1 flu’s are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. The reason why the flu shot may or may not work, however, from year to year, is due to mutations. Therefore, there’s no vaccine available for this current hybrid flu strain, and naturally, this is feeding the fear that millions of people will die before a vaccine can be made.

However, let me remind you of one very important fact here.

Just a couple of months ago, scientists concluded that the 1918 flu pandemic that killed between 50-100 million people worldwide in a matter of 18 months — which all these worst case scenarios are built upon — was NOT due to the flu itself!4

Instead, they discovered the real culprit was strep infections.

People with influenza often get what is known as a “superinfection” with a bacterial agent. In 1918 it appears to have been Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Since strep is much easier to treat than the flu using modern medicine, a new pandemic would likely be much less dire than it was in the early 20th century, the researchers concluded.

Others, such as evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald,5 claim that a pandemic of this sort simply cannot happen, because in order for it to occur, the world has to change. Not the virus itself, but the world.

In a previous interview for Esquire magazine, in which he discusses the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, he states:

“They think that if a virus mutates, it’s an evolutionary event. Well, the virus is mutating because that is what viruses and other pathogens do. But evolution is not just random mutation. It is random mutation coupled with natural selection; it is a battle for competitive advantage among different strains generated by random mutation.

For bird flu to evolve into a human pandemic, the strain that finds a home in humanity has to be a strain that is both highly virulent and highly transmissible. Deadliness has to translate somehow into popularity; H5N1 has to find a way to kill or immobilize its human hosts, and still find other hosts to infect. Usually that doesn’t happen.”

Ewald goes on to explain that evolution in general is all about trade-offs, and in the evolution of infections the trade-off is between virulence and transmissibility.

What this means is that in order for a “bird flu” or “swine flu” to turn into a human pandemic, it has to find an environment that favors both deadly virulence and ease of transmission.

People living in squalor on the Western Front at the end of World War I generated such an environment, from which the epidemic of 1918 could arise.

Likewise, crowded chicken farms, slaughterhouses, and jam-packed markets of eastern Asia provide another such environment, and that environment gave rise to the bird flu — a pathogen that both kills and spreads, in birds, but not in humans.

Says Ewald:

“We know that H5N1 is well adapted to birds. We also know that it has a hard time becoming a virus that can move from person to person. It has a hard time without our doing anything. But we can make it harder. We can make sure it has no human population in which to evolve transmissibility. There is no need to rely on the mass extermination of chickens. There is no need to stockpile vaccines for everyone.

By vaccinating just the people most at risk — the people who work with chickens and the caregivers — we can prevent it from becoming transmissible among humans. Then it doesn’t matter what it does in chickens.”

Please remember that, despite the fantastic headlines and projections of MILLIONS of deaths, the H5N1 bird flu virus killed a mere 257 people worldwide since late 2003. As unfortunate as those deaths are, 257 deaths worldwide from any disease, over the course of five years, simply does not constitute an emergency worthy of much attention, let alone fear!

Honestly, your risk of being killed by a lightning strike in the last five years was about 2,300 percent higher than your risk of contracting and dying from the bird flu.6 I’m not kidding! In just one year (2004), more than 1,170 people died from lighting strikes, worldwide.7

So please, as the numbers of confirmed swine flu cases are released, keep a level head and don’t let fear run away with your brains. 

Where Strain Come From?e did This Mysterious New Animal-Human Flu Strain Come From?

Alongside the fear-mongering headlines, I’ve also seen increasing numbers of reports questioning the true nature of this virus. And rightfully so.

Could a mixed animal-human mutant like this occur naturally? And if not, who made it, and how was it released?

Not one to dabble too deep in conspiracy theories, I don’t have to strain very hard to find actual facts to support the notion that this may not be a natural mutation, and that those who stand to gain have the wherewithal to pull off such a stunt.

Just last month I reported on the story that the American pharmaceutical company Baxter was under investigation for distributing the deadly avian flu virus to 18 different countries as part of a seasonal flu vaccine shipment. Czech reporters were probing to see if it may have been part of a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic; as such a “mistake” would be virtually impossible under the security protocols of that virus.

The H5N1 virus on its own is not very airborne. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which are more easily spread, the effect could be a potent, airborne, deadly, biological weapon. If this batch of live bird flu and seasonal flu viruses had reached the public, it could have resulted in dire consequences.

There is a name for this mixing of viruses; it’s called “reassortment,” and it is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created in the lab. Some scientists say the most recent global outbreak — the 1977 Russian flu — was started by a virus created and leaked from a laboratory.

Another example of the less sterling integrity of Big Pharma is the case of Bayer, who sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting medicine to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, even though they knew it was tainted with the AIDS virus.

So while it is morally unthinkable that a drug company would knowingly contaminate flu vaccines with a deadly flu virus such as the bird- or swine flu, it is certainly not impossible. It has already happened more than once.

But there seems to be no repercussions or hard feelings when industry oversteps the boundaries of morality and integrity and enters the arena of obscenity. Because, lo and behold, which company has been chosen to head up efforts, along with WHO, to produce a vaccine against the Mexican swine flu?

Baxter! Despite the fact that ink has barely dried on the investigative reports from their should-be-criminal “mistake” against humanity.

According to other sources, a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, has concluded that the current swine flu virus possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest the new strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.

The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents.

In addition, Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick — the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released, according to a recent article in the Fredrick News Post.13 In February, the top biodefense lab halted all its research into Ebola, anthrax, plague, and other diseases known as “select agents,” after they discovered virus samples that weren’t listed in its inventory and might have been switched with something else.

Read rest of the article here.

Originally written May 1, 2009

Secrets about Bleached Flour you need to know

I’m diabetic and my cousin and I noticed by blood sugar rises whenever I eat pasta. My cousin who is also my doctor told me wheat increases blood sugar.

I just read an article of Dr. Mercola which explains some ills of the commercial flour which I want to share with my readers.

Nearly everyone knows that white flour is not healthy for you, but most people don’t know that when white flour is bleached, it can actually be FAR worse for you.

It’s generally understood that refining food destroys nutrients. With the most nutritious part of the grain removed, white flour essentially becomes a form of sugar. Consider what gets lost in the refining process:

• Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids 
• Virtually all of the vitamin E
• Fifty percent of the calcium
• Seventy percent of the phosphorus
• Eighty percent of the iron
• Ninety eight percent of the magnesium
• Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins

And many more nutrients are destroyed — simply too many to list.

The Journey of the Wheat Berry

Have you ever wondered how white flour is made?

The website Healthy Eating Politics has an interesting article about the process.

Most commercial wheat production is, unfortunately, a “study in pesticide application,” beginning with the seeds being treated with fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are sprayed with hormones and pesticides. Even the bins in which the harvested wheat is stored have been coated with insecticides. If bugs appear on the wheat in storage, they fumigate the grain.

A whole grain of wheat, sometimes called a wheat berry, is composed of three layers:

• The bran  

• The germ

• The endosperm

The bran is the layer where you’ll find most of the fiber, and it’s the hard outer shell of the kernel. The germ is the nutrient-rich embryo that will sprout into a new wheat plant. The endosperm is the largest part of the grain (83 percent), making up most of the kernel, and it’s mostly starch.

White flour is made from the endosperm only, whereas whole-wheat flour combines all three parts of the wheat berry.

Old time mills ground flour slowly, but today’s mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel rollers. The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and even much of today’s commercially processed whole wheat flour has lost a fair amount of nutritional value due to these aggressive processing methods.

White flour contains a small fraction of the nutrients of the original grain, with the heat of the steel rollers having destroyed what little nutrients remain. But then it is hit with another chemical insult–a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as a whitener, as well as an “aging” agent.

Flour used to be aged with time, improving the gluten and thus improving the baking quality. Now, it is treated with chlorine to instantly produce similar qualities in the flour (with a disturbing lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to your food).

According to Jim Bair, Vice President of the North American Millers Association:

“Today, the US milling industry produces about 140 million pounds of flour each day, so there is no way to store the flour to allow it to age naturally. Plus, there is a shelf life issue.”

It has not been determined how many mills are bleaching flour with chorine oxide, but we do know the use of chlorides for bleaching flour is considered an industry standard.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines chlorine gas as a flour-bleaching, aging and oxidizing agent that is a powerful irritant, dangerous to inhale, and lethal. Other agents also used include oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl, and benzoyl peroxide mixed with various chemical salts.

The chlorine gas undergoes an oxidizing chemical reaction with some of the proteins in the flour, producing alloxan as an unintended byproduct. Bair and other milling industry leaders claim that bleaching and oxidizing agents don’t leave behind harmful residues in flour, although they can cite no studies or published data to confirm this.

Why Bleaching Makes White Flour Even Worse

It has been shown that alloxan is a byproduct of the flour bleaching process, the process they use to make flour look so “clean” and — well, white. No, they are technically not adding alloxan to the flour — although you will read this bit of misinformation on the Internet. But, they are doing chemical treatments to the grain that result in the formation of alloxan in the flour.

With so little food value already in a piece of white bread, now there is potentially a chemical poison lurking in there as well.

So what is so bad about alloxan?

Alloxan, or C4 H2O4N2, is a product of the decomposition of uric acid. It is a poison that is used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals (primarily rats and mice), so that researchers can then study diabetes “treatments” in the lab. Alloxan causes diabetes because it spins up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them.

Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of your pancreas called islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so if those are destroyed, you get diabetes.

There is no other commercial application for alloxan — it is used exclusively in the medical research industry because it is so highly toxic.

Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other chronic diseases in this country, can you afford to be complacent about a toxin such as this in your bread, even if it is present in small amounts?

Just How Much is Too Much?

Similar to disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in water, alloxan is formed when the chlorine reacts with certain proteins remaining in the white flour after the bran and germ have been removed. Protein makes up between 5 percent and 15 percent of white flour, depending on whether it’s cake flour, or high-gluten flour, such as what’s used for pizza crust or bagels.

So, this would suggest that perhaps 5 to 15 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour could be contaminated.

However, according to Professor Joe Schwarcz, Director of the McGill University Office of Science and Society, alloxan is the byproduct of xantophyll oxidation only. Xantophylls are yellow compounds in wheat that react with oxygen, causing flour to turn white.

According to Mr. Schwarcz:

“One of the possible minor side products of xantophyll oxidation is alloxan. It may therefore be found in small amounts in flour. There is no available research that shows trace amounts are a problem or that alloxan builds up in the body. The amounts, if present at all, must be small because xantophylls themselves only occur to the extent of 1 microgram per gram of flour.”

Alloxan has not been studied in terms of human exposure, particularly long-term. There is just so much we don’t know, and you know what assumptions will get you.

Alloxan in Rats vs Alloxan in Humans

Scientists have long known that alloxan produces selective destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, causing hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis in laboratory animals. Alloxan is structurally similar to glucose, which might explain why the pancreatic beta cells selectively take it up.

According to Dr. Hari Sharma’s Freedom from Disease, alloxan causes free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the pancreas, causing them to malfunction and die. When they fail to function normally, they no longer produce enough insulin.

Even though the toxic effect of alloxan is common scientific knowledge in the research community, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still allows companies to use chemical processes in which the end result is toxic food. Until they unequivocally prove something is toxic by way of human deaths, severe side effects, or when the public screams loudly enough, the FDA is not likely to protect you.

Until then, it is you who must protect yourself.

If you have diabetes, or cancer, have a compromised immune system, or if you are in some other high-risk category as tens of millions of North Americans are, you need to know what foods contain hazardous ingredients so you can avoid them. But in the case of alloxan, there is no way to know, either by reading the ingredient list or by any other means, that it might be in your food!

History of Bleaching Flour — Pillsbury and the FDA

An interesting sideline to this whole flour story lies in the origins of the FDA.

Bleaching and oxidizing agents weren’t developed to produce quick aging of wheat flour (within 48 hours) until the early 1900s. Prior to that, it required several months for oxygen to condition flour naturally.

When bleaching was introduced, it was vehemently opposed.

The first major consumer advocate was Harvey W. Wiley, MD, who eventually became known as the “Father of the Pure Food and Drugs Act” of 1906. Mr. Wiley was head of the Bureau of Chemistry, which was the precursor to the FDA. Wiley crusaded against benzoic acid, sulfites, saccharin, and bleached flour, among other food additives and adulterants.

Dr. Wiley felt so strongly about preventing the bleaching of flour that he took it all the way to the Supreme Court. They ruled that flour could not be bleached or “adulterated” in any way. However, it was never enforced.

Wiley believed that foods posed a greater risk to the public than adulterated or misbranded drugs. He constantly butted heads with Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and President Roosevelt over food regulation.

Soon, Wiley’s personal administrative authority was undercut when Wilson created the Board of Food and Drug Inspection in 1907 and the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts in 1908, one of which was reportedly headed by someone who had been working at Pillsbury, although I have not been able to verify this addendum.

Finally, in 1912, Dr. Wiley quit as director out of frustration, although he continued as a vocal consumer advocate for many years.

The government replaced Dr. Wiley with Dr. Elmer Nelson. Dr. Nelson was the polar opposite to Wiley , and was quoted as saying:

”It is wholly unscientific to state that a well-fed body is more able to resist disease than a poorly fed body. My overall opinion is that there hasn’t been enough experimentation to prove that dietary deficiencies make one susceptible to disease.”

Therein lies the foundation of the FDA. Since Dr. Wiley resigned, the FDA has continued to shift its focus on drugs, since Wiley was never able to convince the government of the dangers from chemicals in our foods. He was truly a pioneer and a century ahead of his time!

Food For Thought

The important point to take away is, beware of any processed food because chemicals are always used. And we simply don’t know what the long-term effects will be of ingesting chemicals, on top of chemicals, on top of more chemicals.

Strive to stick to whole unprocessed foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. If you’re going to eat grains, make sure they are at the least unbleached, whole, and organic, and eat them in the proportion that is best for your nutritional type.

Originally written March 25, 2009

Arsenic in Water Linked to Diabetes

A new report seem to link arsenic in water to Type 2 Diabetes.  Sounds absurd but various tests were conducted which led to this conclusion.  Salient points in the article are as follows:

• A new analysis of government data is the first to link low-level arsenic exposure, possibly from drinking water, with Type 2 diabetes, researchers say. The study’s limitations make more research necessary. And public water systems were on their way to meeting tougher U.S. arsenic standards as the data were collected.

• Seafood also contains nontoxic organic arsenic. The researchers adjusted their analysis for signs of seafood intake and found that people with Type 2 diabetes had 26 percent higher inorganic arsenic levels than people without Type 2 diabetes.

• Arsenic can get into drinking water naturally when minerals dissolve. It is also an industrial pollutant from coal burning and copper smelting. Utilities use filtration systems to get it out of drinking water.

Also, the findings raise a chicken-and-egg problem, she said, since it’s unknown whether diabetes changes the way people metabolize arsenic. It’s possible that people with diabetes excrete more arsenic.

Originally written February 12, 2009

Nano Ink ‘Tattoo’ Could Monitor Diabetes

Discovery News just came out with an article about a new type of ink tattoo which can monitor sugar levels of diabetics.  This is less painful than the usual blood glucose test used.  Read more about it here.




Another report describes the process as  having a sensor that would be injected into the skin’s surface layers — actually shallower than tattoo ink. A fluorescence monitor, resembling an optical mouse, would then be used to measure the light emitted by the tattoo.

Aside from monitoring glucose, there are possible applications to monitor sodium levels, which can measure hydration. This would most likely lead to the tattoo becoming a mandatory style for club-going ecstasy users.

Originally written February 12, 2009

What is the best alternative to sugar?

What is the safest artificial sweetener? For diabetics like me this is a constant concern as many studies are coming out on the harmful effects of some of them starting from aspartame. I stumbled upon this very informative video which helped me determine which product to use.




Originally written February 12, 2009

Harmful effects of Splenda

My Ayurvedda doctor does not allow us to use Splenda.  He says it is not good for our body.  He would rather the diabetics use Mozcovado rather than this artificial sweetner.



Various materials that I have read endorse Stevia rather than the more popular Splenda.  Equal and other aspartame brands have been reported as extremely harmful for humans.
Recently, I read in the website of Dr. Mercola that current studies show that Splenda reduced the amount of good bacteria in the intestines by 50 percent, increased the pH level in the intestines, contributed to increases in body weight and affected P-glycoprotein (P-gp) levels in such a way that crucial health-related drugs could be rejected.

The P-gp effect could result in medications used in chemotherapy, AIDS treatment and treatments for heart conditions being shunted back into the intestines, rather than being absorbed by the body.

Originally written February 12, 2009

14 Health Foods That Aren’t

A friend shared this article in facebook which I found interesting specially now that I have to choose what I eat. I do agree with what was written below. I was told not to eat white rice and instead stick to organic brown rice. Sometimes however when I have to eat out due to some business meetings, I notice that if I eat pasta my blood sugar rises. Brown rice never spikes my blood sugar.

Last night at a coffee shop I was looking for a sugar free pastry. The only thing available was guiltless chocolate. It looked rich so I looked for something else. The staff recommended the bran muffin but I asked him to check the ingredient. True enough there was sugar and from the article below boy it was rich!

14 Health Foods That Aren’t
By David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding

If your weight-loss regimen consists of giving up pizza and burgers in favor of flaxseeds and rice cakes, it’s time to reconsider your strategy.
In the book, Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide, co-authors David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding insist you don’t ever have to diet again. You can eat all of your favorite foods and still drop 10, 20, 30 pounds in just a few months.

To do so, though, you’ll need to learn the sneaky tricks the food industry employs to sabotage your waistline. The biggest hurdle to your weight-loss efforts isn’t the industrial-strength calorie bombs lurking in supermarkets and restaurants the country over (though be sure to brush up on the Worst Restaurant Foods and Worst Supermarket Foods in America, just to be safe), but rather, the flood of lackluster packaged and prepared foods masquerading as healthy eats. With the food industry spending $30 billion a year to peddle their most dubious products, it’s no wonder we’ve confused some of the most calorie-riddled, fat-laden products in America for truly nutritious food. To help you slim down this year, the Eat This, Not That! guys have identified the 14 most punishing health ruses and suggest delicious alternatives that will keep you satisfied and give you all the purported nutritional benefits that many of our most beloved foods sadly do not. Read on to discover a new, smarter game plan!

1. Bran muffin
# 420 calories
# 20 g fat
Eat this instead: Ham, egg and cheese on an English muffin
# 300 calories
# 12 g fat

Bran muffins are comprised of two things your body doesn’t want in the morning: sugar and refined flour. Both will work to spike your blood sugar, which signals your body to start storing fat and sets you up for a mid-morning crash. And with only trace amounts of fiber, there’s nothing healthy about this misunderstood muffin. The breakfast sandwich, on the
other hand, is a surprisingly great way to start your day. Besides having fewer calories, fat, and carbs, it also offers about 20 grams of protein, which we really need in the morning to jumpstart our metabolism.

2. Chicken Caesar salad (dinner-size portion)
# 900 calories
# 60 g fat

Eat this instead: Grilled chicken on mixed greens
# 400 calories
# 20 g fat

Caesar salads suffer the consequences of two natural disasters: a flood of fatty dressing and a blizzard of Parmesan cheese and croutons. Even a Caesar side salad before a meal can cost you up to 500 calories. Skip the emperor treatment in favor of a simple grilled chicken breast tossed in a bed of mixed greens tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette. The vinaigrette is a vast improvement over the treacherous Caesar dressing, and the absence of a Parmesan sea means that you’ll save nearly entire meal’s worth of calories by making this simple swap.

3. Tuna melt
# 900 calories
# 50 g fat

Eat this instead: Roast beef or ham sandwich
# 500 calories
# 15 g fat

Plain tuna out of the can is healthy; tuna doused in mayo, shrouded in melted cheese, and slicked with another layer of dressing is not. Both ham and roast beef are packed with protein and are super-satisfying and surprisingly lean, which means you can eat the same size sandwich and save 400 calories and 35 grams of fat.

4. Chicken wrap
# 700 calories
# 35 g fat

Eat this instead: Grilled chicken sandwich
# 375 calories
# 15 g fat

The wrap itself is the real offender here, dense with fast-burning carbs and containing up to 400 calories. It’s a tortilla shell pumped with a bunch of modified starch and fat. Plus the huge surface area means more room to slather dressing and pack in more cheese and meat than your typical sandwich. Definitely not a health food. A grilled chicken sandwich on a bun offers a great balance of fat, carbs, and protein, plus having a bun instead of a huge tortilla provides some much-need portion control. Bonus: Nix the mayo in favor of barbecue sauce or salsa (which is the ultimate fat-free, low-cal condiment).

5. Turkey burger
# 850 calories
# 50 g fat

Eat this instead: 7 oz sirloin steak
# 350 calories
# 20 g fat

People hear turkey and automatically think lean and healthy, but depending on the type of ground turkey and toppings used, one of these poultry patties can be every bit as fatty and caloric as a beef burger. Sirloin, on the other hand, is one of the leanest cuts of meat available, which makes for an incredibly satisfying, protein-enriched meal that will keep you feeling fuller, longer. Who wouldn’t want to make this swap?

6. Fruit smoothies
# 600 calories
# 120 g sugars


Drink this instead: 100 percent fruit smoothie
# 350 calories
# 75 g sugars

Many fruit smoothies contain added sugars and high-fructose corn syrup, which means they’re more milkshake than smoothie. The key here really is in the name: A 100 percent fruit smoothie made with plain yogurt instead of ice cream or sherbet will contain nearly half the calories and significantly less sugar, plus it will provide all of the vitamin and
antioxidant capacity that a smoothie is supposed to have.

7. Granola bar
# 200 calories
# 15 g sugars

Eat this instead: 1 oz cheddar cheese with Triscuits
# 150 calories
# 5 g sugars

Ever wonder what keeps a granola bar together? The makers of one of America’s favorite (and
most misunderstood) snacks use mostly high-fructose corn syrup as their glue, which in turn quickly raises blood sugar and cancels out any of the potential benefits you might otherwise
get from the oats. By switching over to good old-fashioned cheese and crackers, you swap out sugar and calories for protein and fiber. Talk about a great deal!

8. Pasta salad
# 300 calories
# 20 g fat

Eat this instead: Egg salad
# 200 calories
# 14 g fat

When the main ingredient for a snack or a side is pasta, you’re asking for trouble. That’s because pasta is made from highly-refined flour, which means quick-burning carbs and a huge spike in blood sugar. Not only does it save you a hundred calories, but the egg salad replaces those troublesome carbs with healthy protein, which helps fill your belly faster and keeps your metabolic fires effectively stoked.

9. Yogurt with fruit on the bottom
# 190 calories
# 30 g sugars

Eat this instead: Plain yogurt with fresh fruit mixed in
# 110 calories
# 15 g sugars

You wouldn’t start your morning with a can of Coke, would you? Then you should pass on these troublesome yogurt cups since they contain as much sugar as a soft drink. Almost all of what comes directly from the “fruit” is high-fructose corn syrup. Yogurt and fruit can be a great way to start your day, but do it yourself by mixing a cup of nonfat plain yogurt with a half cup of mixed berries.

10. Bagel with cream cheese
# 700 calories
# 40 g fat
# 13g saturated

Eat this instead: Cheese omelet
# 425 calories
# 18 g fat
# 6 g saturated

Bagels are bogus. The bread is bad enough, containing 300 calories and 60 grams of carbohydrates, but tack on the liberal cream cheese schmear (by our survey of popular breakfast chains, up to 4 ounces for a single bagel!) and your “harmless” breakfast snack just got worse than a Whopper. The omelet swap will save you nearly 300 calories, plus provide a surge of metabolism-driving protein. And a recent study from the University of Connecticut found that eggs can help raise HDL (good) cholesterol.

11. Pasta primavera
# 800 calories
# 40 grams of fat (12 g saturated)

Eat this instead: 2 slices veggie pizza
# 400 calories
# 20 g fat
# 6 g saturated

Yes, there may be a few vegetables in this popular pasta dish, but there is also a ton of butter, cream, and quick-burning carbs from the mountain of noodles. If you want to stick to pasta, look for red sauce-based dishes like pasta pomodoro or penne arrabiatta (chili-spiked marinara). But ultimately, even a few slices of cheese or vegetable pizza turn out to be a relatively smart choice when the craving for Italian food strikes. Unlike the nearly bottomless pits of pasta most restaurants serve up, pizza comes in a naturally portion-controlled form: two slices and you’re done. Just be sure to opt for regular or thin crust; both pan and deep dish pizza have nearly twice the calories.

12. Dried fruit
# 175 calories
# 45 g sugars

Eat this instead: Fresh fruit, like an apple or a peach
# 70 calories
# 15 g sugars

Okay, so dried fruit won’t totally derail a day of good eating (unless you put down an entire bag of banana chips), but it’s far from being a harmless snack. First, because the dehydrating process sucks most of the volume from the fruit, you can eat cups of the stuff, and 600 calories later, still not feel any fuller. More troubling, though, is the fact that companies like Sun-Maid and Ocean Spray almost invariably add a ton of sugar to the fruit, making Craisins closer to candy than Mother Nature’s original intention. In this case, the
choice is clear: Stick to the real stuff. You’ll get more fiber and less sugar, a time-tested formula for superior snacking.

13. Fish sandwich
# 600 calories
# 30 g fat
# 11 g saturated

Eat this instead: Chicken sandwich
# 300 calories
# 13 g fat
# 4 g saturated

Fish is healthy. Fish battered, fried, robed in cheese, and bathed in tartar sauce is decidedly not. The lesson? It’s not about the star ingredient, but the supporting cast—in this case a cadre of fat-bearing miscreants. We’ve seen too many chicken- and fish-based dishes ruined by overly assertive (and caloric) accoutrements. To that end, make sure your next chicken sandwich is grilled (avoid any menu item with the word “crispy,” the restaurant industry’s euphemism of choice for fried food), dressed with fresh produce, and topped with
a low-cal sauce like barbecue, or even ketchup and mustard.

14. Stick margarine (1 Tbsp)
# 100 calories
# 11 g fat
# 2.5 g saturated
# 2.5 g trans fat

Eat this instead: Whipped butter (1 Tbsp)
# 50 calories
# 6 g fat
# 1.5 g saturated

In their haste to remove saturated fat from butter, stick margarine makers created a monster—a soft, spreadable sludge loaded with trans fats, a dangerous lipid with more concerning links to heart disease than saturated fat. Stick with the real stuff, but pick up whipped butter from brands like Land O’ Lakes instead; by whipping air into the butter, manufacturers decrease the caloric density of a tablespoon of butter, plus it makes for easier spreading. Learn more about the healthy foods you should be shopping for and print
out personalized grocery lists with the Eat This, Not That! Premium site.

Originally written January 20, 2009