12 Toxic Lies the Food Industry Keeps Telling You in 2023
#4. Low-calorie foods are healthier
Data from the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has repeatedly found that our country is eating way more calories than the daily recommended intake. What’s worse, most of those calories aren’t even healthy as they contain sugar, unhealthy fats and very few nutrients.
These scary statistics made us turn to foods and products labeled as ‘low-calorie.’
After all, if we’re eating too many calories, these sound like the best option, right?
Wrong – at least when it comes to snacks, soda and other heavily processed foods.
The main reason is that most low-calorie products are enriched with artificial sweeteners to give you a satisfaction similar to actual sugar. However, these are still empty calories that lack any nutritional value; it also proves that just because something is low in calories, it doesn’t mean it’s healthy too.
This 2017 study from the Canadian Medical Association Journal, for example, found that eating non-nutritive sweeteners constantly can increase your risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
You can find these sweeteners listed on the label as stevia, sucralose or aspartame.
