Five Foods We Think Are Good For Us (But totally aren’t)

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These days we’re bombarded with messages of what’s healthy and what’s not, and somehow, in amongst the deluge of information, we’re supposed to make responsible and nutritionally sound decisions.

Yet therein lies the confusion, since there a few foods sneakily masquerading as ‘healthy’, but in reality are about as good for us as Will Smith turning down the role of Neo in ‘The Matrix’ to do ‘Wild Wild West’. No, really. So I’ve dedicated an unreasonably large portion of my week to weeding out the food that is keeping us all from being the Adonises/Lady Adonises we know we truly are:

For some reason, hummus is literally everywhere today. You can barely make it down the road without your lungs filling up with the Middle-Eastern chickpea-based dip, and it’s probably because there’s a vague air of health around the beige mash. For some reason, probably because it’s a bit exotic, mysterious and tenuously associated with vegetables, people think it’s okay to shovel tub after tub down their trendy food holes. You don’t have to look far to see someone clearly attempting to pick ‘the lighter option’ by consuming ten carrots smothered in a tub of the goo while self-righteously looking down at your third bag of hula-hoops. Actually, hummus is about 40% fat, which is more than Nutella. So leave me and my hoops alone, we’re very happy together, thank you very much.

Yeah, just dip carrots in it and no one will notice.

Following close on the heels of hummus as ‘sneakily fatty thing that women can’t seem to get enough of’, behind Tom Hardy, is yoghurt. Watching a standard yoghurt advert you’d think that eating the stuff is like drinking a litre and a half of ‘supermodel juice’, guaranteed to turn your hair instantly shiny and move you into a bigger house, usually decorated entirely in white. But if you were planning on dropping a few pesky pounds by chowing down on tub after tub of the fermented dairy product, keep in mind that a tub of Strawberry Activia has the same amount of sugar as a digestive biscuit, so you’re likely to end up fatter, and probably in the same crappy non-all-white house, googling Tom Hardy again.

Go on, just a drizzle…

So you want to be healthy? Well what better place to start than breakfast, the dinner of morning? A quick change to your cereal, and bang! You’re half way to looking like Matthew Mcconaughey used to look. For instance, you could change a bad cereal, like Coco Pops for a good one, like granola. I say ‘good’ because granola boxes come with pictures of mountainsides and goats and stuff on them. One bowl of that and your lungs are sure to fill with fresh alpine air and offers of marriage! Or at least you’d think, until you looked next to the goats and saw the calorie count: around 500 per bowl. Without milk.  Almost twice as much as a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

Could also be bird food

Okay, so it’s unlikely you really thought this one was good for you. But hey, it’s probably better than smearing your own brand processed white bread with Nutella and crushed hula hoops again. And peanuts are nuts, which I’m pretty sure Gillian McKeith told me were healthy right? Wrong. Peanuts are actually legumes, Gillian McKeith is as scientifically qualified as the man at the bus stop this morning who told me the government were forcing him to have abortions, and peanut butter actually contains icing sugar, totalling around 100 calories per tablespoon.

Hello sexy.

Similar to its evil twin granola, cereal bars have worked their way into nearly every food outlet as the choice de jour of the sanctimonious, haughtily passing over the rows and rows of processed chocolate and sweets in favour of a self-righteous alternative, usually with a deceivingly nutritious sounding prefix like ‘Nutri- ‘ glued onto the front of it, followed by the applause of a thousand unbearably smug food marketers. Well, as it happens, those chewy rectangles are themselves glued together with an almost physically impossible amount of sugar, amounting to 30g per bar, leaving you just as unable to fit into nice jeans as the wobbler across from you tucking into another Dairy Milk.

So next time you’re faced with a possible ‘healthy option’ in the supermarket, just think back to this article, and then remember that we’re all going to die anyway, so just do what you want.