I don’t know about you, but I work hard to get the most bang for my buck out of the food I eat. I’m constantly looking for ways to make my diet healthier. It was good luck then that I happened to come upon this slideshow composed by Cooking Light on “The Most Common Nutrition Mistakes”. See how many of these common slip-ups you’re making, perhaps without knowing it!
- Choosing brown eggs over white. A large brown egg has the same nutritional value as a large white egg. Brown eggs come from a different type of hen, which is typically larger and costs more to feed – hence the increased cost of the egg itself!
- Bottom line: Either egg you choose will be nutritionally sound.
- Forgetting to shake your soy milk. Many people drink soy milk for the added calcium. However, soy milk is different from cow’s milk in that the calcium is not naturally suspended throughout the liquid. This causes the calcium in soy milk to clump up at the bottom and very often gets thrown away.
- Bottom line: Shake that soy milk prior to each use!
- Grabbing peanut butter fortified with omega 3’s. This is a good idea in theory, but in actuality you’d have to eat 1 cup of that peanut butter (1520 calories) to get the same amount of omega-3s as a 4 ounce piece of salmon (200 calories).
- Bottom line: Fortified peanut butters are okay, but make sure they are not your only source of those healthy fats. And watch the serving sizes to stay within your daily recommended calorie intake.
- Substituting ground turkey for ground beef. Some ground turkey includes both light and dark meat. A quarter pound of ground turkey contains 3g saturated fat, compared to 2.5g in ground sirloin. Ground turkey breast, on the other hand, contains only .5g saturated fat.
- Bottom line: Make sure you’re reading the label and choosing only 100% ground turkey breast.
- In an effort to lose weight, you stop snacking. While the basic principle of eating less to weigh less is true, snacking helps manage hunger by leveling off metabolic rates – which helps you eat less in the long run.
- Bottom line: Don’t stop snacking, just snack right! Try nuts, low-fat dairy products, or low calorie fruit once or twice a day between meals.
- Boiling your vegetables. When you boil veggies that are rich in water soluble vitamins (Bs, Cs, Folate) they lose many of their nutrients into that very water. This is okay if you’re making a soup or a dish that keeps the broth, but not if you’re draining them.
- Bottom line: Steam or microwave your vegetables to retain more vitamins.
- Choosing fast food grilled chicken over a beef burger. Sodium can skyrocket in a fast food chicken breast because of brine or salty toppings like bacon. For example, at Burger King the Tendergrill Chicken sandwich has 1,100mg sodium whereas a Whopper Jr. burger has half that and 130 fewer calories!
- Bottom line: Take time to scan the nutritional information, while keeping in mind the suggested daily intake of 2300 mg of sodium. Chicken isn’t always better.
So, how’d you do? Any surprises in there? I’m glad the world of nutrition has come so far, but it can get kind of crazy trying to differentiate the good from the bad. What types of nutrition mistakes have you caught yourself making? How did you change them? Stay tuned for Part II of my nutritional research!