Tuesday

College student friendly tricks to being healthy

Being a college student already brings about great difficulty in finding ways to eat healthy. But when we’re deceived daily by labels and advertisements telling the public inaccurate information about what is healthy, it makes it even more of a challenge to stay true to our diets.

My best advice for anyone who wants to lose weight is to avoid processed foods at all costs. They’re fake food made in factories, David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., director of the pediatric weight loss Optimal Weight for Life Program in Boston, said.

I found this astonishing statistic while doing research on EverydayHealthy.com  “Any food that has been canned, dehydrated, or had chemicals added to it is a processed food, and these foods make up about 60 percent of the average American diet.” 

And these foods are everywhere, which makes it even more difficult to avoid ingesting processed foods.
Photo Credit: Kathleen Etzel
Artificial sweeteners that are “diet friendly” are said to do more harm to our bodies than sugar. Sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose and saccharin are all types of artificial sweeteners. Studies suggest that artificial sweeteners are linked to headaches and cancer, not to mention they are chemically made which is harder for your body to digest.

You can find these in packets on the table at a restaurant, in diet drinks or sugar free items. I went around and polled 10 people at the ASU Downtown Campus to see who used artificial sweeteners daily. 

It turned out that eight out of the ten people I asked used sweeteners daily and didn’t see the harm in using it, they just really cared about the taste.

Ryan Hill, freshman at ASU commented on artificial sweeteners saying, “ It’s a lot more accessible and less expensive than real sugar, but it tastes the same”

Some other foods I found that you would think are healthy that aren’t; granola bars, fruit snacks and frozen yogurt. Shocking I know but frozen yogurt is still loaded with sugar and calories not too mention the toppings added in. Both granola bars and fruit snacks are also loaded with sugar.

The secret to being healthy is looking at the ingredients and knowing less is more. If it takes you longer than 10 seconds to read the label, chances are that it is not healthy!

Kathleen Etzel