Foods You Think are Healthy That are Actually Junk

Over the course of our collective lifetimes, science has made great strides in recognizing what will eventually kill us, but what about what keeps us alive and functioning? It is in this unknown that charlatans lurk, hawking quack medicines they swear will achieve miracles. These impostors aren’t the expected shady characters, peeping out from the corners of darkened alleys, wearing an eye patch and a trenchcoat lined with ill-gotten goods.  Instead, you are being hoodwinked by gigantic corporations who, at a glance, appear to be respectable and trustworthy businesses singing their siren song to billions of unsuspecting people. “Our products work,” they croon. “Come and see for yourself. Everyone else is.” Ranging from outright dishonesty to blatant attempts to get you to spend money on their brand when the benefits could be sourced from elsewhere, hardly a second goes by when we aren’t being inundated with advertisements from one source or another, all brought to us by Big Food, whispering sweet nothings in our ear of how we can live longer and hold onto our youth if only we buy their products. Caveat emptor, dear health seeker. The health claims on these products are often dubious at best and it’s likely that you have amassed a pantry full of snake oil.

Coconut Water

While various celebrity shills in the form of cardboard cutouts lurk in the beverage aisle of your local grocery store try to convince you of the numerous health benefits of drinking coconut water, you might be wondering if it’s worth the price. To be fair, it is true that coconut water is low in calories, loaded with potassium, and cholesterol and fat-free, there is no real proof that it is any better than regular water for basic, daily consumption and hydration.

When held up against a typical sports drink like Gatorade, coconut water does have less sodium and fewer calories. It also has a much greater amount of potassium. On the positive side, coconut water generally has less sugar than any sports drink, fruit juice, or soda.

Plain coconut waters could seem like the perfect drink for someone who is looking for a drink that not as cloyingly sweet as juice or soda. The calories from those coconut waters can shoot up very quickly if you are not mindful of how much you drink. Just 11 ounces of plain coconut water has around 60 calories in it, and if you opt for any of the coconut waters that have been flavored, you are essentially consuming the exact same amount of sugar as if you were drinking soda. Lastly, at an average of $2.50 for a small bottle, the cost is hardly worth the product inside. You can get the exact same benefits from eating a single 20 cent banana for potassium and drinking free water from the tap. You also get the added benefit of not having to consider calories, sodium, or carbohydrates.

Vitamin Water

In 2014, a class-action lawsuit was brought against VitaminWater. The lawsuit accused the Coca-Cola company of fraudulently marketing the infused water as a health drink. Given the fact that a single bottle of VitaminWater contains just about as much sugar as a can of Coke, this is clearly not the case. In response to the allegations, in an unparalleled act of logic so twisted and nonsensical that Lewis Carroll himself could have penned it, Coca Cola claimed that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage,” even though it is blatantly marketed as such. In actuality, Vitaminwater is little more than sugary water with less than a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins added to it. You can save money and calories by simply eating a piece of fruit and drinking regular water, but Coke isn’t going to tell you that, are they?

Nutritional Snack Bars

The commercials for nutritional and protein snack bars show us images of fit women in skin-tight workout clothes or hulking men with bulging biceps and the coveted 12 pack. Of course, you want to know how they got that way. Advertised as a healthy and nutritious meal replacement option, these bars promise that they are an integral part of living a healthy lifestyle. These types of meal replacement bars are a $2.3 billion industry. As far as actually being good for you? Well, I suppose that depends on how broad your definition of healthy is. Kind brand bars, which started back in 2004 and have since sold over a million bars, were recently cautioned by the Food and Drug Administration that their bars do not come near the standard benchmarks used to determine what is healthy. The majority of the bars were way too high in their saturated fats, and the bars that contained dark chocolate somehow were not able to provide enough antioxidants overall to allow them to carry a label claiming that they are antioxidant-rich.

Overall, these nutritional bars contain an excessive helping of sugar in one form or another. Whether it’s granulated white sugar, raw sugar, high fructose corn syrup, agave nectar or honey, sugar is still sugar. Additionally, the fat content in these bars is usually very high, as is the calorie count. When all is said and done, a vast majority of these so-called nutritional meal replacement bars have about the same nutrition as a candy bar.

The GMOs

Have you ever wondered about the cane sugar in Vitaminwater and these various other supposedly healthy foods and drinks? Bayer, formerly Monsanto, is the all too familiar company that drives the manufacturing of genetically engineered seed, and it is well on its way to putting the finishing touches on insect-protected and RoundUp Ready sugarcane. Eventually, this will mean the extensive production of genetically modified sugar cane that is resistant to bugs and tolerant to herbicides in a way that Mother Nature never intended.

Monsanto’s genetically modified sugar beets have put a chokehold on the agricultural business Even the United States Department of Agriculture has decided that the RoundUp Ready sugar beets are equally as harmless as conventionally-grown sugar beets. The Department of Agriculture has also determined that RoundUp Ready sugar beets need absolutely no regulation of any kind, and of course, absolutely no label.

Any of these foods are more than likely something that you come into contact with on a daily basis. Unfortunately, they can all have very negative consequences for your health and for your waistline in the long run. If you have reason to suspect that repeated and prolonged exposure to glyphosate from Round-Up or Round-Up Ready products caused your illness, then you need to speak with an attorney as soon as possible. A dedicated and knowledgeable attorney who is familiar with products liability claims and mass torts will be able to thoroughly investigate the link between Monsanto’s products and your illness. Your attorney can help review the facts of your case and can help determine what your next steps should be. We here at the Brady Law Group do not shy away from difficult or complex cases and we go to any necessary lengths to protect the rights of our clients. If you would like a free consultation regarding a Roundup lawsuit that you believe you may have, please reach out to our law firm by calling (866) 211-2562 as soon as possible.