Why LOW FAT Foods Are Keeping You FAT

It would be lovely to think that we could have all the pleasure and taste of our favourite indulgences with a fraction of the calories, and indeed the supermarkets and food manufacturers would love us to believe that!

Unfortunately, ‘low fat’ foods are almost always too good to be true! One of the major culprits is diet ready meals. Not only do they claim to be low in calories and fat, they also claim to be tasty and filling. Unfortunately the reality is usually a cardboard or plastic tub, with a disappointing portion lurking at the bottom. You could probably have a larger portion for the same amount of calories if you made the meal from scratch using REAL ingredients! Now something has to replace all the fat and calories that have been sucked from the meal and this is usually sugar, not a particularly good swap. As we know eating sugar laden foods can affect our insulin levels, leading to a sugar high, followed by the dreaded sugar crash where our dieting resolve is really tested! You will also have to watch the salt content of ready meals, remembering that not only is too much salt bad for you, but also makes you retain water, appearing heavier than you are! If you need more convincing, the ‘ready meal’ version is never as good as the real thing, listing ‘flavourings’ or ‘flavour enhancers’ to attempt to make it taste normal, and a host of E-numbers to make it ‘the right colour’. Yuk.

Diet versions of things like cheese, yogurts and biscuits etc are again usually filled with sweeteners, and usually compromise taste to save the calories. This can mean that you need more of the food to enjoy the taste, eating twice as much as usual, and meaning no calories are saved! If you love cheese, have a little bit of a proper cheese, rather than a load of a fake version!

Many ‘diet’ foods are conning you out of your money too – next time you go to the supermarket compare a diet version against a normal version of something like baked beans, not only are they more expensive, but often only have a few less calories. Could it be that the diet industry just wants to make money out of your desire to slim down?

So how do you avoid being conned by diet foods and ready meals? The easiest way is by cooking from scratch at home. 30 years ago, before the supermarkets were saturated with convenience foods and low fat substitutes; obesity was not such a problem. People cooked, baked, and ate sensibly. Try going back to basics and think about what your grandma would have made for dinner. Plates were piled high with vegetables to fill you up, and puddings were almost always mainly made of fruit, not chocolate and cream!

There are ways you can make your cooking lower in calories, try replacing flour in baking with ground almonds for a gluten free, lower calorie option. Instead of using all butter to make a cake, try replacing some with some olive, coconut or ground nut oil – your cake will be moist and tasty. Think about how you cook food – boil or steam vegetables instead of roasting or frying. Choose lean cuts of meats, and remove any fat before cooking.

If you do need to buy a convenience item, still try to buy fresh foods, and avoid anything with ingredients you can’t pronounce or sound like they belong in a chemistry lab rather than in your dinner. Sometimes it is better to buy low fat, but only for the right foods. Skimmed milk and 0% Fat Greek yogurt are good options, the fat taken away hasn’t been replaced by anything nasty, and they still taste good.

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