Learning to spot unhealthy foods:
a killer oatmeal cookie

I try to live a healthy lifestyle – choosing and preparing my food carefully and avoiding unhealthy foods. However, even the most careful person can accidentally put bad things into their body. Not too long ago I had an experience that really drove this truth home – and it all started with innocent looking, supposedly healthy oatmeal cookies. 

(Update: Scroll to the end of this page if you came here looking for for healthy oatmeal cookies recipe. I finally found one and prefected it!)

Recognize bad and good calories

There I stood at the store, hungry for a snack. An apple pie looked tempting, but I knew that its hydrogenated fat content was a no-no. Then I spied an oatmeal cookie. Oatmeal is good for you, so it seemed like it was the perfect solution.

Unfortunately, I was in for a shock.

I chose my healthy oatmeal cookies, proudly showcasing their oat grains through occasional chocolate bits.

After I chewed a cookie, I checked the calories. I always do because I intend to stay healthy and lean forever. I almost dropped the box…..

A whopping 200 calories per cookie!

If you are a woman living on 1500 calories diet, this is just unacceptable. But at least there was some oatmeal goodness in what I ate, some fiber, right?

Right! 2 grams of fiber, 5% of the cookie's weight, were actually good for me. Accompanied by 5 mg of cholesterol. You just cannot win!

Let’s see what those calories are coming from

"BAD" calories: 68%
28% - sugar,
41% - fat.

What’s wrong with this picture? The proportion of the ingredients!

Calories 101:

Whether healthy or unhealthy, foods provide energy from protein, fats and carbs. Protein can be from animal or plant sources. Both carbs and fats can be of the good or bad variety.

Healthy foods also include fiber (could be spelled "fibre"), unhealthy foods include cholesterol, chemicals, natural harmful substances and toxins.

So far so good?

Protein and carbs produce 4 calories per gram, while fat supplies 9 calories per gram.

Fiber doesn’t supply calories, but plays an important role of internal cleanser and vehicle for the food to get from your mouth to its final destination. We need fiber to help digest food.

Good "complex" carbs is what you are looking for. You can calculate total amount of those by substracting sugars and fiber from the total carbohydrate content:

"GOOD" calories:
Total carbs: 27 g
Less fibre: 2 g
Less sugars: 14 g
--------------------
Good carbs: 11 g
Calories: 44, 22% of total calories
Add plant protein: 6%.
Total: 28% of "GOOD" calories.

Just a bit more than a quarter of the cookie's calories came from the good carbs

In the example of my cookie, the proportion of fats, carbs, and protein and fiber was just plain wrong, and it can be that way in many other foods that at first seem perfectly “good for you. “

What do we expect from healthy oatmeal cookies?

• More fiber,
• More good carbs (complex carbs),
• Less bad carbs (simple carbs, sugars)
• Less fat
• Less animal protein
• More plant protein.

This cookie failed the test miserably. It turned out to be an artery-clogging, obesity and heart disease promoting 39 grams of little treat that many of us would easily buy for our children.

By the age of 25, three out of four people living in the U.S. will have their arteries half-clogged with fats and cholesterol.

Let’s change this trend. We don't have to be a part of this statistics!

Learning to read nutritional label is an essential skill to survive in the shopping jungle, yet nothing gives you more power over your own body than cooking by yourself and for yourself.

If you want to make healthy oatmeal cookies using healthy nutritional ingredients as substitutes for unhealthy ones, try my easy  Healthy oatmeal cookies recipe.

Please check out Healthy and unhealthy food definiton and come back for more.

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