10 Worst Supermarket Foods
Who likes food? All of us!Who likes shopping? All of us!
Who likes food shopping? Hands? Anyone? Hello . . .?
The answer is, almost nobody likes food shopping. Going to the supermarket is a drab, draining drudgery, as even shopaholic gourmands will confess. A trip to the grocery store means spending an hour or so parsing specious nutritional claims and confusing price schemes and annoying, cloying packaging tricks, all while paying more money than you ever imagined, and doing it all under florescent lighting that could make Brooklyn Decker look like the Crypt Keeper.
Worse, thanks to tricky packaging, that supermarket is loaded with food that’s going to cause more weight gain than you bargained for. And it doesn’t matter how thorough your command of the English language is; Eminem couldn’t pronounce half of what’s on an ingredients list, and only Don Draper could make sense of marketing gobbledygook like "Part of a Well-Balanced Diet" and "Loaded with 9 Essential Nutrients." What you need is a cheat sheet that will lead you away from the worst offenders, and toward the shelves of nutritional safety. Fortunately, I’ve got one.
Through years of groundbreaking Eat This, Not That! research, we've managed to conquer the labrynth, and to show you what I mean, we've pulled together the worst of what the supermarket has to offer. If you want to survive the aisles, you'd be wise to avoid these diet-destroying pitfalls.
1. Worst Yogurt
Stonyfield Whole Milk Chocolate Underground (1 container)
220 calories
5 g fat (3 g saturated)
36 g sugars
Stonyfield is notorious for being generous with the sugar, but the 9 spoonfuls in its Chocolate Underground is bad even by the most indulgent dessert standards. Not even Ben & Jerry's most decadent scoop has this much sugar.
Eat This Instead!
Stonyfield Plain 0% Fat Yogurt
80 calories
0 g fat (0 g saturated)
11 g sugars
2. Worst Condiment
Eggo Original Syrup (1/4 cup)
240 calories
0 g fat
40 g sugars
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but not when it comes topped with this much sugar. Thanks to the combined impact of three liquid sweeteners, one serving of Eggo's pancake syrup has as much sugar as two packages of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, according to Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide. That's no way to start the day.
Eat This Instead!
Maple Grove Farms Sugar Free Syrup (1/4 cup)
25 calories
0 g fat
0 g sugars
Special Report: If you're serious about losing weight, you need to cut down on sugar first. Problem is, many of us eat too much of the white stuff for breakfast. You stay full longer when you swap out sugar for fiber, and we'll show you how to do it with ease right here: The 24 Best and Worst Cereals.
3. Worst Pick-Me-Up
Vault Red Blitz (20-oz bottle)
290 calories
78 g sugars
Here's a staggering stat: If you're used to drinking black coffee every morning, and you switch to this bottle of Vault, you'll pack on more than 5 pounds of body fat in the first two months on your normal diet. What's more, it's unlikely that you'll earn any extra buzz. This bottle has 115 milligrams of caffeine. An 8-ounce cup of coffee has as much as 200 milligrams. Stick with coffee or pick a leaner energy drink.
Drink This Instead!Rockstar Recovery (16 fl oz)
20 calories
2 g sugars
