How to Choose Healthy Diet Foods

Walking around the supermarket, you'll see hundreds of "diet foods" being marketed to you. How do you know which ones are healthy and which ones aren't? Here's how to choose healthy diet foods.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• money for groceries
• willpower

1. Stick to the perimeters of the supermarket. This is where you will find the best foods. Foods that are down the center aisles tend to be highly processed, with a few exceptions. Incidentally, the foods in the perimeter tend to have lower prices, just in case your wallet is on a diet as well.

2. Don't read the ingredients. Usually, when selecting a food, you are told to "read the ingredients." However, when selecting a healthy diet food, ideally there won't be any ingredients to read. That's because the healthiest diet foods are one-ingredient foods: Apples, berries, oatmeal, eggplant...all of the best foods are whole foods, meaning that they haven't been tampered with and are still in their natural state.

3. Consider how the food will affect your blood sugar. The healthiest foods are foods that are low on the glycemic index, meaning that they will not cause a spike in your blood sugar levels. If you consult a list of foods rated on the glycemic index, you will find that apples are a much better choice than raisins, for example.

4. Select foods that are high in fiber. Fiber not only fills you up, but it helps eliminate cravings later, since it causes food to digest slower, therefore helping to moderate blood sugar. Studies have also shown that people are likely to lose weight when they follow a "high-satiety" diet. High-satiety means a food that you can eat quite a bit of without consuming a lot of calories and still feel full. Apples are a good example of a high-satiety food.

5. Read the ingredients. Yes, this contradicts Step 2, but sometimes we do end up in those middle aisles. Does the food labeled as "diet" contain added sugar? Saturated fats? Ingredient names you can't pronounce? If so, this is not a food that is good for a healthy diet of any kind. Even if the food only contains 100 calories, such as the 100 calorie snack packs, if it contains these items, then move as quickly as possible to the perimeter of the store!

6. Pretend you are going to be on television. If a news reporter came up to you and asked you to explain to a television audience how to eat healthily while on a diet, could you justify every item in your cart? If not, get rid of it!

7. Enjoy the wonderful feeling of good health and looser jeans you'll get from eating healthy diet foods! And don't forget to add me as a friend on eHow! :-)

Tips & Warnings

• Take a limited amount of money to the store. This will help you control impulse purchases.
• This is an excellent time to teach your children about healthy eating choices.
• Never shop when you are hungry. You are much more likely to make poor choices at that time.

Resources

• The Glycemic Index
• Losing Weight on Sugarbusters

[hlthychoclitnut]

on 1/14/2009 Thanks for good tips on How to Choose Healthy Diet Foods. you mentioned satiety of different foods. Dark chocolate has actually been shown to be an appetite suppressant. If I eat a small amount of some YUMMY chocolate I found in between meals I'm not hungry for ages and I eat less.