Let’s say you start your day with some cornflakes/muesli (Kellog’s or any other common brand) for breakfast. You also enhance your milk with Bournvita/Complan/Horlicks. During the day, you might avoid aerated beverages and go for some fruit juice by Real/Tropicana etc and feel happy about it. It is also natural to assume that you might snack on some Marie/Parle-G/Monaco biscuits; or McVities which is supposedly healthier. Oh and do you replace normal bread with brown bread, that’s another good choice isn’t it?
If your daily diet resembles the one mentioned above, I have bad news for you. Look at the chart below:
The reason why we consider these foods monstrous is that they have been publicly accepted as part of a normal diet whereas their consumption offers little to no benefits, and can in fact be considered unhealthy:
1) These products are healthier only when compared to absolute junk food like deep fired snacks etc, but not compared to fruits, pulses, vegetables.
2) Impractical serving sizes are indicated on the nutritional labels which lead to overconsumption, when was the last time you had 30g of cornflakes or 100g of biscuits?
3) They are aggressively promoted as healthy/nutritious; whereas if these comprise a significant portion of our daily meal they will lead to nutrient deficiencies and other disorders (as indicated in the table)
4) Flavoured/sweetened foods are addictive and lead to avoidance of natural, healthy foods
In the end, all I’d say is you should make your mom read this!