6 Foods I Tell Every Patient Over 50 to STOP Buying Immediately [ASK DR. ANNA]

[00:00:00]Six foods I tell every patient over 50 to stop buying immediately. That's what I'm covering today. If we haven't met yet, hey, I'm Dr. Anna. I'm a medical doctor trained in Italy and I've helped thousands of adults over 50 achieve permanent weight loss and reverse chronic diseases using simple Mediterranean strategies. Now, I see the same struggles over and over again in my patients and clients trying to lose weight. When I look at what they're buying, I see the same six foods that constantly pop up. So, these are foods that are marketed as healthy, but they're actually working against us most of the time. So, today I'm going to walk us through these six foods and I'll tell you exactly why I tell my patients to stop buying them and what to buy instead. And make sure you stick around till the end of the episode because I'm going to give you my honest take on what you really need to watch out for and it's the real danger here. That's not just these six foods, it's actually worse. So, let's jump right in. Food number one. So, a lot of you might be surprised, but I'm going to put number one on my list as flavored yogurt. Now, this is probably something I see more commonly than the rest of the foods.

[00:01:04]Patients tell me all the time, "But Dr. Anna, I eat yogurt every morning. That's healthy, right? Doesn't have that good bacteria?" And look, absolutely that's true. Yogurt is a healthy food, but flavored yogurt, I'd argue, is really not the same thing as just regular yogurt. Why? When you pick up a container of flavored yogurt, so it doesn't really matter what flavor, strawberry, vanilla, blueberry, fruit on the bottom, if you flip over that package and you look at the back, you will see the sugar content. Now, some of these have literally up to 15 or even 20 g of added sugar. And that is like eating a candy bar with your breakfast.

[00:01:44]Now, these food companies literally are taking a perfectly healthy food, yogurt, and then they strip out some of the fat and what do they do to add the flavor back in? Well, they pump it full of sugar. And so, if you think you're being healthy, you are, but you're also adding in something that's completely not great for you right at the first thing of your day. So basically, you're starting your day with dessert. Now, here's what to buy instead. Just keep it easy, plain Greek yogurt. The fat content I will actually say is kind of a controversial thing, so I'm going to leave that part up to you, but please just buy the plain kind. Then, if you don't like the sourness to it, you can always add your own sweetener, a little bit of honey, a little maple syrup, a little bit of actual cane sugar that you can control the amount. Just drizzle that on top, add some cinnamon, add some real fruit.

[00:02:33]Now we're talking. Okay, food number two on our list. This is going to be fruit juice. Now, even if you buy juice that says 100% juice or no sugar added, let me tell you, fruit juice is really not a health food. Here's why. When you juice fruit, you end up removing all the fiber from the whole form fruit. And what is the fiber doing for us? Well, the fiber is actually what slows down the sugar being released into our bloodstream. Now without fiber, you're just drinking liquid sugar and some vitamin C, maybe and some antioxidants. Your blood sugar will spike. There's no question about it, and you're going to be hungry again an hour later. Now, little caveat here, juice is actually a really helpful tool because of everything I just described to bring your blood sugar up if it's too low. So diabetics out there who are taking insulin, you're going to know that this is a really helpful tool so that you don't get too low of blood sugar. But I'm not talking to you right now when I'm making this statement. I'm talking about the general population.

[00:03:37]Most of us do not have diabetes and are also taking insulin. And so for most of us, most of the time, we do not want to have this quick spike in our blood sugar. Now, I'm not saying that fresh pressed juice is actually the end of the world. By all means, you can enjoy it, and it is very delicious, especially if you're on a beach or you're somewhere where they're making this fresh in like a street stand. I can tell you I've had some travels to places where I've had fresh-pressed watermelon juice, and it is like to die for. Fantastic. Enjoy, especially if you're having fun, you're on vacation, and you want to just have something special. But, it's really not a great staple for us to have in our lives on a daily basis. What I'd argue you can buy instead of course, just buy the whole fruit form. If you like the flavor of fruit, please just eat the fruit. Fruit is fantastic for our health, and it still has all that healthy fiber. Doesn't really matter which fruit. Could be an orange, a grapefruit, an apple, some berries. You get the fiber, you stay full longer because of it, and your body handles the sugar way better. But, if you really want to have juice some of the time, please go ahead and enjoy. I would just argue it's probably better that we pull back from having this as a daily staple of our lives. Okay, fruit number three on our list. This is going to be pre-made bottled 100% fruit smoothies.

[00:04:56]Now, here's the thing. Probably some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute. I thought we just talked about how juice is so bad because there's no fiber, but I don't understand how smoothies would still be bad because we have the fiber."

[00:05:07]Yes, these are marketed as healthy, and they're portable breakfast options, but here's the problem I see with these. I agree with you. They are a little bit of a step up from the juice because we do still have the fiber inside, but to be honest, they're really expensive. And if they're just 100% fruit, it's really still just all sugar. Now, I love smoothies, and I make them frequently in my house, and I take them to work all the time. What's the difference? Well, the difference is if you're going to make your own smoothie, really, I can't recommend enough boost up that protein content. Add a little bit of healthy fat in there. Let's balance out the nutrition, so it does completely different thing for your metabolism and for your blood sugar. A bottle of pure fruit as a smoothie, even with the fiber in there, is ultimately just going to increase your blood sugar and crash it back down. The difference is, compared to the juice, it's just going to do that a little bit more slowly. But, it's really going to happen no matter what.

[00:06:04]Instead, if we add in things like yogurt, if we add in some milk or protein powders or some nut butters like peanut butter or cashew butter or almond butter or even some avocado or some vegetables, spinach or kale, now we're talking about something much more balanced and it's not just a sugar bomb.

[00:06:23]So, real quick, if you're listening to this and you realize that you've been buying these foods thinking they were healthy, well, you're totally not alone.

[00:06:30]That's fine. That's why I'm making this video. This is exactly why I also host a free weight loss webinar where you can learn an easy way to lose weight and keep it off so you can stop second-guessing every single food choice. You can feel confident what you're eating and actually see results without having to follow a real diet.

[00:06:49]You can register for that free webinar by clicking the link in the description below. Or, if you're watching this from a TV or any kind of a screen, there's a QR code where you can hover your camera app right over top and the link's going to pop up for you. Okay, let's dive into food number four. Food number four are these healthy frozen meals. So, you're seeing all the brands. I'm not necessarily going to nitpick any one over the other. They're all kind of the same to me. Lean Cuisine, Smart Ones, etc. Those clean eating frozen dinners, they sound healthy and they're literally designed and marketed at us to be portion controlled and low calorie. But, here's what I see a lot of the time.

[00:07:27]This is what concerns me. There are so many ingredients. They're often pretty high in fat and there's so much sodium.

[00:07:34]These meals are designed for their shelf life. They're not for your health.

[00:07:38]They're packed with preservatives, fillers, and tons of salt to make them taste very good after sitting in a freezer for months. And the portions are so small that off often what I see for people is they end up still feeling hungry at the end of it, so they add something in addition, or they're hungry just like 1 or 2 hours after they eat these things, and so they have a fourth meal of the day. So, what you can do instead is just to make really simple meals at home in like 15 minutes or less. Pan-seared chicken, steamed vegetables, a scoop of rice or quinoa, maybe you make it in a rice cooker, a really simple soup or a stew, drizzle some olive oil on top, done. Real food, real nutrition, and you'll actually stay full. And don't forget, I have so many other videos on my channel talking about a lot of different meal ideas that are Mediterranean-inspired.

[00:08:25]And so, these are things that are going to keep your body feeling full and satisfied, supportive of weight loss.

[00:08:31]So, please don't hesitate to check out all my other videos if you need more meal ideas. Okay, we're ready for food number five. This is a classic no-no, and this is margarine. So, for years, margarine used to be marketed as this healthy alternative to butter back when people became really afraid of eating butter. It was lower in saturated fat, which we started to understand is definitely problematic and can be linked to higher risks of heart disease and things like strokes and heart attacks.

[00:08:59]But, here's the truth. Margarine really isn't a great alternative because it's loaded with something called trans fats.

[00:09:05]And these are modified oils, they're basically made in a lab, and turns out trans fats, ironically, are actually even worse for our heart and our blood vessels than the saturated fat. So, they cause a lot of inflammation. So, you probably can understand that it's not really a real food because it's lab-altered, and it's highly processed, and it's really just something our body does not handle well. Now, by all means, at the time that they designed it, they weren't aware of all of this, so it's not their fault, but we've learned better by now, and so I really recommend margarine getting out of our kitchens.

[00:09:37]What to buy instead? In my opinion, and a lot of my physician colleagues are probably going to lose their mind that I'm going to say this out loud on the internet, but I think real butter is okay. You can enjoy butter, I do all the time. It's not going to cause a heart attack. Better yet, though, are other oils like olive oil, avocado oil, walnut oil, sesame oil. Any of these things though are coming from whole natural foods and they have nutrition inside.

[00:10:05]So, please understand all of these things I just mentioned have been used in cooking by civilizations for hundreds and thousands of years. Your body knows what to do with them. It's completely different than margarine. All right, are we ready for our sixth food on this list? Things to get rid of entirely. I would say it's these instant oatmeal packets. All right, oatmeal. I thought that was healthy Dr. Anna. I was always told oats are good for our heart, right?

[00:10:30]They're whole grains. But, the instant oatmeal packets is not the same as true oats. These are packaged and processed with altered versions of the oats themselves to that make them really quick cooking. Normally, oats take, you know, somewhere from 8 to 10 minutes to cook, let's say, and these instant oatmeal packs are supposed to be cooked within 2 minutes. You already understand that there's something different there.

[00:10:56]The other thing is that they add so much sugar into these things. They want them to be healthy and tasty at the same time, so you're going to see maple brown sugar, apple cinnamon, or banana walnut.

[00:11:08]Now, these packets literally can have 10, 12, or even 15 g of added sugar.

[00:11:13]Again, just like we talked about at the beginning of this with the flavored yogurt, it's like having dessert for breakfast. What to buy instead? Just enjoy real oats. The old-fashioned kind, or you can get the Irish oats, which are even longer cooking. Either way, you can cook them and design your oatmeal exactly as you like. You can make it taste like whatever you want, and it really doesn't take that long. Water, milk, I know a lot of people do overnight oats, so they avoid the cooking part entirely. That's also fantastic. Whatever you do, just consider how much sugar you're putting in your body when you're eating your meal. That's always the game that we want to play, especially when it comes to weight loss. Now, here's my honest take that I promised you at the beginning of this episode. Here's the biggest danger of all that I see. First of all, especially with these kinds of discussions, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't actually think talking about a food that is good versus bad is even that helpful. What's the real danger here? No single food is actually going to cause all of your weight gain or give you disease directly. These six foods that we just talked about, they're just actually increasing your chances of weight gain and causing disease by other factors that are also included. So, the real danger is that anyone telling you that one food is bad and it needs to be avoided forever, and it will cause you to have this problem and that problem.

[00:12:34]Well, I'm telling you they're actually misrepresenting the science, and they're actually tricking you. They're not feeding you honest information. You got to be aware of those people, and they are people that you want to be very skeptical of. The real issue is this.

[00:12:47]The food industry has been marketing these foods to us as healthy for decades, and we've been buying them thinking that we're doing the right thing. But, the truth is these foods are designed to be cheap, shelf stable, and profitable for the companies, not to help you lose weight or stay healthy.

[00:13:01]So, the bigger lesson here is not just about these six foods in terms of choosing the right one versus the wrong one. It's about questioning the marketing that you see, and being skeptical about what you hear somebody tell you as being a black and white scenario, because these things are really never black and white. Just consider all of these things when you're thinking about taking over control of your health and trying to lose weight for good. But, it's okay if you do need help learning some of these skills, things like how to read labels, how to think through what somebody is telling you, how to understand if the marketing is actually clear and correct, or if it's misleading and misrepresentative of the science. Don't forget, I have a lots of free resources for you, including my free Mediterranean Weight Loss Webinar, which makes this all kind of fit together in one system, and the link to register for that webinar is in the description below. So, let's recap for a second before we move forward, cuz this was really key point. If you've been buying these six foods, please don't beat yourself up. You were doing the best that you knew at the time, and you were doing what you thought was right.

[00:14:06]But, now you know better, and now you can actually make different choices. I'd consider buying real food, whole ingredients, building meals that actually support your body, and considering what you're putting into it.

[00:14:16]So, here's what I want you to do right now. If this episode has been helpful for you in thinking through and seeing some of these foods differently, send it to three people you know who are also trying to lose weight. This could be a neighbor, a co-worker, a family member, anyone you know who might be struggling, because you could be the reason that they finally figure this out. And then, when you're ready, drop a comment below at which food on this list surprised you most. I would love to hear your thoughts and your feedback. Now, when you're ready to keep going with your weight loss learning, jump into my next episode up here. You're going to love that conversation, and I'll see you over there.