These are called ‘diet food’, but it promotes insulin secretion and is easily stored as fat. There is nothing wrong with eating these foods simply as a normal meal or snack, but the biggest problem is that you consume them with the thought that ‘it helps you lose weight’ or ‘you lose weight if you eat them’. Unlike regular food, it is more difficult to control the amount.
Vegan bread
Vegan bread that doesn’t use animal ingredients (butter, milk, eggs) can be found these days. It’s easy to think that using rice flour or other substitutes instead of wheat flour, unrefined sugar, or honey instead of white sugar, is ‘healthier’. But healthier doesn’t mean it’s a ‘diet food’ that puts on less weight than regular bread.
It’s vegan because it doesn’t use animal ingredients, but it has nothing to do with ‘refined carbs’ that directly affect insulin levels. Even if you replace wheat flour with whole wheat flour, quinoa, oats, brown rice, rice flour, etc., all grain flour is quickly absorbed by your body. Of course, it may be a slightly better choice than wheat flour, but it is not significantly different.
Even if sugar is replaced with non-refined sugar or honey, it is the same sugar! Keep in mind that although they have different nutrients, they are ultimately absorbed in the same form by our bodies. If you want a true diet bread that is not absorbed as fat, use erythritol or allulose instead of sugar, and choose a low-sugar (keto-style) bread that uses almond flour, coconut flour, or psyllium husk flour instead of wheat flour.
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Protein Bars
A protein bar that’s great for a meal replacement when your sugar levels plummet. And even the protein chips you eat prevent ‘bite bursting’ on your diet! Most of the protein snack foods sold on the market like this contain too much sugar.
All of these products are covered with saturated fat and various additives such as soybean oil, which is suspected of being genetically modified due to the nature of processed foods, various vegetable oils with a high risk of oxidation, synthetic flavors, dextrin, and shortening.
A ‘protein bar’ is not as high in protein as chicken breast. Most of them are less than half the amount of protein that would be good for one meal. Protein chips are also a food that is not much different from regular snacks made by frying flour. If you focus only on calories, both seem to help you lose weight, but ‘what you eat’ is always more important than calories.
Honey, Maple Syrup, Unrefined Sugar
As we mentioned before, even if sugar is replaced with non-refined sugar or honey, it has the same sugar! It is true that there is a very slight difference in absorption rate and nutritional content rather than sugar. But they all break down into glucose, which raises insulin levels. Choose only the healthier options, and stay away from them if you are on a weight loss diet.
Even if you replace it with an alternative sweetener, it’s also not good to eat a lot at once or consume it every day. It tastes sweet on the tongue, but it’s an act of tricking the brain so that sugar doesn’t come in. Eventually, your brain will command you to experience the actual sweet taste. It is difficult to break even with willpower, so it is best to stay away from ‘sweetness’ itself while on a diet.