Healthy Foods that are Actually Bad for You

By Valeri Guevarra, Founder of Teen Health 101

When a healthy snack recipe asks for peanut butter, you may go to the pantry and grab that jar of Skippy's, but what you did not realize is that peanut butter is not the healthiest option compared to other alternatives.

Above is the label of Skippy's, which has sugar and a mix of different highly-processed oils. Below is an organic peanut butter available at Aldi, a European grocery chain that recently has expanded to the US.

Both are peanut butter, but one is clearly better than the other. The highly processed oils in Skippy's is highly refined and often leads to inflammation in the digestive system. The extra sugar in Skippy's is unnecessary. The calorie counts are the exact same, but the true difference is in the ingredients.

Another example is tortilla chips.

Above is the commonly known Tostitos Original Corn Chips while below is the Simply Nature Organic Yellow Corn Chips.

Chips and salsa is a healthy snack, but choosing the right chips can make it even healthier for you. The ingredients are very similar, but one is organic, which is particularly important for corn products. When corn products are not organic, the corn is often genetically modified (GMO) for mass production and loses all nutritional value. The organic chips are the best for your body as they are natural and contain all of the nutrimental value that corn can have fried.

These are just two examples of some foods that may be seen as healthy but actually have even healthier and better alternatives.