MYTH 2
Diet foods help you drop pounds.
Truth: They can actually do the opposite.
You may be doing yourself more harm than good by scanning labels for the lowest calorie and fat counts. "They may be less caloric, but they're not necessarily better for you," Sandon says. "Prepackaged diet foods can have a lot of sugar and trans fat."
As with carbs, it's the quality of the fat, not the amount, that makes the difference. Monounsaturated fats (found in nuts, olive oil, and avocados) and the polyunsaturated variety (in corn, soybean, and safflower oils) help your cardiovascular system, improve weight loss, and are crucial for absorbing beta carotene from vegetables like carrots. Trans fats and saturated fats, on the other hand, have been linked with heart disease and even cancer.
The Harvard Nurses' Health Study vividly contrasts "good" and "bad" fats. It found that replacing just 30 calories of carbs a day with the same amount of trans fats nearly doubled the risk of heart disease. Replacing the same ratio of carbs with monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats, on the other hand, lowered the risk of heart disease by 30 to 40 percent. So consider boosting your good fats by adding nuts to your morning cereal or some avocado to your salads. Just watch your overall daily calories to keep them in check.
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