Don't Put These Foods In Your Grocery Cart

The authors of “Eat This Not That: The Supermarket Survival Guide” caution that many processed foods hide behind seemingly healthful labels, including “fortified” and “lite,” although they are meaningless and only serve to mask unhealthful food. Others play with serving sizes on their food labels in the hopes that you don’t really know how small a 5 g serving is. With some foods, however, you should ignore the label and the food to keep your family as healthy as possible.

Classic Potato Chips

The next time you are craving a salty snack, leave the potato chips at the store and opt for a handful of nuts instead. A 1-ounce serving of fried potato chips, roughly 15 chips, contains 160 calories and 10 g of fat. If you can’t get rid of your craving for crisps, choose a baked variety, which weighs in at only 120 calories and 2 g of fat.

White Bread

Bread made from white flour is almost as bad for you as white sugar. Although one slice only contains 66 calories, its high-carbohydrate and low-fiber combination causes your blood sugar to rise precipitously. Make your sandwiches and toasts healthier by choosing multigrain or whole wheat breads instead.

Non-Dairy Whipped Topping

When you read the food label for some of the popular non-dairy whipped topping brands, they seem fairly innocuous. One 9 g serving contains a mere 25 calories, with 1-1/2 g of fat -- all saturated fat. The problem lies in the serving size because that 9 g translates to only 2 tbsp. of whipped, white goodness, and few people stop at such a small amount. Products such as Cool Whip come loaded with unhealthful oils and high-fructose corn syrup, ingredients that you don’t want to serve to your family.

Sausage

When it comes to sausage, say no. Sausage contains meat, spices and copious amounts of fat. Three links of one of the leading brands of pork sausage contains 22 g of fat with 8 g of saturated fat, which is more than double the amount in a McDonald’s hamburger. Even turkey sausage comes up short, with 7 g of fat, 2 g of saturated fat and 490 mg of sodium.

Ramen and Cup Noodles

Instant noodles are easy to make, filling and inexpensive, but you should avoid them. Not only are they high in fat, the sodium content is over the top. One package of chicken-flavored Nissin Cup Noodles contains 300 calories, 13 g of fat and 1,060 mg of sodium, more than one-half the recommended daily amount. Ramen noodles blow cup noodles away at 380 calories, 14 g of fat and 1,660 mg of sodium in a one-package serving.