Diet Foods and Weight Gain
Artificial Ingredients Trigger Cravings and Sabotage Weight Loss
Dieters often turn to meal-replacement bars, powders, drinks or diet foods like low-cal pop or chips to curb caloric intake, most of which sabotage plans to lose weight.
In a culture obsessed with being thin and with doing things the quick and easy way, diet foods are doubly enticing. Most people who buy weight-loss products know that substantial, lasting weight loss requires dietary and lifestyle changes, but they are taken in by smooth marketing and low prices. Not only are most of these foods ineffective for weight loss - many are tremendously hazardous to your health.
Why Low-Cal Foods Can Actually Make People Gain Weight
Most low-calorie foods cut calories by removing refined cane sugar and replacing it with artificial sweeteners like Aspartame, Sweet’n’Low, Splenda, and a dozen other sugar-like compounds. These artificial sugars contain less (in some cases, zero) calories, but they are incredibly dangerous in other ways.
Artificial sweeteners have been linked to... cancer, migraines, depression, birth defects, infertility, seizures, thyroid problems, and weight gain. In addition, low-calorie diet foods are usually loaded with processed ingredients that the body doesn’t know what to do with - so it stores these ingredients as wastes in fat.
Among the most common processed ingredients are refined/enriched flour, colors, preservatives (which go by hundreds of different names), and chemical flavorings - which may legally be called “natural flavors” even if they include MSG, known to cause migraines, cravings and weight gain. (As a side note: most varieties of processed or “textured” soy protein (TSP or TVP) use MSG for flavor and call it “natural flavors.”)
Artificial Ingredients Linked to Cravings
Some experts believe that the more refined a food is, the less satisfying it will be. Because the body is unable to receive what it needs from denatured, highly processed junk foods, it craves more nourishment. Sugar stimulates appetite and increases cravings for sugar - and so do most artificial sweeteners.
Coffee and Chocolate
Not only are coffee and chocolate known to stress the kidneys, adrenals, and liver, contributing to weight gain, they’re also addictive.
Why are these unhealthy foods included in so many weight loss products? It’s simple marketing. Chocolate-flavored varieties (of almost anything!) sell more than other flavors.
Regardless of a product’s other merits, caffeine will counter or limit its positive weight loss effects. The benefit of any product is suspect once they use these ingredients to seduce customers.
Diet Soda Pop and Other Diet Junk Food
A number of mainstream brands boost their sales by offering a low-calorie, sugar-free, or “diet” option. Most of these are loaded with aspartame, splenda, and other artificial sweeteners which, as mentioned above, may be even more dangerous to health and weight goals than real sugar.
Profit Motive
Even the best companies, whose apparent goal is to promote health and wellness, are still in business to make a profit. Corporations selling diet products and low-cal foods are hardly motivated to make a product that really helps people consume less and lose weight. If they did, their captive audience - people who are overweight - would disappear, taking their money with them.
Weight loss products are highly suspect for their harmful and addictive artificial ingredients, and for the elusive promise of “quick, easy” weight loss they promise but almost never fulfill. The only certain way to lose weight is to focus on healthy nutrition, an active lifestyle, and creating balance and harmony in our lives.
