Vindication via television

I was happy to watch the Today show's feature on Eat This Not That. David Zinczenko said that often marketers will lie about whether a food is healthy for you. In fact, some food's labels say they are "all natural" or "multigrain" or "reduced fat," but that doesn't necessarily mean good for you. Click here to see more.

Stonyfield Farm fat free has a lot of sugar -- equal to two scoops of Edy's double fudge brownie ice cream. Yikes. I know I look specifically at the food label and try to have no more than 10 grams of sugar in foods, especially those that get into the kids. Zinczenko recommended greek-style yogurt, which has fewer calories, but double the protein and way less sugar. Avoid meal replacement bars with high sugar, and look for those that have fewer ingredients.

Here's another surprise. Low-fat peanut butters can be bad for you! They put some really nasty filler in them to make them low fat, which reduces the important monounsaturated fats you would get from the peanuts. He recommended finding peanut butters that have only two ingredients -- peanuts and salt. He said the low fat versions may remove all healthy ingredients and replace it with this low-fat filler that only reduces calories by 10 per serving -- still equal to a Krispy Kreme donut.

I like that! They also talked about how butter is so much better for you than most replacement butters. "One comes from cows and the other comes from a lab." To make them low-fat, they have to add other oils, usually adding 2.5 grams of transfats -- again -- bad. Go with whipped butter instead, he said.

He also recommended all juice juices -- no sugar.

I'm so happy because several of these rules match what my nutritionist is telling me. Butter is ok rather than replacement oils, juice is fine as long as it's all juice. And regular fat yogurt is way better than low-fat yogurt which uses either chemical sugars or real sugars in order to replace fat. Thank you Tracie!