Marketing Tricks and Food Swaps

I've briefly touched on chemical additives in my last post and about marketing these things has healthy.
Lately I've seen a lot of advertising in magazines and on TV for new "diet" foods. There are thousands of them out there that claim to have some kind of health benefit. No matter if it's "low carb" or "fat free", there always seems to be a catch.
I'm usually that weird girl standing in the frozen food aisle reading labels on frozen spinach to make sure I'm not buying any with added salt. If I'm picky about something as small as that, you already know it gets worse as I make my way through the rest of the store. I stand there reading just about every single label on foods I haven't bought before but am thinking about trying. 9 times out of 10, I end up putting the food back down. Why? Because the food labels scare me. This so called "health" food may have 20+ ingredients. Just because it may have less than 100 calories per serving doesn't mean it's going to make me feel good about buying it. Ingredients that I've never wanted to eat are popping up in foods that they have no place to appear on. Why does ketchup have high fructose corn syrup? Why does this "health" bread have evaporated cane juice in it?
People are often tricked into buying something completely unbeneficial to their health being under the impression that they are swapping an unhealthy food for something that is supposed to be healthy. A great example is yogurt. An original and standard yogurt has around 25-30 grams of sugar and 160 calories per container. People often make the switch to a light version of yogurt, which isn't bad because the calories and sugar are reduced, but chemicals such as aspartame have been added to sweeten the yogurt unnaturally. I skip yogurt all together and buy plain, fat free greek yogurt with a higher protein content than regular yogurt and I flavor it with a stevia packet and some vanilla extract.
When it comes to processed things like bread and crackers, which I try to eat as minimally as possible (although it's hard to always eat fresh food while being at school) try to look for the variety with the least amount of ingredients, or at least be aware of everything in that food. Cheez it's aren't ideal because the actual amount of cheese in them is probably a negligible amount and plus there is a lot of fat in them that shouldn't be. Instead I'd choose Blue Diamond Nut Thins. They're crackers made out of brown rice and almond flour. They are rich in the good kind of carbs and have a minimal amount of ingredients. (And yeah, they do actually taste good!)
Bottom line: don't let marketing fool you into thinking you're doing yourself favor when you actually aren't! (486)