When good foods go bad: Salads, smoothies can load on the calories

It didn't take long for Debra Tacad, a registered dietitian and coordinator/instructor for the UNLV Nutrition Center, to list foods that people think are healthy, but aren't necessarily so.

"Juices and smoothies," Tacad said. "Everyone thinks, 'They're full of fruit, so they must be healthy.' So they have a triple cheeseburger for lunch, thinking, 'I'll have a smoothie later.' That's not how it works."

Mary Wilson, a registered dietitian and extension nutrition specialist with University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, agreed that such fruit-based drinks can be nutritional minefields.

"Smoothies are a great way to increase your fruits and dairy, but they have sugar syrups in them," Wilson said. "I've seen them at restaurants that have 500 calories in them, and that's a lot of calories for a drink. I tend to make mine with fruit, nonfat milk and ice, so I'm not adding a lot of fat and calories to it." Wilson added that nonfat yogurt could be used instead.

But surely fruit juices are always healthful, right? Like everything else, the secret is in moderation.

"One 8-ounce glass of orange juice isn't a bad thing," especially because of the vitamin C it provides, said Peter DiPrete, a registered dietitian at University Medical Center. "But if you drink three or four of them, it can unbalance your diet." Some fruit juices, such as orange and grape, have, ounce for ounce, half as much sugar as soft drinks, he said.

And you need to watch out for those trendier juices, too.

"Juicing is kind of a popular trend these days," DiPrete said. "It's a good way to incorporate fruits and vegetables into your diet, if used properly. But you can pack a lot of calories into a juice, it doesn't end up leaving you satisfied, and you end up eating more calories."

But those weren't by any means the only misconceptions on the dietitians' hit list. Here are some others:

Wilson: "One of the first things I think of is granola, because we think of that as being really healthy, and often it's high in sugar and fat. It usually contains nuts (which tend to have beneficial oils), but sometimes it'll have oatmeal and other grains in it and they're roasted in oil to give it that nice crispy texture, so that adds to the oil. And a lot of them add sugar ... or put some kind of honey coating on it or whatever."

Tacad: "Lower-fat foods or lower-sodium or lower-sugar foods. Take away one and you have to make it up with one of the others."

Wilson: "Reduced-fat peanut butter. They've just taken some of the fat out and replaced it with sugar, so it's not necessarily a more healthful item."

DiPrete: "A salad is great, but you throw a lot of croutons in there, a lot of dressing, you can turn a salad into 500 or 600 calories without trying too hard — which isn't necessarily unhealthy; you've just got to fit it into your daily eating regime."

Wilson: "Energy bars. Lots of them are high in fat and sugar. Some of them are high in saturated fat, because they're trying to add those calories in there. I always try to get people to look for the ones that are lower in sugar and fat."

Tacad: "Baked potatoes, and you add a bunch of butter and cheese and bacon. Well, that's not the best."

Wilson: "Those nutrient waters. We assume they're healthy, but some of them do have sugar in them. We think we're doing so much better than if we had a sweetened beverage, but they are a sweetened beverage, and the price tends to be higher. We'd be better off with water and eating our vitamins."

Tacad: "Something like a frozen yogurt. People say yogurt's good for you," because of the calcium content and probiotics. "When you start adding chocolate syrup to that, and tons of dried fruits, which have a lot of sugar also, that's when it tends to go bad."

Wilson: "Sandwiches made with chicken salad or tuna salad; they tend to have lots of mayonnaise. We think 'salad' and we think it's healthy."

DiPrete: "Another one I hear about is 'gluten-free.' There are no studies that show gluten intolerance; the only people who suffer from gluten intolerance are those with celiac disease, and it is a rare disease. A lot of the gluten-free products are higher in calories. They tend to be, because they're more dense."

Tacad: "I think 'gluten-free' is something everyone should be afraid of. They can be really high in fat and sugars, just in general. It has to last on the shelf ... for that to happen, it has to have a lot of sugar and a lot of fat."

And while, most of the time, we seem to think of foods as unhealthy because they contain high amounts of sugar or fat, DiPrete pointed out that too little can be just as bad as or worse than too much.

"Detoxes seem very extreme," he said. "I've seen things with extreme (daily) calorie restrictions in the 400- to 500-calorie range, which is not suitable for a healthy lifestyle. It makes you feel very ill."

"It's also the notion that we have to get rid of toxins," DiPrete said. "If your body's functioning properly, your kidneys and liver and everything are going to be getting rid of the toxins already."

Diets based on your blood type, and those that involve the use of HCG, which is a hormone produced during pregnancy, also tend to be unhealthy, DiPrete said.

"If you're going to eat 500 calories (a day) of anything, you're going to lose weight," he said. "The extra hormone isn't going to do anything to that. It's not enough calories. It's actually not considered healthy."

In the end, they said, it's important to think about balance.

"I think it's about looking at the overall picture of things," Tacad said.

And, she said, even one of the recent darlings of the health-food world isn't necessarily nutritious.

"Kale chips tend to have a lot of salt if you get the flavored ones," she said.

"And the cheddar cheese one is not very good."

Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at Hrinella@reviewjournal.com. Find more of her stories at www.reviewjournal.com and bestoflasvegas.com and follow @HKRinella on Twitter.