These foods could be making you fat

You'll be surprised at which "healthy" foods make our list

Rice cakes

You may see rice cakes as a staple diet snack, but in fact their high Glycemic Index (GI) means they’ll raise your blood sugar levels and leave you hungry quickly. Not a good way to  stick to the diet, as you’ll be reaching for a more filling (and more fattening) snack in no time. Swap the rice cake, which has a GI of 87, for a Ryvita, which has a GI of 63.

Salad dressing

Don’t ruin your healthy salad by slapping an unhealthy dressing all over it, full of saturated fat and empty calories. Dietician Ursula Arens says, “A lot of salad dressings are high in fat. I specifically would advise caution with the creamy US-style dressings, like blue-cheese dressing. French vinaigrette still has a lot of oil but it is highly unsaturated, so better on the health scale.”

Nutritionist Penny Crowther recommends making your own dressing with sesame or hemp oil for their content of omega 6 fats, which “if unheated are very beneficial and will actually help the metaboli

                                                                         

Cereal bars

Cereal. Nuts. Seeds. Must be good for you, right? Wrong. In fact, nutritionist Penny Crowther warns that “most  cereal bars are fat and sugar-laden”. The Tracker Breakfast Bar is made up of 43% fat, and a Strawberry and Yoghurt Alpen bar contains nearly 10g of sugar.

If you must go for a cereal bar, Crowther recommends TREK, NAKD, Village Bakery and Food Doctor, as these have no added sugar or hydrogenated fat.” But you're better off opting for a cereal like Weetabix, which is fat-free.

     

Fruit juice

While fruit juice isn’t necessarily bad for you, experts unanimously agree that eating the whole fruit is always better than drinking it in juice form. Nutritionists warn that fruit juices have less fibre and more concentrated sugar than the original fruit. A study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism even found that fructose, a sugar in fruit juice, may promote weight gain.

For those trying to lose weight, Arens advises against fruit juice: “It's an easy way to eat a lot of sugar and calories very quickly without getting full”. Instead, she suggests having a glass of water or  a cup of tea with a couple of satsumas to feel more satisfied.

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