A glass of milk a day builds strong bones, but three glasses … kills you.
Well OK, admittedly that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's true that a study was recently conducted by Uppsala University in Sweden that tied drinking three glasses of milk a day to an earlier death, according to Express. So how exactly does that work out? First off, milk contains both lactose and galactose – sugars which, when consumed in high enough quantities, can lead to some unpleasant side effects. Of course, milk isn't a bad substance – far from it, in fact. As Medical News Today reports, milk offers benefits like calcium, Vitamin D and potassium. Not to mention it's the first thing that all of us eat in our lives, so there's that.
But just because it's the beverage that carries us through childhood doesn't mean milk should remain a constant presence in our lives. As the Sweden-based university study pointed out, the sugars contained in milk "can increase oxidative stress and chronic inflammation in the body – both of which are major causes of a host of killer and chronic diseases," Express stated.
Of course, milk in moderation is not by any means bad for you, and even the people who carried out the study suggest that the results should "be interpreted cautiously," as lead researcher professor Karl Michaelsson pointed out. Still, this study's findings call into question whether there are other foods or substances out there that might not be as good for us as we think. We did some digging, and here are the results:
- Fruit chips. We know the feeling: You're cruising the produce aisles looking for fruit when your gaze lands squarely on a box of banana chips, which somehow look impossibly more scrumptious than any fruit you could buy. And hey, it's just the banana in chip form, right? Wrong. As USA Today points out, these "chips" are far less in the nature of fruit and far more akin to plain old candy, containing large scoops of fat and sugar.
- Stuff marked gluten free. MindBodyGreen states that just because something is marked "gluten free" doesn't mean that should be taken as synonymous with "healthy." At the end of the day, if you're buying processed food that proudly proclaims itself gluten free, that doesn't negate the fact that you're still buying processed food, replete with oils and sugars.
- Prepared salads. Instead of buying a prepared salad, why not just go out and cop a hamburger, because the two things are basically the same as far as health benefits go. As Cooking Light points out, prepared salads are often packed to the brim with calories, not to mention the fats and sugars dispersed among the tomatoes and croutons.
Fortunately, there's one simple way to avoid polluting your body with falsely advertised "health foods" – namely, read the labels. Or better yet, why not buy stuff that doesn't have labels. That's right – we're talking about the real stuff: bananas, potatoes, broccoli and other real stuff.
