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Life sure has been made easier with the convenience of superstores where you can pretty much get any kind of food no matter the season. You may think you’re making healthy choices for you and your family, but there are a few pitfalls when it comes to purchasing certain food items at major grocery store chains. Here is a list of food you should avoid buying at all costs!

Prepackaged Veggie Burgers

A lot of people choose to be vegetarian for either health reasons or personal reasons. Grabbing a veggie burger might seem like a good idea at the time to get that hamburger-like fix, but think again! The prepackaged veggie burgers found in most stores contain a ton of sodium. Plus, a lot of the veggie burgers contain a chemical called hexane which has been known to cause headaches and even vertigo in a lot of people.

Artificial Vanilla

Via eBay

We get it. Real vanilla is expensive. The cost is partially due to the complicated process involved in extracting the vanilla. Hence the demand for a cheaper alternative. However, the imitation vanilla (made from synthetic vanillin) can come from a number of places – like wood pulp, coal, or cow poop, among others. Spendind a few extra bucks for the real stuff doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

Reduced Fat Peanut Butter

Via Flickr

You might think reduced fat foods are healthier for you, but in most cases, the opposite is true. For peanut butter in particular, when you remove the naturally occuring fats and oils, the texture and taste is way off. So, in order to restore the creamy texture and peanuty taste, manufacturers will add things like corn syrup and starchy fillers. Plus, the fats they are removing are actually the good kinds of fat – monounsaturated.

Agave Nectar

Via Flickr

Looking for a healthy alternative to processed sugar? A lot of people are turning to agave nectar, but it might not be as healthy as they think it is! In fact, agave nectar has the highest fructose content of any commercial sweetner available in stores. Plus, the FDA cracked down on a few shipments of agave because they found the farms they came from in Mexico used dangerous levels of pesticides.

Non-Dairy Powdered Coffee Creamer

Via webstaurantstore.com

Next time you’re grabbing your morning cup of coffee, make sure you’re not filling it with powdered coffee creamer. These types of creamer may seem convininet, especially in an office setting where they don’t have to take up precious fridge space, but they are full of trans fats! Due to a loophole in the law, the manufactureres don’t have to even list trans fats in the ingredients.

Bagged Salads

Having a side salad with dinner is a good choice, but only if it’s loose leaf lettuce! Getting your salad from a bag might be convenient, but several studies have shown just how much bacteria those bagged salads contain – spoiler alert, it’s a lot! If your bagged salad has broken leaves in it, there’s an increased risk of getting salmonella poisoning.

Anything Blueberry Flavored

Blueberries are great for you, and definitely a healthy choice for a snack, or incorporated into a meal. But blueberry flavored things are much less healthy. And, due to some loopholes in the law, sometimes manufacturers don’t even have to differentiate between blueberry and blueberry flavor – so they market it as real blueberries, while the whole time it’s sugar, starch, and blue dye.

Watch the video below for more details on why you shouldn’t buy these things at the grocery store!

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