Foods You Should Avoid

By eliminating, or at least limiting, certain foods and ingredients, you'll improve your chances of avoiding a host of major health problems. Learn what to cross off your menu.

Bacon, doughnuts, French fries, ice cream — they’re all unhealthy foods you should avoid, right? The short answer is yes; the longer answer is, find out what’s in the foods you’re eating, whether you think they're healthy or not.

“Don’t look at cutting out a single food, but look at ingredients, processing, and preparation,” says Julia Renee Zumpano, RD, LD, who works in preventive cardiology and rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic. It isn’t easy, but by avoiding certain unhealthy foods and ingredients, you can reduce your risk of developing many chronic health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, and even some cancers.

Unfortunately, many ingredients linked to serious health problems, such as heart disease, are hard to avoid. Salt, saturated and trans fats, refined sugars, and processed foods (because they can easily contain all of the previous items) are among the worst offenders. Here’s why, and how to spot them on food labels.

Unhealthy Hydrogenated Oil

“Hydrogenated oil or partially hydrogenated oil would be number one” on the list of food ingredients to avoid, Zumpano says. The oils, both containing trans fats, increase LDL (bad) cholesterol levels and lower HDL (good) cholesterol levels in the body, so it’s like a double whammy, she adds. Trans fats can contribute to atherosclerosis, the buildup of cholesterol and other substances on the inside of arteries, resulting in narrowing or blockage of the arteries. Atherosclerosis increases the risk for stroke, heart attack, and heart disease.

Because they help preserve food, making it last longer and look better on store shelves, the oils are used in many different foods, including crackers, cookies, and packaged cakes. To avoid trans fats and other unhealthy ingredients, shoppers need to read nutrition labels carefully, both to see if trans fats are on the list and, if so, how much. The American Heart Association recommends that no more than 1 percent of your daily calories should come trans fat — for a typical 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, that’s a max of 20 calories.

Food labels list ingredients in order of weight; the more there is of an ingredient, the higher it appears on the list. “If hydrogenated oil is one of the first five ingredients, avoid that food altogether,” Zumpano says.