What is healthy these days?

Don’t drink diet drinks or fruit juice, or eat those granola bars or have the breakfast bagel because they aren’t good for you.

That’s right, I’m now once again confused about what is good to eat and what seemingly OK foods are getting a big X from those in the know about nutrition.

There are reasons for not eating most things. Because diet drinks don’t have actual sugar (which is a good thing), they have artificial flavours and colours (not good) they are not even worth considering when trying to live healthy, experts say.

Same goes for that bagel and yogurt you had for breakfast. Chances are the bagel was loaded with refined white flour (who knew that was bad?) and the yogurt had fructose corn syrup (read: sugar) and those pesky artificial flavours and colours made another appearance.

I guess we have to realize that few foods will be 100 per cent good for us, but to be clueless about some of these things that can potentially cause health problems is scary… and also downright confusing.

You pick up one magazine and read that fruit juices are a great way to go when selecting refreshing and healthy drinks, but then you read another article that tells you some of the artificial ingredients can lead to obesity and diabetes.

It’s a little deceiving. On one hand we want to run out and buy all these “healthy choices” but we almost need to spend a couple hours at the newsstand reading all the food articles to see what contradicts what and stand there blankly wondering what is actually good and what isn’t.

Is there such thing as a strictly water diet? I think so and maybe that’s where I’m headed. But then it also brings up the debate about bottled water versus filtered water versus tap water. Dammit!