Avoid these five common health food landmines that make you gain weight, develop pre-diabetes and undesirable lipid and lipoprotein patterns.



Bananas



Fruits in general are a good source of flavonoids, the varied and extraordinary class of nutrients that provide blood pressure-lowering, plaque-shrinking, and cancer-preventing benefits. Blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, and citrus are loaded with them. Bananas, however, are essentially devoid of flavonoids. They taste great but they’re jam-packed with sugar, adding 27 grams of carbohydrate (in one medium banana) to your daily intake. The 105 calories in one banana are almost entirely from the sugars. Yes, bananas have a healthy quantity of potassium, but so do green vegetables and tea. If there’s one fruit that is not helpful to your program and may, in fact, add empty calories without much benefit, it’s bananas. Use them only as flavoring or sliced as garnish with no more than a few slices at a time to minimize the damage of this fruit “candy”.





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