As you’ve matured, your tastes have changed. You’ve outgrown many once-favorite foods. Chances are that sugary cereal, penny candy, and bubblegum are no longer part of your daily routine. At another time you may have subsisted on ramen noodles, peanut butter sandwiches, or delivery pizza, until your tastes, habits, or budget evolved.
Now that you’re over 45, you have a new set of reasons to reexamine your diet, banish unhealthy choices, and adopt a new set of favorites. With age come changes in your metabolism, activity level, brain function, and personal priorities; now may be the time to look for healthier alternatives to some of the foods you’ve become accustomed to.
Here’s a list of the top ten foods that may not be a good fit for healthy lifestyle after 45 – and a longer list of alternatives you may find that you enjoy even more. Making the switch can usher in an era of better heart health with reduced risk for cancer and diabetes, less digestive discomfort, a slimmer waistline, less chance of brain fog, healthier skin and hair, and added years of good health. A few thoughts as you start:
Don’t feel you have to make all changes at once. You don’t even have to make all of them. Just pick two or three you like best and phase some others in over time.
Don’t feel you have to go ‘cold turkey’ from one extreme to the other. Gradual changes are more likely to be permanent.
Identify your excuses for making bad food choices and eliminate them. For example, you may overindulge because it’s a “special occasion.” Replace impulse eating with purposeful eating and watch your health improve day by day.
Print this report and keep it in the same place you write out your weekly grocery list. Use it over time to swap in healthier food choices.
Finally, for those food habits you simply can’t give up, save yourself some “cheat days”, but no more than one a week.
Here’s our list of ten foods to give up after at 45, and in bold face type with each, a longer list of foods you’re apt to like better anyway. It’s your body, your health, your future – so choose your foods wisely.
10 Foods You Should Never Eat Again After Age 45
(and 20+ You’ll Like Better Anyway)
1. Fried foods
The more fried food you eat, the greater your risk for heart failure. That’s the conclusion of a 2015 study at Harvard Medical School, as reported by WebMD.
Their recommendation: “ditch the French fries, doughnuts, crispy fried fish and chicken, and other foods cooked in fat.” 1
Samantha Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, told WebMD that greasier foods increase calorie consumption, leading to obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease.
"In addition,” she said, “people who eat a lot of fried foods may also consume a generally less healthy diet, consisting of more red and processed meats and fewer vegetables, beans and fruits. The bottom line is, eating fried foods once in awhile is fine but not on a daily or even a weekly basis."
The good news is that finding alternatives to fried foods is easy. If you have a fondness for fish and chips, order your broiled fish with a pat of butter and eat just half an order of the fries. If you must a donut with your coffee, choose a donut hole instead; you’ll enjoy the same donut shop experience while eliminating 73% of the calories. Fast food joints known for fried food offer non-fried alternatives, like grilled chicken sandwiches.
2. Junk food
Junk food is no joke. The term applies to any cheap food containing high levels of calories from sugar or fat while offering little in the way of fiber, protein, vitamins or minerals.
Junk food alone is probably not going to wreck your health, but it is a contributing factor. Best of all, it’s easy to eliminate.
The best selling items in most fast food places and convenience stores are junk food. To get the burgers, fries, candy bars, and chips out of your diet, stop going into (or driving through) the places that sell them. Since you most often eat these foods when you are out in your car, consider keeping healthier snacks like granola bars in your vehicle. Or if you’ve looking to grab a snack while you’re filling your gas tank, convenience stores often sell bananas, apples, or healthy snacks like fruit and yogurt cups (just look out for added sugar). If you crave something crunchy and salty, skip the chips and grab a small bag of lightly salted almonds.
Junk food calories are empty calories. The high metabolism you enjoyed when you were growing up easily burned them off. But after age 45, it’s time to reassess; aren’t there better things your like to spend your daily calories on?
3. Sandwiches
Though we’ve just mentioned grilled chicken sandwiches as a much healthier alternative to fast-food burgers, a sandwich for lunch every day may not be the best idea.
Sandwiches traditionally combine bread (often refined white bread), lunch meats (high in fat and nitrates), cheese, and mayo or other high calorie spreads. Put them all together and you’ve got a calorie bomb in a baggie.
Here are some healthier alternatives:
Make or order all your sandwiches with whole grain bread
Use twice the vegetables and a third less meat
Hold the cheese; or eliminate all the meat and use one slice of cheese with lots of veggies
Replace mayo with mustard, pickle relish, or hummus
Deconstruct the sandwich by ordering a bowl or a wrap instead, completely eliminating the bread
Order your lunch off the salad menu and skip the sandwiches altogether (beware the high-calorie dressings and the basket of bread)
These options are as quick, easy, and satisfying as traditional ham-and-cheese, but without the excess fat and calories. As with with the junk food, you’ve got better things to spend your calories on.
4. Refined Sugar
Refined sugar is added to many processed and prepared foods for a couple basic reasons.
First, it’s an easy way to make foods more appealing to your taste buds.
Second, sugar is ridiculously cheap due to heavy subsidies from the federal government; while one set of government workers urges you to adopt healthy eating habits, another is doling our subsidies, tax breaks, and trade protection to U.S. sugar producers. In addition, many in the political class now want to tax you for consuming the very same sugar that your taxes already helped subsidize.
In a nation where diabetes has reached epidemic levels, taxpayer-financed sugar subsidies make no sense whatsoever. Your take-away – do your own research, think for yourself, and stop letting the government decide what you put in your mouth.
Start by eliminating as much refined sugar as possible. According to nutritional experts, refined sugar contributes to serious health problems such as obesity, tooth decay, hypoglycemia, diabetes, vitamin and mineral depletion. 2 Tooth decay alone is a compelling reason to give up refined sugar; your later years will be a lot more pleasurable if you still have your original set of healthy teeth.
Nutrition expert Dr. Josh Axe recommends these top 5 sugar substitutes: raw honey, stevia, dates, coconut sugar, and maple syrup. 3
5. Added salt
Like refined sugar, salt is a cheap food additive that our tastebuds enjoy and have become accustomed to. Food processors know this and add salt liberally to packaged and prepared foods.
Historically, salt has been an essential element in the human diet due to its value as a preservative. Salt has been used to cure fish and meat going back thousands of years. However the advent of refrigeration in just the last century has reduced the need for salt as a preservative. Trouble is, our taste buds and our cooking habits still haven’t fully adjusted.
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, high salt intake increases blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease. 4
You have many alternatives to added salt when it comes to enhancing the flavor of your food. These include garlic powder, hot sauce, red pepper flakes, herb blend and many other options found in the spice section of your favorite market.
6. Distilled spirits
You already know that alcohol has serious health impacts. What you may not have considered is that these impacts can be more severe after age 45. Your brain, your liver, and your heart can all suffer irreparable harm, degrading your quality of life in your mature years.
The brain impact alone is enough to cause anyone to reassess their alcohol habits; cognitive decline, depression, and the risk of falling all increase with excessive alcohol consumption.
If you drink distilled spirits, consider switching to options with lower alcoholic content as a safer choice. Beer and wine in excess can be as bad for your health as distilled spirits, but have the advantage of being more dilute.
Many popular options are now available for lower alcohol beer (under 5% ABV). A few top selling brands include Anchor Steam (4.9%), Founders All Day IPA (4.7%) , Newcastle Brown Ale (4.7%), Goose Island Honkers Ale (4.3%), and Guinness (4.2%). Some popular brews go even lower: Sam Adams Light (4%), Murphy’s Irish Stout (4%), and Victory Donnybrook Stout (3.7%).
These beverages allow you to enjoy social hour without unduly punishing your brain, liver, heart and other organs. Two 12-oz. bottles of Sam Adams Light contain less than one full ounce alcohol. Two pints of Guinness contain about 1-⅓ oz. of alcohol.
Most wines have a higher alcoholic content than beer, but still much lower than distilled spirits. Wine is typically 12-15 percent alcohol, versus 40 percent or more for distilled spirits. Some varieties tend to be lower in alcohol, including moscato and reisling at around 6%. Some red blends have alcohol content as low as 10.5%. Red wine contains resveratrol, believed by many to support heart health. Mix your wine with sparking water or fresh squeezed fruit juice to reduce the alcohol content even further.
For a taste comparable to wine at the alcohol level of beer, Angry Orchard hard cider comes in at 5.0% ABV. Other ciders and fruit lambics may be lower.
Learn to purchase or order beer and wine based on alcohol content, much as you’d compare nutrition labels of jars of peanut butter. If you occasionally want to enjoy a distilled spirit, use a ample amounts of a mixer such as sparkling water, ginger ale, bloody Mary mix, or fresh squeezed fruit juice.
Also remember that the single most important beverage to consume is pure water. Have a glass of water both before and after consuming alcohol in order slow absorption, dilute the alcohol in your system, and stay adequately hydrated, since alcohol actually dehydrates you.
7. Mystery meat
Hot dogs and other processed, cured meats should be avoided because they contain... well, who even knows what they contain, which in itself is the reason to avoid them. Mystery meat tends to be high in fat, sodium, nitrates, fillers, and food coloring, not to mention animals parts you always assumed either got thrown away or used in dog food.
If you’re eating in a deli, sliced turkey breast is probably your best bet. Turkey pastrami is a healthier choice than deli meats made from fatty beef brisket. If you’ve having an occasional hot dog, makers of all-beef hot dogs tend to have the highest standards for quality and nutrition. Hebrew National, maker of kosher-certified all-beef hot dogs, claims that its wieners are superior because “we answer to a higher authority.” There may be some truth to this, as Hebrew National along with Wellshire Farms was rated tops in the nation by a taste-testing panel at The New York Times. 5
The healthiest meat options include grass fed beef and bison and antibiotic-free chicken and turkey.
8. Soda
Since you’re reading a report on healthy living, you probably don’t need to be told that soda is bad for you.
Whether it’s full-sugar or a diet version, soda is not healthy and has no redeeming values. It does not make your life better or more fun, and it does not make you more attractive. Switch to iced tea (either unsweetened, or sweetened with one of the natural alternatives listed earlier in this report). Choose either traditional black tea, anti-oxident rich green tea, or one of the many flavorful herbal teas. Or go with one of the many options available in water – flavored water, vitamin water, or basic pure spring water. Hydration is essential, soda is not.
9. Fat-promoting foods
Being obese and over 45 is a bad combination. The strain on your heart alone can take years of good health off of your life. The extra pressure on your joints can make walking difficult and uncomfortable. This in turn means you’re less likely to get even a basic level of exercise. It’s time to shape up your diet by erasing fat-promoting foods from your life.
Leading culprits include potatoes, a starch and should be eaten in moderation. Instead, choose vegetables like cabbage, green beans and carrots. If you’re dining out, skip the starches and order an extra vegetable or a salad instead.
Avoid high-fat ground beef. Instead choose 90 percent lean beef. Don't eat the skin on chicken. You still need some fat in your diet, which you can get from using high quality olive oil, all-natural peanut butter, and avocados. 6
If your diet is too heavy in fat-promoting foods (and you’re too heavy as a result), seek help from your doctor, from a nutritionist, or reshape your food intake and your body by following a common sense eating plan like the Mediterranean diet.
10. Brussels Sprouts
Never eat brussels sprouts after age 45 – unless you actually like brussels sprouts. We’re stretching the point here in order to say that you no longer have to eat what your mother tells you to eat. Now that you’ve matured, you should not feel compelled to eat anything you don’t like – brussels sprouts, broccoli, liver, you name it. Enjoy your meals by learning to choose foods that you enjoy and that are good for you. Your grocer offers more variety than ever before, as do restaurants. Experiment with new foods that are whole, fresh, and low in fat. Find what you like and eat it!
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