Question: What is the healthiest junk food?

Emilie Combet answered on 13 Mar 2014:

It all depends on your definition of “junk food”!

To me, the questions I would ask are:
– is it providing the right amount of energy for my meal (about a third of the total calories I should eat in a day)?
– is there a good balance of nutrient contributing to this energy – i.e. some of the energy is coming from the proteins, some from the carbohydrates and some from the fat?
– is the meal containing a good range of vitamins and minerals?
– does it contain vegetables or fruits?
– is the fat mostly saturated (not very good for health) or unsaturated (better)?
– is there too much salt in this meal?
– is there a lot of artificial ingredients, flavouring, colourants in this meal?

It is actually quite difficult to find fast food or ready meals which tick all the boxes. Some burgers may achieve this, and some pizzas would too. We cannot get it right all the time every time, but we need to achieve a good balance at the end of the day or week. To do this, we need to have the right information of what a meal is made of, and understand a little bit more about our food and how to best combine it into meals and menu plans!