The Hungry Girl Series Forgoes Health and Nutrition

One of the problems I've faced while trying to lose weight is being hungry. When I first heard about the Hungry Girl series of cookbooks, I was pretty excited. I eventually purchased one of the books and unfortunately it set on the shelf for several months. One day while flipping through the channels though I saw the Hungry Girl cooking show on The Cooking Channel. After watching a couple of the shows, I started to notice patterns that I did not like. Before you fall for the Hungry Girl concept, you should really consider the following.

First things first, cutting calories is essential for weight loss and the Hungry Girl series does indeed cut calories. The series shows you new ways to make your favorite foods so that they are lower in calories, which means you can eat more and feel full. This sounds like a great thing. Unfortunately, I found that the Hungry Girl series focuses mostly on calories and not the actual nutrition of the food. This is something that many of us fall for while trying to count calories. We look at the nutrition label and focus solely on the calories, when we should also be looking at the vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, carbohydrates and other information found on the label. These foods will help you meet your calorie goals, but at what cost? You have to remember that food is fuel and if it has no nutritional value, you will feel sluggish and find it hard to get through the day for lack of energy.

Lack of nutrition isn't the only thing I discovered about the Hungry Girl series. I also found that the recipes are based on packaged products that contain artificial sweeteners. While you can cut calories using sugar free products, many of these products plainly state not to use these products for weight loss purposes. While sugar free products are a great option for diabetics, they can cause problems for other people. Artificial sweeteners break down differently than sugar and leave your brain craving glucose, which can lead to overeating.

My overall opinion of the Hungry Girl series is that it offers good tips, but shouldn't be relied on for your entire diet. If you want to substitute a snack for one of her lower calorie options, that may be okay. However, depending solely on the recipes from this series could lead to malnutrition, not to mention a diet extremely high in sodium due to the amount of packaged foods the series uses. I cannot recommend this series. If you care about your health and want to lose weight in a healthy way, do you not buy these books.

Sources:

Sugar or Sweeteners?: Your Body Knows What's Right