They are known as empty calories to those that contribute to our body a different amount of calories, but no nutrients or health benefits.
This is the case, for example, of soft drinks with added sugars, gummies or pastries, alcoholic beverages, fried foods, sausages, fatty meats and butter, to name just a few clear examples.
They can be tasty foods and for which we have a certain predilection, but they tend to be rich in simple sugars, saturated fats and refined flours.
Therefore, mainly, they tend to provide us with calories that, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article, do not have any nutritional value, and are not beneficial to our health.
Empty calories and your position in the diet
The empty calories tend to position themselves in a prominent place in many diets, since today is more preferred to opt for a hamburger, an alcoholic drink or a sweet to select more healthy and nutritious food.
And it is that empty calories can be, to some extent, harmful to health, since they cause our body to only receive energy, and must compensate for the lack of main nutrients with other foods, so, in the end, the total amount of ingested calories is generally excessive.
In addition, foods rich in empty calories are fundamentally characterized in that they are satiating foods, so then we will have little hunger to eat those foods that we do need, as they are nutritious products.
Possible risks of empty calories
As we have mentioned, empty calories tend to contain high amounts of unhealthy fats and simple sugars, which favors the appearance of high cholesterol, especially LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.
Or, they can even affect the onset of diabetes, mainly type 2 diabetes mellitus.
How to eliminate empty calories from our diet:
For all that has been discussed up to this point, we should try to eliminate empty calories both from our diet itself and from the daily diet that we follow every day.
The best option is to opt for low-fat cooking methods, replace the typical soft drinks or alcoholic beverages with fruit juices or water, and when we are hungry but it is not time to eat, choose fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts or yogurts to kill the bug.
