It is impossible to imagine a hot piping cup of tea without cookies or biscuits, but what if you are trying to lose weight? Well, we try anything and everything to stay in shape, right from picking fad diets to switching to everything labelled ‘healthy’!
The term ‘Digestive’ evokes a sense of good-for-health factor and may make you believe that these biscuits are good for digestion.
Digestive biscuits were first prepared by two Scottish doctors to aid digestion in 1839. In fact, the first commercial production began in 1892 by McVitie in the United Kingdom. These semi-sweet biscuits were believed to be a lot more healthy than regular cookies and biscuits.
These biscuits became popular with the name ‘digestive’.
Contrary to popular belief, digestive biscuits are not as healthy as they propose to be. While they may satiate your hunger, and give you the satisfaction of eating only healthy, digestive biscuits are actually the disguised devils of today’s highly processed foods.
Here are three reasons which make digestive biscuits a big NO.
HIDDEN INGREDIENTS:
As mentioned before, digestive biscuits contain refined flours, sugar, fats, and sodium. These are combined to form a product you can gulp down with your tea.
If a packet promises that it is rich in fibre, proteins, vitamins, and minerals, read the label once again. Find out what the Greek names in the ingredient lists actually mean. There are taste enhancers involved to get you addicted to these biscuits.
4 digestive biscuits have the same sodium content s a packet of potato chips. They have 10% saturated fat from altered vegetable oil, which is unhealthy.
These biscuits are made with saturated fats and may contain 3-5gms of fat per biscuit, which may not be a healthy choice.
HIGHLY PROCESSED:
Digestive biscuits being sold in hundreds of quantities are bound to be processed. There is no way of making a biscuit in such a large quantity without having them processed. Have you ever seen biscuits being rotten or getting fungus?
Chances are that they are processed and filled with ingredients to make them sustain for days. The amount of Sodium and other preservatives to enhance the taste and shelf life are synthetic in nature.
Read the label, these taste enhancers involved to get you addicted to these biscuits.
UNHEALTHY CALORIES:
Two digestive biscuits typically consist of
150 calories
20 grams of Carbohydrate
4.6 grams of fat
5 grams of sugar
2gms of protein
160 milligrams of Sodium
These are not healthy calories that will accelerate your weight loss. Instead, these are calories that will hamper your weight loss, and you wouldn’t even know why!
Unhealthy calories from sugars, flours, and sodium are not needed in your body and only deteriorate your health. Ingredients do not have nutritional value, just adding to unhealthy calories.
In the end, I would say they may have some amount of fibre and comparatively less sugar, but they are not HEALTHY.
Instead, choose healthy snacks like Roasted makhanas, Roasted/bhuna chana, Mixed seeds and nuts, and ragi-based biscuits.
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