4 Reasons Even The Healthiest Fast Food — The Sub Sandwich — Is Still Not Healthy
Congrats, it's not a burger. But is that so-called healthy sub really healthy?
getty Nowadays, most of us are leading busy lives, filled with lots of chores and lots of things that need to be done until the clock hits midnight.
So, in the middle of all that running around, we often tend to forget that we need a homemade meal that consists of healthy ingredients. We forget or we do not have the time — it does not really matter.
What it does matter is the fact that when we feel that hunger rising in our stomach, 8 out of 10 times we turn to fast food. It is delicious, it is prepared fast and it satisfies our hunger for a long time, right? But is it healthy?
Fast food is a lot of things but it is definitely not healthy. Which is why many people, trying to lead a more healthy life, turn into subs instead. Sub, short for a submarine sandwich, is a sandwich that is being prepared using a long roll of bread filled with healthier ingredients as compared with burgers, using seasonal vegetables, cheese, and sauces.
But how often do you actually prepare your own sub to take it with you to work and eat it for lunch? Do you prefer to buy your sub on a daily basis thinking that it is just as healthy as the homemade one? But is it, in fact healthy? Find out now!
Is the famous sub as healthy as you might think?
Before we start discussing today’s topic, first we would like to congratulate you on the decision to choose a sub instead of a let’s say a taco or a burger. After all, it is a healthy option compared to the usual fast food choices. But is it, in fact, as healthy as you think?
Perhaps you have even chosen a sub over a burger thinking that it is a healthy food to lose weight. Sure, in a sub you will not find fats and carbohydrates at such enormous levels as in a burger, however, you have to still be cautious about your sub choices.
A healthy sub is something that you get to prepare at home, using organic, fresh seasonal vegetables, cheese, spices, and sauces. That way, you will get to include the ingredients of your choice, and use the beneficial effects that the fresh vegetables offer you. You should always prefer a homemade sub instead of a store bought one.
Why do you ask? A store bought sub can be just as unhealthy as any fast food and you are not aware of that. Let’s see why is there is no such thing as healthy fast food:
1. They consist of GMO ingredients.
You can never for sure now what exactly is included in your store bought a sub, right? And you cannot ever know if they are using organic or simply GMO ingredients to prepare your sub.
On the other hand, in your homemade sub, you can choose to put only the best ingredients and the freshest vegetables that you can find.
2. They can contain rotten vegetables.
It is not uncommon for the brands to use old vegetables, even rotten ones. Take into consideration the fact that the vegetables that they use are usually chopped and prepared the previous day. Even when these vegetables are stored under the best conditions, they are still nothing in a compartment with the fresh ones.
Unlike the store bought subs, at home, you can choose to use only the freshest vegetables and leave out any rotten parts, which is unlikely that these brands will do.
3. They contain way too many sauces.
When you're trying to stay healthy, the last thing that you need to be adding to your meals is a sauce. This is because of the fact that these sauces are often filled with carbohydrates, saturated and unsaturated fats, sodium, and preservatives which make them highly unhealthy.
Unfortunately, this is what most of the brands use to make their subs more delicious.
The only way that you can stay healthy using healthy subs as your meal is by adding only small amounts of salt and pepper to the fresh vegetables, cheese, and olives that you will add to your homemade sub.
4. They have a lot of calories.
Cutting back on your calorie intake is an easy way to lose weight. However, you cannot do that if you tend to eat a store bought sub that can contain around 600-800 calories.
And let us say this — that is a high-calorie number for something that is classified as healthy. Most of those calories lay in the sauces that are being used to spice up your sub. Maybe they are delicious, but they are for sure unhealthy and unnecessary in a sub.
Often, the things that we consider to help us in our battle against obesity can turn out to be our enemies from the start. And that is the case with the famous subs — an alternative to the fast food choices that we tend to choose and pretend that we are leading a healthier life.
Well, we are, but only if we choose to prepare our sub at home, instead of getting a store bought one. As you can see from this article, a store bought sub can hold many health risks such as GMO, preservatives, high sodium, saturated fats and carbohydrates levels.
Plus, there is always the risk of getting unfresh, rotten vegetables in your sub. So for the sake of avoiding all those risks, next time prepare your own sub and take it to work.
Donna Begg is an expert editor, a mentor, analyst, and a researcher.