She’s over the moon pie.
Jenna Rizzo, a weight loss coach from Georgia, is sharing the three types of groceries banned from her home — individually wrapped pastries, sodas and fruit juices and packaged vegan food.
“If you love these foods, go right ahead and eat them,” Rizzo advised her 83,000 TikTok followers in a video this month. “It’s just in my personal experience that these foods are just not generally conducive to overall health and weight loss goals, but it’s your life.”
Individual pastries
Rizzo placed Little Debbie Snacks, HoneyBuns and Pop-Tarts on her naughty list.
“These foods are on the banned list because we know they really don’t provide a lot of nutritional value for us — very high in saturated fat, very high in processed sugar,” Rizzo explained.
Packaged pastries are ultra-processed foods, notorious for having lots of calories, sugar, fat and salt and little to no vitamins or fiber.
Yet these disgraced foodstuffs are responsible for an astounding 60% of Americans’ daily caloric intake.
UPFs have been tied to 32 poor health outcomes, including a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, metabolic syndrome, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Type 2 diabetes and even premature death.
But that doesn’t mean Rizzo completely eschews sweets.
“I love sweets so much,” she shared. “If I want a pastry, I’m gonna go to my local bakery and get something that was made fresh and with love, not something that’s meant to be shelf-stable for 13 months.”
Sodas and fruit juices
Sodas have long held a poor reputation for containing plenty of sugar and calories but no vitamins, minerals or fiber. Fruit juices, however, have earned a mixed reputation.
“I think we can all agree that we know soda is not the healthiest thing, but fruit juices typically surprise a lot of people,” Rizzo reasoned. “That’s because they’re thinking they’re drinking this good, healthy thing. In reality, most juices are just like a bunch of processed sugar made to taste like grapes or apples.”
Sugar-sweetened beverages — which include soft drinks, fruit drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks and sweetened water, coffee and tea refreshments — provide the most added sugar in the American adult diet, according to a 2023 study in the journal Nutrients.
Nearly seven in 10 adults have made SSBs part of their weekly diet, with 38% admitting they drink at least one or more a day.
SSB consumers run the risk of gaining weight, developing Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, experiencing tooth decay and impairing brain function.
Rizzo prefers making fruit juice at home so she can control the ingredients.
Packaged vegan food
Rizzo’s beef is specifically with vegan UPFs — not all vegan foods.
“People see that label that it’s vegan and automatically think it’s going to be the healthier option,” Rizzo said. “Eating these fake meats and butters and cheeses that literally have an ingredient list longer than a CVS receipt did nothing more for my health.”
A recent study linked plant-based UPFs to a 7% higher risk of cardiovascular disease than unprocessed plant-sourced foods.
Rizzo finds it’s simply better to eat high-quality natural foods.
