Contrary to what you believe, not all food items are exactly fit fam complaint. In the course of eating healthy, a lot of us binge eat foods that are thought to have low calories. Well, it turns out that we’ve been doing it all wrong, according to Ronke Edoho, the brains behind Lose It Nigerian, a social media platform dedicated to encouraging healthy eating via Nigerian-based diet. Yes, you read right! Nigerian meals can be healthy! But that’s not why we’re here. Being a Certified Nutrition and Clinical Weight Loss specialist, Ronke spilled the tea on some of the not-so-low-calorie meals that we consume in large portions and let’s just say we felt very atttacked.

Here are some of the meals that should be consumed in serious moderation:

• Sardines

I personally think sardines are gross, but for those of you who enjoy it, here are the number of calories you consume when you have sardines, with or without the oil. 

• Swallow

Swallow is one of our favourite things to eat as Nigerians, from fufu to eba to pounded yam. But based on the ingredients used in these various swallows, their calorie level obviously differs. For instance, the amount of starch found in plantain swallow cannot be the same as the amount in pounded yam. Also, according to Ronke, wheat is not healthier than eba or amala. The ones who told you people that lied. Here’s an example:

• Olive Oil

Have you ever had to consider the health risks of using the frying method to cook almost everything? Or even the amount of artery-blocking fats the oils used in frying contains? Well, it turns out that olive oil isn’t a healthier substitute for palm oil, so you can drop that bottle of annointing oil you planned to use to cook.

• plantain chips

Did you know that a pack of plantain chips counts as a whole meal calorie-wise? Yet, look at you eating two packs and reaching for a third. 

• Brown Rice

Like I said in my last post and like we all know, rice is a part of every Nigerian’s destiny, and most people know to parboil rice when cooking it, to lose some of the starch in the staple. So there’s that. Also, eating brown rice won’t save you from those calories. However, like everything else, it should be consumed in moderation.

Yam

Sorry to disappoint you but half a slice of yam is equivalent to a whole 118 calories. So this is one meal that should be consumed on cheat days if you want to fully indulge and pig it out. Unless you’re like me whose life motto is “if I perish, I perish”.

Will you be making changes to your diet now that you have this information? Let us know what you think in the comments section.