Every day, we eat, drink, and consume things that might feel great in the moment but could have negative effects in the future. Nevertheless, I could think of a gazillion things that might not be good for me that I enjoy, but I figured I’d list some that you might not have known about (or do and choose to ignore).
- gUM
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I had to google the ingredients to a typical pack of gum (I happen to prefer Extra, Spearmint if we’re specific) because they don’t even list the ingredients on the actual pack. All it says is that it contains Bioengineered Food Ingredients. Mmmm, I love the taste of those. But what I hate more is the first bite into a stick of gum that is so sickly sweet and disgusting that you want to give up on the whole thing right then and there. Vibe was immediately killed. What makes it taste that way, you might ask? Sorbitol, gum base (what?), and glycerol. Nothing says, “Put Me In Your Mouth!” like ingredients that you can’t pronounce or find in a grocery store. Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone likes gum that much; maybe fresh breath or the sound when you chew that makes you feel like the blueberry girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but not the actual gum. My advice is to drop it. No more gum.
- Dryer Sheets
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We just can’t have anything anymore, I guess. Supposedly, dryer sheets are just the solid form of fabric softener, and when you add them to your load, the chemicals in the softener heat up and kind of aerate out. They can cause asthma and respiratory issues, but more importantly, they’ll ruin your clothing! The stuff in dryer sheets that makes your clothes so nice and fresh also gets stuck on the washing and drying machine, causing those to function poorly; in addition to that, dryer sheets can get caught in the lint trap of a dryer and burn your house down! Because I am just so eco-friendly, I decided to buy dryer balls for my laundry, and they work great; they don’t make my laundry smell nice and fresh, but they do their job without killing me.
- Diet coke
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So, I might strike a couple of cords with this bad boy. I am a self-proclaimed Diet Coke enthusiast; sadly, I find the urge to drink one every day. Cans only, I don’t mess with the bottles. My indulgence is usually justified by a boring class, a long run, or whatever excuse I can muster, but Diet Coke is NOT good for you. Aspartame is wild and is 200 times sweeter than regular sugar, and you CAN become addicted. Also, the “caramel color” will stain your pearly whites like crazy, and you’ll look like Shrek. Instead, try Kombucha, and I mean, try it—don’t just buy a bottle and say this is gross. I’m convinced people don’t like Kombucha because they won’t give it a chance. I used to be the same way, and now when I’m feeling all kumbaya, I’ll drink my little fermented drink and feel demure on top of that.
- A Cutesy Drink, Perhaps
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No. Stop drinking coffee every day. Starbucks doesn’t care about how much sugar is healthy to consume. I wanted to try an Iced Caramel Brulee Latte the other day, and there are 44 grams of added sugar in a grande. A GRANDE. The American Heart Association says you should not be having more than forty grams of sugar in a day. So, don’t. That drink would’ve been 176% of my intended daily sugar intake. What would I have had for my sweet treat that day? Yogurt?!?! Take my advice and skip a coffee every once in a while. Try a Diet Co- kombucha. Try kombucha instead.
- Screen Time
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Let’s be real. We all know the screens are doing horrific things to our bodies. My eyes hurt, my back is aching, and yesterday, I put my face up to my house’s ring doorbell as if Face ID would open the door. We have to chillax and read a book. My personal favorite is The Secret History, but any book by Khaled Hosseini will do. I recently read The Bell Jar, which was a nice way to bat away the Sunday scaries. Do your work and gear up for finals but take my advice: save yourself from complete and total annihilation and peel your eyes away from TikTok. I always wonder what our generation will look like in 50 years, as we can’t base it on the previous ones. So, for now, I’ll just keep wondering.
If you can’t follow my advice, that’s okay. I’m not a genius. But when all is said and done, I want to live to see Apple come out with a Flip iPhone, so I’m hunkering down—me and my kombucha.
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