Everyone wants to be healthy to some degree or another. Even if you want to eat nothing but pizza and beer every day, you’d probably still like to keep your weight in check and feel overall good. Unfortunately, the world isn’t set up to make that easy. Things that look wholesome often hide a darker side, and some “healthy” picks turn out to be worse than the obvious junk foods.

10 Grape Juice Has 33% More Sugar Than Soda

Dieticians and doctors have been vocal about the perils of soda for years. While a Pepsi won’t rip your arms off, it does pack sugar, caffeine, acidity, and more, contributing to tooth decay, obesity, and even hair loss. Many assume fruit juice is a smarter swap—sweet, natural, and therefore better. In reality, some juices beat soda on the sugar scale. Grape juice, for example, contains 33% more sugar than an equal amount of soda. Welch’s grape juice can out‑sweet a Mountain Dew, delivering more sugar and calories than many think.

9 Movie Theater Popcorn Has More Calories Than Whole Meals

The classic cinema ritual involves a big bucket of popcorn. Though popcorn sounds like a light snack, the butter and oil used to pop it add a hidden load of fat. You can end up consuming more calories and fat from a single bucket than you would from an entire meal—or even several meals. The notorious 85‑ounce AMC cheddar crunch popcorn tops out at 4,550 calories and 341 g of fat. By comparison, a Big Mac offers 550 calories and 30 g of fat. Eating that bucket during a movie equals the fat of eleven Big Macs and the calories of eight.

8 Campbell’s Tomato Bisque Has Almost as Much Sugar As a Coke

Soup often evokes comfort and wholesomeness. Campbell’s leans heavily into that image, but not all its soups are created equal. Their Tomato Bisque packs a surprising 37.5 g of sugar per can. Because the label counts a can as 2.5 servings, a single‑serving portion actually delivers 93.8 g of sugar—nearly identical to a can of Coca‑Cola. That amount also mirrors eight Oreo cookies, making the bisque a sugary surprise for anyone watching their glucose.

7 Unfrosted Pop Tarts Have More Calories Than Frosted Ones

If you reach for a Pop‑Tart, you might assume the frosted version is the heavier culprit because of its sugary coating. Surprisingly, the unfrosted variety actually packs a few more calories and fat. To keep the overall size comparable, the unfrosted version has a thicker crust, which adds extra carbohydrate and fat. The calorie difference is modest—about ten calories—but it’s a reminder that “unfrosted” isn’t automatically the lighter choice.

6 Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Has Double the Sodium of a Big Mac

Campbell’s Chicken Noodle is a go‑to comfort for many, but it hides a hefty sodium punch. The can contains 2,225 mg of sodium, which sits just under the recommended daily limit of 2,300 mg. Because the label assumes 2.5 servings per can, each serving still delivers about 890 mg. By contrast, a Big Mac provides 1,010 mg—roughly 45 % of the soup’s sodium. Even a large bag of Lay’s chips (1,700 mg) falls short of the soup’s total, highlighting the salty surprise.

5 Bud Light Still Has More Calories Than Coca‑Cola

Light beer often gets a pass for being “lighter” than regular brews, yet a 12‑ounce can of Bud Light still delivers 146 calories—six more than a 12‑ounce Coke. Alcohol itself packs seven calories per gram, outpacing fat (nine calories) and carbohydrates (four calories). So even a “light” beer can sneak more calories than a sugary soda.

4 A KFC Chicken Pot Pie Is Loaded With Fat and Calories

KFC’s chicken pot pie might look like a healthier alternative to fried pieces, but it’s a calorie and fat bomb. One serving packs 720 calories and 41 g of fat. Compare that to a KFC keel piece (breast without ribs) at 290 calories and 13 g of fat, or a drumstick at 140 calories and eight grams of fat. The pot pie’s fat content equals roughly five drumsticks or three breasts, making it a surprisingly indulgent choice.

3 A Cup of Banana Chips Has Almost as Much Fat As a Quarter‑Pounder Hamburger

Banana chips seem like a wholesome snack, but many are fried in oil, inflating their fat content. One cup can hold 24 g of fat and 374 calories—almost matching the fat in a McDonald’s Quarter‑Pounder and delivering three times the calories of a comparable portion of potato chips. The crunchy, sweet appeal hides a hefty nutritional load.

2 A Cup of 1% Milk Has More Calories Than a Coke

Milk is celebrated for its nutritional benefits, yet it also carries a surprising calorie count. Whole milk tops out at 150 calories per cup, while 1% milk still packs 110 calories. A 12‑ounce serving of 1% milk translates to roughly 165 calories—higher than the 140 calories found in a 12‑ounce Coke. So, even the “light” dairy option can out‑calorie a sugary soda.

1 Meatless Burgers Are Higher in Saturated Fat and Sodium Than Beef

Plant‑based patties have become trendy, but they don’t always beat meat on the health front. Both Impossible and Beyond Meat burgers contain more saturated fat than a typical ground‑beef patty and carry four to five times the sodium. While they satisfy ethical concerns and provide solid protein, the processing involved adds a nutritional downside, and the environmental impact may not be as green as advertised.

10 8220 Healthy Overview

Fashion is an artistic form of self-expression, and like any art form, it is constantly evolving and branching in new directions. Of course, if you take enough directions, some will lead to strange places. This is certainly true in fashion, where there have been many questionable trends over the years. And though most of them are baffling but harmless, a few have been downright dangerous. And more often than not—at least in Western society where it is mostly pushed on women—those dangerous fashions trends are left to the ladies. 

From deadly chemicals to radiation to the breaking and removing of bones, women have had to endure some seriously unsafe practices to meet shifting social standards. Here are ten of the most dangerous fashion trends that women, somehow, participated in.

10 Lead, Arsenic, & Mercury—Oh My

Though we named three of the big ones, we could easily have included more, like turpentine, formaldehyde, phthalates, parabens, and more. Over the millennia, there has been no shortage of deadly chemicals used in beauty products. Women have literally been poisoning themselves for beauty for as long as there has been fashion.

The examples are too numerous to list. Among them are: 

• Arsenic pads, which were used to pale the complexion (they worked by killing the red blood cells under the skin).
• Lead powder, which was used to create the signature Baroque white face.
• Scheele’s green, a vibrant green dye made from arsenic that caused cancer after repeated use.
• Mercury-treated hats which caused neurological disorders and are the reason we’ve all heard the phrase “mad as a hatter.”

9 Neck Rings

Neck rings have emerged independently in several civilizations, ranging across Africa and Asia. The process entails covering the neck of a growing girl with metal rings and adding more rings as she grows (or winding the single metal ring another turn). They add even more rings if any gap or looseness emerges between rings. This theoretically lengthens the neck, thereby increasing the women’s beauty. The problem is, the neck doesn’t actually elongate at all.

In reality, the heavy discs and their dense arrangement push down on the clavicle and ribs with enough force to warp them, bending them unnaturally far down. This warping can lead to many health risks, including circulation and clotting issues as the soft tissues are subjected to bones in irregular places. Worse, in some cultures girls can choose to forego rings during childhood and instead start as a preteen, taking on extra rings to catch up. Accelerating the process of bone deformation is certain to be unpleasant and unhealthy.

8 DIY Piercings

Even though piercings are intentionally inflicted stab wounds, which should make any sane human think “a professional should do this”, many try to perform their own piercings at home. The proliferation of DIY at-home piercing kits online has made this option even more enticing for thrifty dummies.

There are a number of dangers when stabbing yourself at home, the most common of which is infection. Professional piercing locations have to meet an array of standards to prevent infection risk, but no one’s home does. Professionals wear gloves, sterilize their tools and room, sterilize the piercing site, and train to make sure they’re competent. None of that is guaranteed at home, where lack of training and sterility could even lead to disease transmission if done improperly enough.

7 Tho-Radia

In the 1920s and 30s, there was a fashion craze built around radioactive products. Scientists had just discovered radioactive elements in the previous decades, and to the ignorant public, they were just new materials that contained energy. The buzzword was enough to launch a craze, and suddenly thorium and radium were everywhere.

One such line of cosmetics was named Tho-Radia because it contained both thorium and radium. The line included face creams, lipsticks, soaps, and even soft drinks, all of which were marketed as miracle products whose mysterious energetic properties could cure anything from aching bones to crow’s feet. Obviously, the products did not work quite as expected, and instead, an entire generation of women saw its cancer rate skyrocket.

6 High Heels

Of course, high heels aren’t as dangerous to the wearer as many of the other items on this list. But what they lack in imminent danger to one person makes up for in gradual, insidious danger to millions. And some high heels of the past, taller than today’s standard, were a lot less gradual.

Repeated use of high heels, even the modern variety, literally reshapes the Achilles tendon and calf to fit the foot’s new angle. This puts stress on the knees, hips, and back as they try to adapt to an inhuman gait, causing osteoarthritis, stress fractures, and more. On top of that, some historical high heels, like eighteen-century chopines, were much taller, looking like creepy, alien monoliths with foot-straps.

5 Corsets

Somehow corsets have existed, and been in widespread use, for hundreds of years. The idea is simple enough: cinch a fabric frame around the torso in order to thin the waist, with the added bonus of raising the breasts and widening the hips. And corsets work, but they also put enough pressure on the torso for enough time to deform and damage your organs.

Corsets have been shown to deform the bowels, causing painful blockages; deform the lungs, opening them up to infections; and even kill. There are multiple recorded cases of corsets killing their wearers, either by slowly suffocating them or, as in the infamous case of Mary Halliday, pushing hard enough into the torso to pierce the heart.

4 Crinoline

One of the most famous fashion trends of the Victorian era was the hoop skirt, the wide, flowing, circular skirt that gave Victorian women their signature big-bottom-tiny-top look. The skirts were able to hold their prodigious size because they were supported by cages known as crinolines. Also, because of crinolines, hoop skirts killed thousands of women.

The dangers of crinoline were twofold. First, it was an extremely flammable material. Second, the shape it created widened the skirts to an unreasonably large scale, making it hard to manage and therefore susceptible to getting caught in or brushing against things it shouldn’t— namely fire. Many Victorian-era women caught fire or were caught by machinery or wagon wheels. Reports vary, but all place the death toll from these unwieldy, flammable skirts in the thousands.

3 Foot Binding

Foot binding was a Chinese practice in which young girls had the bones in their feet broken and wrapped tightly in order to reform them to a new shape, generally a smaller, pointier one. The process began with systematically breaking each of the toes and tucking them under the foot, followed by breaking the foot’s arch and binding it in the desired shape.

Toenails tended to in-grow during the procedure, which caused infection and often led to toes falling off completely. Even more painful to think about, this was considered a bonus. Without the toes, the feet could be bound into even smaller profiles. As unbelievable as this practice was, what is even more so is that it lasted for around 1,000 years. By the height of its popularity in the 1800s, most women in China all had bound, disfigured feet.

2 Heroin Chic

Thinness has been a major part of fashion for most cultures and for centuries. Most women can tell you about their struggle with chasing the ever-shifting bar of the ideal feminine form. The 90s, however, grabbed the bar and flung it down a dark, grimy alley with the trend known as ‘heroin chic.’

Heroin chic, as its name applies, was the implied glamorization of heroin use, specifically the skeletal thinness that heroin users tend to accrue. That and the dark eye bags and pallid skin that come from overall poor health. Pictures promoting the look tended to show their models dazed, unsmiling, laying against walls or in alleys. The culmination of the trend came when photographer Davide Sorrenti, one of its chief purveyors, himself died of heroin use.

1 Rib Removal

As hard as it is to believe that there have been people willing to remove entire bones in their quest for beauty, it’s even harder to believe that the practice is a modern one. Yes, there are people out there—right now—who have elected to remove two, four, or even six ribs just to thin their waist. For many, the idea is to look like Barbie or cartoon characters.

The cost for that cartoonishly small waist is firstly an invasive surgery. There are inherent risks with any surgery, like infection and internal bleeding, and most doctors will tell you that it is generally only used as a final option. Another danger is that the loss of ribs increases the likelihood of significant organ damage; the ribs are, after all, there specifically to keep your lungs and other vital organs safe upon impact. Without their hard framework, the risk of a collapsed lung is greater than ever.