Powered By Blogger

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

COMMON FOOD MYTHS DEBUNKED- WORLDWIDE!

 COMMON FOOD MYTHS DEBUNKED- WORLDWIDE!

There is so much information and misinformation circulated on the Internet, it’s hard to tell what we should be eating and what we should be avoiding.
There may not be one set of rules that works for everyone – but here are some of the most common myths debunked, from publications around the globe.

Want more information? Come to our Special Health care talk with Kristen Kissell on Thursday Jan 23rd from 6-7pm. Or you can attend our healthcare classes on every other Tuesdays.


From Great Britain: (www.nhs.uk) 
Myth: Healthy food is just too expensive!
"People who skip breakfast are unlikely to catch up on all the vitamins and minerals having breakfast provides later on in the day."
 
Loads of people think this is true, but it’s actually more likely you will find a lot of cheap healthy meal ideas that help save you money. You just need to be clever about it. Buy what’s local and in season. Make meat go further in casseroles or stir-fries by mixing it with cheaper healthy alternatives such as beans and vegetables. Cook batches of dishes such as chili, curry or stew, and freeze them in handy sizes. Then you will have a cheap healthy meal that will last and last.


Myth : Missing breakfast is a good way to lose weight Breakfast is such an important meal. This is because when we’re asleep, we are also 'fasting' for about eight hours, so it’s pretty important to ’break’ this by having some food when we get up. People who skip breakfast are unlikely to catch up on all the vitamins and minerals having breakfast provides later on in the day. If we miss out on breakfast, this often makes us feel hungry later on, so we can end up snacking by mid-morning on foods that are high in sugar or fat. So, skipping breakfast often ends up being more unhealthy than having a good breakfast in the first place!

 
From Australia (Sanitarium.com.au) 
Myth: You need to eat meat to get enough protein Eating a variety of protein-rich plant foods each day will give your body all the protein it needs for good health. Nuts, seeds, legumes and grains are all good sources of protein - and the key is to simply eat a variety of these foods every day to make sure you get the best balance of essential amino acids. Soy protein is a high quality plant protein, that provides all of the essential amino acids we need in the one food. And compared to meat, plant protein foods offer the additional benefits of thousands of phytochemicals that protect against disease.


Myth: All fats are bad for you Healthy fats are essential for good health and have been shown to protect us from a range of diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Healthy fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, found in nuts and seeds, olives and olive oil, avocados, canola and canola oils. They also include omega-3 fatty acids found in linseeds, soybeans, dark green vegetables and oily fish. Healthy fats have been shown to help decrease total cholesterol levels, while omega-3 fats in particular have been shown to have many other health properties, including reducing blood pressure and assisting with inflammatory bowel disease.


From Canada (Besthealthmag.ca)  
Myth: Eggs are bad for you. For years, nutrition experts cautioned that eggs were unhealthy. After all, those gifts from the henhouse are one of the richest sources of cholesterol in the human diet. Since cholesterol plugs up arteries, eggs must raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes, right?


Wrong. Large studies suggest that this theory is full of feathers. For example, the famous Framingham Heart Study, which first showed that high blood cholesterol causes heart attacks, found no connection between eating eggs and cardiovascular disease.


How could that be? It turns out that only about 25 percent of the cholesterol in your blood comes from food. The other 75 percent is manufactured by the liver, which produces lots of cholesterol when you eat cheeseburgers and other sources of saturated fat—something eggs are low in. Eggs are also filled with useful nutrients that may offset any damage done by their cholesterol content, including unsaturated fat, folate and other B vitamins, and minerals.


Myth: Nuts are too fattening—eat them sparingly. To be sure, nuts contain a lot of fat, but it’s mostly the good kind. Dry-roasted peanuts, for example, have three to four times more heart-healthy monounsaturated fat than saturated fat. Recent research suggests that eating nuts as part of a healthy diet may even help you lose weight. Researchers believe that the fat in nuts helps people feel full, and the protein may use up calories as it digests. What’s more, a study by British researchers shows that high-protein foods help trigger the release of a hormone known to reduce hunger.
Nuts’ high concentration of healthy fats makes them a guilt-free way to satisfy hunger without raising cholesterol or other blood fats. What’s more, nuts are an excellent fiber source and provide a long list of nutrients, including vitamin E, magnesium, folate, and copper.


From the US (realbuzz.com)
Myth: Craving is your body's way of saying it needs something
A big misconception about food cravings is that they are our body's way of telling us we are lacking a certain nutrient and need to remedy this immediately via a huge slab of chocolate cake (or your particular food of choice). However, while this theory may help ease our guilt over giving in to cravings, it has yet to be proven true, and more recent research has suggested that food cravings are in fact all in the mind.

Page 3 ::
Common Food Myths Debunked – Worldwide!
(continued on page 4)
 
A study published in the journal Appetite has suggested that many people crave the foods that they most attempt to resist, such as junk food. Research has also suggested that people simply crave the foods that they are most exposed to and familiar with, which is demonstrated by the fact that most people crave sugary, salty and fatty foods. Your body and mind will only crave the foods they remember, meaning that eating a healthy, balanced diet - with a little of what you fancy - should help to reduce those junk food cravings.


From (Prevention.com)
Myth: Microbes in our food are dangerous. Again, yes, of course there are sometimes dangerous microbes in food, but I’m more worried about not having microbes in our food. There’s a real danger in sterility because nature abhors a vacuum. Normally, germs keep each other in check: The competition of harmless microbes can keep dangerous ones from taking over. There are some bacteria (Clostridium difficile is the prime example) that are harmless under normal conditions but run out of control when they enter a sterile environment. So three cheers for microbes in food. Besides, the yeasts, bacteria, and fungi make our beer, cheese, and sauerkraut delicious.


Myth: Organic food isn’t healthier. Last year, an analysis of organics suggested that they were no more nutritious than conventional produce. A lot of people were upset by this conclusion, but it only makes sense: Conventional farmers can measure their nutrient levels, and getting this wrong would hurt their bottom line—so they get it right.


If you are looking very narrowly at those nutrient chemicals we already know humans need, organic doesn’t always look very different from industrial produce. But if you take a broader view, things look different: Buying from farms that make the world cleaner and more beautiful rather than uglier and more polluted is healthier. Buying from farms that support a broad middle class rather than tycoons and destitute laborers is healthier. Buying from farms that don’t torture animals is healthier. Buying delicious food—and taking pleasure in every bite—is clearly healthier.


Myth: There is one right way to eat for optimal health. Humans are wonderfully diverse, and this variety extends to our diets. We are hardwired to eat different things. For instance, most humans don’t have the genetic mutation required to digest lactose. It’s also interesting to note that monkeys produce different forms of breast milk depending on whether a baby is male or female. The males get creamier milk, while the females eat a greater volume of lighter milk; the theory is that males feed less frequently and become more adventurous, while females eat more frequently, staying closer and learning more from their mothers. All this is evidence that—rather than having everyone take one portion of milk and three portions of grain—diets should be individualized.


Around the world with thoughts on food – when you are deciding what to eat and not eat, find the balance between contemporary thinking and your common sense – your best diet probably lies somewhere in the middle. See what’s right for you, and enjoy!

No comments:

Post a Comment