6 Nutrition Myths Debunked By An Expert Nutritionist - Blog Kalori

Blog Kalori - Should you be adding lemon juice to your water or eating steak to get your Omega three? Let's talk about that.

How's it going guys, my name is Richie Kirwan.

And today we're going to talk about some of the most common nutrition myths that I hear all the time.

I'm always astounded by just how strongly some nutrition myths hang around in people's memories.

It's like people hear something that sounds interesting.

It gets spread around by word of mouth or these days by social media, and then becomes common knowledge or something that people just accept as fact.

While some of these myths can be really well known in the general population, some are really specific and only circulate in online nutrition communities.

Those communities often act like echo chambers, where people keep hearing the same bad information over and over again until they believe it's fact.

What's worse is when a small part of the myth is based on actual nutrition facts that make it really hard for people to know what to believe or not.

And the best way to describe information like that is 'nutribollox' nutritional information that is mostly pure bulls*** but has enough nutrition truth to make it believable, that's nutribollox, and the internet is full of it.

The problem with fake news like that is that it can be really hard to get people to unlearn it, which is often something they need to do to make progress with their nutrition.

Hopefully, some of what we're going to talk about today will help you make better nutritional choices in your day-to-day life.

Right. Let's debunk some nutrition.

Lemon water

First off, let's talk about the internet's favourite way to start today, a glass of lemo water.

If you were to believe the internet, you think that a glass of water with a few slices of lemon could cure cancer, which it obviously can't.

A quick Google search for the benefits of lemon water comes up with a huge list of claimed benefits from improving your hydration.

I mean, who would expect that from a glass of water right? To boost your immune system, which is based on the fact that lemons contain vitamin C, which we can get from pretty much any fresh fruit or vegetable.

The most common benefit we hear though, is apparently a glass of lemon water in the morning will help with weight loss.

And you know what? 

the problem is, one, there's no reason that it should help with weight loss.

Lemons don't have any metabolism-boosting compounds.

And two, there's virtually no evidence that it actually causes weight loss in humans in the first place.

I say virtually because while I was researching this video, I did find one study on the effect of lemon water on weightless.

I found this one study in an obscure journal that I had never heard of before that did report weight loss in a group drinking lemon water daily.

The only problem is they had absolutely no control group, no dietary records, and no exercise records either.

So it's really hard to say if it actually was the lemon juice that caused the weight loss.

Another myth about lemons that is even more ridiculous is that lemon water can help to alkalize the body something that is alkaline has a higher pH than neutral and is the opposite of an acid which has a lower pH neutral.

If you remember from science class, the pH scale is what we use to measure how acid or alkaline asubstances is.

The first face-slapping part of this is that lemons are an incredibly acidic fruit.

They're used in cooking because of their high content of citric acid, which is something that is a source of acid going to make your body more alkaline.

But besides that, you can't actually change the pH of your body with food.

Our bodies are very finely tuned machines and to operate properly, the body needs to maintain homeostasis.

That means our body works really hard to make sure our temperature blood sugar levels, salt levels, and yes, our pH stays within a very fine range.

You can't change the pH of your body by just eating foods that are supposedly more acidic or more alkaline.

That's not how biology works.

No matter what some people online might claim.

There's nothing wrong with lemon water and it probably does contain some vitamins and polyphenols in low levels.

But believe me, drinking some everyday is not going to transform your body or your health.

Now, the next myth is one that really, really annoys me as someone who researches the benefits of protein on health.

Broccoli v Steak

According to some sources, "broccoli is a better source of protein and steak".

Well, that's what the idea stems from the fact that for the same amount of calories, broccoli has more protein than ribeye steak.

This information is probably one of the most misleading ideas in the nutrition space.

You see, per calorie, broccoli may have more protein than a ribeye steak.

But that's only because ribeye is one of the highest fat therefore highest calorie cuts of steak you can buy broccoli advantage disappears as soon as you switch to a lower fat and lower calorie steak like round or fillers or sirloin because they're all much lower in calories.

Besides that, to get just 25 grammes of protein, you'd need almost one kill About 10 cups of broccoli, you can get the same amount of protein, and half the calories from a little over 100 grammes of Lean steak.

I don't care how much you love your broccoli, but eating that much would be unpleasant.

On top of that, the high volume and fibre content of the broccoli would make it harder to digest and absorb all of the protein that contains, there are far better sources of protein in broccoli, whether you're a meat eater, or vegetarian.

Pink Himalayan rock salt

Next up, you've all probably seen pink Himalayan salt for sale everywhere.

And you may have heard that it's better than regular table salt because it's a great source of minerals.

And apparently, that will help you do everything from improving your sleep to helping balance your body's pH.

Sound familiar? I suppose.

Now in fairness, there is a difference between table salt and pink Himalayan rock salt, table salt is made up of more than 99.

8% Sodium chloride, so it's pretty much pure salt.

Pink rock salts, on the other hand, are made up of about 97 to 98%, sodium chloride, what makes up those other 2%? Something called trace minerals.

trace minerals mean that the amounts are so small that you can barely measure them, but they probably don't have any effect in your body.

And yes, those minerals can include beneficial minerals like potassium, iron, and calcium.

But they can also include toxic minerals like lead, and mercury, and even radioactive minerals like uranium plutonium, radium.

So is pink rock salt harmful? No.

Because all those minerals are present only in trace amounts.

too small to have any effect on health, positive or negative.

To be honest, if you even tried to get a relevant amount of any of those trace minerals found in the rock salt, you'd probably suffer from having way too much sodium in your body first, pink rock salt has absolutely no benefits over regular table salt.

It just looks pretty solid, still something we need to make sure we don't overuse and we certainly can't use it to get other minerals apart from sodium.

Okay, next up, have you ever heard that grass fed beef is healthier? Because contains loads of omega threes? Yep, you guessed it, that's bulls***.

Omega threes are a type of fatty acid.

And one of them is called alpha linoleic acid, or ALA.

And it's considered an essential fatty acid because we can't make it in our bodies and need to get it from our food to be healthy.

But when we eat ALA, which is produced by plants, it needs to be converted to more active forms in the body.

The active forms are fatty acids called EPA and DHA.

Unfortunately, humans aren't very good at making EPA and DHA ourselves.

So it's probably a better idea to get it preformed from foods like oily fish.

But anyway, back to it.

It is definitely true that grass fed beef is higher in omega threes compared to regular beef, which is often fed grain.

In fact, some studies have shown 11 times more ALA four times as much EPA, and twice as much DHA in grass fed beef.

Now that sounds really impressive.

But 10 times almost nothing is still not a lot.

You see in terms of the amount of fat you get in a portion of beef.

It's not a good source of essential fatty acids, meaning you'd need to eat a lot of it to change your body's levels of essential fatty acids.

To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

A 100 gramme portion of salad could have two grammes of combined EPA and DHA.

To get the same amount of EPA and DHA from lean grass fed beef, you'd need to eat over six kilogrammes of meat.

Now, do you see why it's not a great source of Omega threes? grass fed beef is probably healthier than conventional beef for a number of reasons.

But omega threes is not one of them, save your money and either eat fish or taking omega three supplements.

Fructose corn syrup

Next, okay. You might have heard that high fructose corn syrup is far more fattening than regular sugar.

Well, this one is actually terrible.

You see, there are some people that say that fructose in sugar is a major problem for health.

You see, fructose is metabolised differently from glucose, the other monosaccharides and one thing that is different is that fructose may be more easily converted to fat in the liver, a process called de novo lipogenesis.

But that's not going to cause weight gain, unless someone is eating more calories than they need.

In fact, we have a lot of evidence where people are on high fructose diets and don't gain weight as long as they don't eat excess calories.

It's because of fructose that people assume high fructose corn syrup is even worse for health than regular sugar.

High fructose corn syrup is made industrially by fermenting corn.

It's super cheap, and that's why it's become so popular as an ingredient so much so you can see it in the ingredients list of many processed foods these days.

The thing is, high fructose corn syrup doesn't really contain much more fructose than table sugar.

Table sugar is already 50% fructose, corn syrup, on the other hand, usually has a maximum fructose content of 55% not a big enough difference to have a major effect on health or your waistline.

The real issue with both sugar and high fruit Corn Syrup has to do with how much of it people eat today, we eat a lot more processed foods these days, and they often contain a lot of sugar or high fructose corn syrup, along with fat.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with processed foods.

But many processed foods, especially Ultra processed snack foods are just super easy to overeat.

And that's what leads to weight gain.

You shouldn't make high fructose corn syrup, a big part of your diet.

And the same goes for regular sugar too.

Any more myths need busting?

They both have the same effects on health and weight gain, Right.

So there were six really common nutrition myths that we've debunked today Or any of them are surprising.

Let me know in the comments below and let me know if there are any more myths you'd like me to debunk.

https://blogkalori.blogspot.com/2022/08/6-nutrition-myths-debunked-by-expert.html