Debunking Some Famous Food Myths
We've all got to eat, but sometimes we let food myths dictate what we'll put in our mouths. Here are a few of these food myths you should no longer find troublesome.
Besides air and water, food is your body's most essential element -- so it's no wonder there are so many food myths floating around. With all the media reports about dieting, or the latest studies on whether protein is good or bad for you, the results are a confusing barrage of information that's difficult to process.
Fortunately, you have us here at Mythbusters working for you, separating the mythical wheat from the chaff. Here's a quick workup of the truth behind four common food myths.
Myth 1: Fresh vegetables are more nutritious than frozen vegetables
.Not in most circumstances. The only time this food myth is true is if you live on the farm and immediately eat the foods you've picked. Storing and shipping even the freshest vegetables can cause them to lose their nutritional value fairly quickly. Before too long, they're not healthier than frozen or canned items.
Even worse, if you let your veggies languish in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator, they may end up being less nutritious than their frozen cousins residing in your freezer. Frozen vegetables are flash frozen immediately after they're picked, so while they lose some nutrients in the process, they retain the rest of them in the end.
Myth 2: A grapefruit diet helps you burn calories.
This food myth is one of the most common misconceptions about diet that you'll encounter, and hucksters tend to promote it because they want to keep making money. The idea is that certain enzymes in grapefruit burn calories directly -- but that's news to the scientific community, which has found no proof of the concept.
You probably will lose weight on a grapefruit diet, which generally requires you to eat half a grapefruit before every meal. This is because these diets are already low in calories, typically allowing fewer than 800 a day. The only way you can lose weight (aside from surgery) is to lower your intake of calories in relation to how many calories you burn each day.
Myth 3: Fish contains a lot of sodium.
This is true of canned, pickled, and smoked fish, because salt is added during the preservation process. However, when it comes to fresh fish, this is another food myth. Fish straight from the market (or the water) is naturally low in sodium. For example, Atlantic cod contains a little over 20 mg per ounce.
Myth 4: It's the carbohydrates that make you fat.
Alone, carbohydrates do not make you fat. All foods fall into three basic categories: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. You need all three to be healthy. Remember, it's caloric intake that determines your weight. If your carb intake is too high, then yes, you're likely to get an excess of calories.
But you can successful eat a relatively high carbohydrate diet and still lose weight, according to recent studies. In fact, high carb, low fat diets work more effectively than low carb, low fat diets, as long as you don't go overboard with the carbs. Speaking of overboard, there goes another one of many food myths!
