Food Freedom Friday Edition 280 - Nutrition Myths

With all the information at your fingertips today, you might think that nutrition myths would have become less pervasive than in times gone by.

Unfortunately, the internet is rife with misinformation, and it can be really difficult to tell what is evidence-based without reading the original research yourself. Myths that were previously passed through word-of-mouth now spread like wildfire through social media, blogs, and even established media. Between a 24-hour news cycle, studies that can be both long and difficult to read, and journalists scrambling for the latest viral hit, information often gets published without verification. Unfortunately, once a piece of information is assimilated, it is rarely challenged and more often than not, treated as fact.

Some common, pervasive and untrue myths of foods that are actually NOT bad for you include:

Protein Is Bad For You

Carbs and fats often take the blame for various health issues, but the third macronutrient is also fair game in the media wars. Protein has often been accused of harming bones and kidneys.

A more in-depth analysis of these two claims is needed

Bone loss

More protein in the diet has been linked to more calcium in the urine. Two reasons have been suggested to explain this phenomenon:

·       Your body draws from its calcium stores (in bones) to buffer the acid load caused by dietary protein. This has led researchers to suggest that higher protein intake could cause greater bone loss.

·       Most studies that looked at protein intake and calcium excretion list dairy products as a protein source. This means that higher urinary calcium could simply be the result of higher calcium intake (i.e., more calcium in, more calcium out).

Looking only at calcium excretion is thus insufficient. Subsequent studies showed that dietary protein promotes dietary-calcium absorption and that high protein intake “promotes bone growth and retards bone loss [whereas] low-protein diet is associated with higher risk of hip fractures.”

When you ingest more protein, you absorb more of the calcium in your food, so less calcium ends up in your feces. Later, your body rids itself of the calcium it does not need, resulting in higher calcium concentrations in your urine, but significantly less than would have otherwise ended in your feces. This means that an increase in protein intake leads to an overall decrease in calcium excretion, which points to an increase in calcium retention.

Current evidence suggests that protein actually has a neutral or even protective effect on bones.

Kidney damage

Other studies determined that high protein diets increased glomerular filtration rate (GFR), a marker for waste filtration in the kidneys. It was suggested that increased GFR was a sign that undue stress was put on the kidneys, but later research has shown that kidney damage does not occur as a result of diets high in protein.

All the randomized trials thus far have not shown that high-protein diets harm the bones or kidneys of otherwise healthy adults.

Protein, even in large amounts, is not harmful(and is most likely helpful) to your bones or kidneys (unless you suffer from a pre-existing condition).

Red Meat Is Bad For You

The common refrain: red meat causes cancer.

Absolute statements are why so many nutrition myths are swimming around. Cancer is particularly difficult to discuss in absolutes. In fact, almost everything you eat has the potential to be involved in cancer development, yet red meat has been fingered as a likely culprit.

Some compounds (such as the polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), found in smoked meats) have been found to damage the genome.  Damaging the genome is the first step to potential cancer development. Current evidence suggests that processed red meats, particularly those that are more charred during cooking, can pose a greater cancer risk for people when combined with poor diets and lifestyles.

If your red meat intake is predominantly unprocessed and you source your meat and animal products well, you consume healthy, naturally occurring fats, you exercise regularly, don’t smoke, and limit alcohol intake, your lifestyle’s effect on cancer is not something to worry too much about.

There is some evidence that eating a lot of processed meat might increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and of various other cardiometabolic diseases, but that evidence is of lower quality.

Fears about red meat causing cancer are vastly exaggerated. Making healthy lifestyle choices (such as eating a balanced diet rich in whole foods, staying at a healthy weight, exercising, and not smoking) is more important overall than micromanaging your intake of processed foods in general. If you want to reduce any animal product, eliminate those that have  been cured, smoked, or highly processed.

Fats Are Bad For You

Eat fat, gain fat, right?

For many decades, the traditional way to lose weight has been to subject oneself to the unpalatability and challenge of low-fat diet. Current evidence suggests that, given the protein intake, low-fat and low-carb diets produce similar weight losses.

While low-fat diets might not seem inherently unhealthy, shunning all fat from your diet can be dangerous because your body needs to consume at least some omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Furthermore, when it comes to saturated fat being the main driver of cardiovascular disease: yes, just another myth.

At the end of the day, man-made trans-fat is the only kind of fat that has been shown to be categorically detrimental to health. Naturally occurring trans fat and industrially produced trans-fat seem to have a similar effect on blood lipids, but there is no need to worry about the minute amounts of trans fat naturally occurring in whole foods (notably dairy and poultry products). The trans-fat you need to avoid as much as possible is a by-product of partially hydrogenated oils: this type of trans fat was once a common ingredient of processed foods. This type of trans fat consumption was linked to more than half a million coronary heart disease (CHD) deaths worldwide in 2010 alone.

Industrially produced trans-fat was banned in the US in 2015, and all products were supposed to be phased out by June 2018, but manufacturers received an extension until July 2019. Currently, food companies are allowed to cram up to half a gram of trans-fats per serving into their food whilst still claiming the product is "Trans Fat Free" (even though it obviously isn’t). This means that a lot of products with this type of trans fat are still on the shelves today.

Looking at food labels might not help much as the manufacturer usually gets to decide what a “serving” is, which means that, while a 5-gram serving (maybe a small treat the size of your thumbnail) may officially contain 0 grams of trans fat, 100 grams of the product may have 8 grams (if 5 grams of the product in fact contains 0.4 grams of trans fat).

A low-fat diet will not necessarily result in weight loss and you need to eat some omega-3 fatty acids. Saturated fat is unlikely to give you a heart attack (but too much trans fat may).

Egg Yolks Are Bad For You

If there is one thing the media is good at, it is probably scaring you away from perfectly healthy foods.

It is true that foods high in cholesterol can increase LDL cholesterol in most people but to a fairly small extent on average. Moreover, some of the micronutrients and other bioactive compounds in egg yolks could interfere with cholesterol absorption, and many studies have failed to find an increase in cholesterol in egg eaters.

It bears noting that although a review of cohort studies (a type of observational studies) associated higher consumption of cholesterol or eggs with higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality in a dose-response manner, clinical trials (a more rigorous type of study) have failed to find an association between eggs and CVD, except in some people who “hyper-respond” to dietary cholesterol.

Eggs are a great source of protein, fats, and other nutrients. Their association with high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been severely overblown.

Salt Is Bad For You

Some myths contain an ever-so-small grain of truth. Studies have associated excess salt with hypertension (high blood pressure), kidney damage, and an increased risk of cognitive decline.

However, salt (sodium) is an essential mineral; its consumption is critical to your health. The problem occurs when you consume too much sodium and too little potassium.

Another issue is the source of all that salt. The average North American eats a very large amount of salty processed foods. This would imply that people who consume a lot of salt tend to consume a lot of foods that are generally unhealthy. That makes it hard to tease apart sodium’s effects from overall dietary effects. Except for individuals with salt-sensitive hypertension, the evidence in support of low sodium intakes is significantly less conclusive than most people imagine. As it stands, both exceptionally high and very low intakes are

A drastic decrease in salt intake has not shown uniform benefit in clinical trials. Most people will benefit more from a diet of mostly unprocessed foods than from micromanaging their salt intake.

Whole foods rich in saturated fat and cholesterol are not simply not-bad for you – in fact, they are incredibly nutritious. Eliminating them from your diet for fear of fat and cholesterol is actually depriving your body of important nutrition. Stop the myth-mongering, follow the real evidence (and that which has allowed us as humans to thrive over millennia) and eat real food!!!!