People tend to become extra-cautious about the diet they’re taking. As we begin a new year and, with it, a new decade, here’s what we believe are three prominent myths related to nutrition which you should scrap right away.
There was a time when ‘superfoods’ i.e. edibles with high antioxidant scores were considered more suitable for intake. These terms have now changed but their underlying concepts haven’t: people keep saying that flavinoids in coffee can make food more healthy.
However, these ideas come from studies which examine specific food components in isolation far from any human relevance. A chemical from red wine could lower the inflammatory biomakers in their blood, doesn’t mean that humans will also get healthier by drinking more wine!
We don’t just eat foods; we live wealthy lives with dozens of things to eat and many considerations of what might actually reduce levels of a certain blood chemical.
Eat your veggies, enjoy the variety nature has to offer. There’s no point wasting time in ‘these berries are nice but those aren’t’.
Low-carb diets such as Keto have become very popular. Remember the Atkins diet? Its preliminary phase involved a strict keto diet going as far back as the 70s.
Earlier in the last decade, there was a possibility that a keto diet would do something magical to our metabolism. Since then, rigorous studies have shown that there’s no biochemical advantage to such diets. As a matter of fact, not to any diet!
All diets apparently work equally well as long as they keep tabs on the calorie count. It’s all about how you eat, not what you eat.
Perhaps this belief stemmed from the desire to optimise.
Similar to how low-fat and low-carb diets work well, there’s no credible evidence that intermittent fasting is better than small mouthfuls of food throughout the day. If you like breakfast, eat it. If not, feel free to skip!
There is, however, some evidence that eating meals during a specific time influences workouts. But its effect is small compared to the basics of what you eat and how much. Just plan workouts to fall between meals, say lucnh and dinner instead of sweating at any specific timeframe.