10 MONSTER MYTHS ABOUT DIET
According to Zoe Harcombe
Conventional wisdom about how we should eat is being challenged.
According to Zoe, the belief that all we need to do to lose weight is eat less/or do more, is a myth!
Myth No 1 : Energy in equals energy out
This ‘law of the universe’ was developed during the industrial revolution to help understand if we could make a perfectly efficient steam engine. The laws were and are all about energy, not weight. The laws say nothing about
weight being conserved – we humans flit between energy and weight interchangeably in the world of dieting and our conversions and assumptions are wrong.
Myth No 2 : Eating less will make you weigh less
The idea that, if you eat 500 fewer calories the body will give up 500 calories of fat, to make up the difference, is the ultimate naivety in the world of dieting. The body is
not a cash machine for fat.
Myth No 3 : Doing more will make you weigh less
Both the eating less and doing more beliefs also make the massive and wrong assumption that the body is able to burn fat. The body will always use carbohydrate for fuel first. Hence, if the average person has any glucose in the blood stream or any glycogen (stored glucose) in the body – this will be used to cover any gap in food eaten or activity done. The body can only burn fat when there is
no glucose/glycogen available. Modern man rarely, if ever, allows his body to get to the state where it can burn its own fat – let alone will.
Myth No 4 : Weight gain is the result of too many calories in
Weight gain is the result of fat being stored, not too many calories in. Equally, weight loss is about fat lost, not about putting fewer calories in.
Myth No 5 : Cholesterol is going to kill you
Cholesterol is absolutely life critical and vital –
not the bad guy in any way, shape or form. You would literally die without cholesterol. It is one of the most vital substances in the human body – it is a key part of the structure for every cell in the body. Cholesterol is so vital to the body that our bodies make it. Statins stop the
body from producing the cholesterol that it is designed to produce. They literally stop one of our fundamental body processes from being able to function.
Myth No 6 : There is GOOD cholesterol and BAD cholesterol
There is no such thing as good and bad cholesterol. The chemical formula for cholesterol is C27H46O. There is no molecular formula for a good version or a bad version and we must stop using such erroneous and emotive terminology.
Myth No 7 : We all need to eat our 5-a-day
There is
no basis for telling us to eat five-a-day. The pick a number a day campaign (it is not always five in each country) has spread across three continents and tens of countries. It has become the most well known and promoted public health nutritional message ever. You would think, therefore, that it was evidence based and founded upon robust scientific knowledge. You would be wrong. It was invented by produce companies who all stood to gain if the world started eating more fruit and veg.
Myth No 8 : We must eat a lot of fibre
The NHS web site says “Fibre helps prevents constipation and clears the gut so that nasty substances don’t hang around for so long”. The two things we actually need to know about fibre are: 1) Humans can’t digest fibre. So, how can something that we can’t digest be so important for our health? 2) Why on earth would we want to rush food through from the gut? The majority of nutritional absorption takes place in the small
intestine – why would we want to speed up this process and disturb the nutrients being absorbed?
Myth No 9 : Saturated fat causes heart disease
It has
never been proven that saturated fat causes heart disease. There has not yet even been established that there is a consistent association between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact, no study to prove this has even been undertaken!
Myth No 10 : We need to keep our blood sugar topped up
We need to keep our blood glucose/sugar level within a very narrow band called normal. One of the maddest
bits of advice is that we need to keep our blood sugar ‘topped up’. Our blood glucose levels are one of the most carefully regulated mechanisms in the human body. Every time we eat a carbohydrate and our blood glucose levels rise, the body needs to release insulin (from the pancreas) to return our blood glucose levels to normal. Hence any ‘topping up’ simply places a demand on the body to get the blood glucose levels back down again.