As we march further into the new year (and, arguably, into the new decade), there are a few things I think we can safely do without. Here are three nutrition myths that I believed, or maybe wanted to believe, at the start of the decadeand why Im leaving them behind.
Remember superfoods? Anything with a high antioxidant score was supposed to be especially good for you. The buzzwords have changed, but the concept has not: We keep hearing that the flavonoids in coffee or red wine, for example, make a food particularly healthful.
But these ideas tend to come from studies that look at one food component in isolationoften in lab studies that are miles away from any relevance to humans. Like, ok, if you extract one chemical from red wine and give it to mice, maybe the mice have slightly lower levels of inflammation-related biomarkers in their blood. So? That doesnt mean that a human being with a habit of drinking red wine is going to be healthier than a human who doesnt drink at all.
We dont eat nutrients, we eat foods; and we dont only eat foods, we live rich lives involving hundreds of things to eat and hundreds of considerations besides what might possibly reduce levels of a certain blood chemical.
Eat your vegetables, get a variety of foods, you know the drill. If youre debating whether to eat these berries versus those berries, youre wasting your time.
Keto and other low-carb diets have undulated in popularity. Remember Atkins? Its induction phase was basically a strict keto diet, and it dates back to the 1970s.
At the beginning of this decade, there was still a possibility that a ketogenic dietone that is low enough in carbs to produce a certain blood chemistrywas doing something special to our metabolism. But since then, weve seen some rigorous studies that test that hypothesis, and they find that theres no biochemical advantage to low-carb diets, nor to any diet in particular.
All diets seem to work equally well (or equally badly, to be honestmost everyone regains the weight they lose in the long run) as long as they restrict calories by about the same amount. So what really matters is choosing a way of eating that you can stick to, whether thats low fat or low carb or anything else.
Im convinced that meal timing only became a thing because people are looking for an easy thing to optimise. Maybe you have trouble eating the right amount and type of food, but at least you can get the timing down. Or perhaps you want to prove to yourself that youre serious about your workouts, so you take the time to plan out the perfect post-workout shake.
Just as low-fat and low-carb diets seem to work equally well, theres no solid evidence that intermittent fasting is better or worse than many small meals a day. If you like breakfast, you can eat it; if you dont, skipping it is fine.
While there is some evidence that meal timing around a workout matters, its effect is small compared to the basics of what youre eating and how much. If you cant get 30 grams of protein immediately after a workout, its not like your muscles will shrivel up and die. (I distinctly remember watching the clock after the gym to make sure I got my shake in the supposed 30-minute window.) It turns out that the window to get that protein is probably several hours long. So most of will be fine to just plan our workout to fall between mealslunch and dinner, say, or breakfast and second breakfastrather than sweating any specific timing.
Read the rest here:
Stop Believing These Nutrition Myths - Lifehacker Australia
