Spotlight on: Top 5 food myths
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Catherine Saxelby busts the five most persistent food myths today. |
Food myths – whether they are urban myths or olds wives’ tales - come and go depending on the nutrition thinking of the day. But some myths persist over time and make a healthy balanced diet or losing weight sensibly hard to achieve.
Myth # 1: To lose weight, you can't eat carbs after 6pm
The no carbs myth was started by body builders in the gym wanting to sculpt down before a comp. It's a way of cutting kilojoules without too much suffering. You can tuck into a steak with a big salad or a stir-fry with chicken and lots of vegetables. No rice, no potato, pasta or bread.
Does it work? There's little proof that carbs themselves are inherently fattening. Certainly it makes good sense to cut out the refined high GI carbs that don't fill you up and leave you hungry two hours later (think white rice or white bread).
But the truth is that you don't need to cut out ALL carbohydrates. At 17 kJ per gram, carbs have around the same kilojoule count as protein. Both are way lower than fat at 37 or alcohol at 29 – these two are your first point of attack.
My experience is that dieters forgo the starchy carbs with the main meal but then are still hungry, so head back to the kitchen after dinner for a piece of choc or a biscuit or some ice cream - all of which have carbs in the form of sugar.
Myth # 2: Red meat is bad for your health
Red meat (beef, lamb, venison, kangaroo) makes a valuable contribution to your intake of protein, iron and zinc (two minerals often low in the diets of women and girls) as well as vitamins B1 and B12.
Thanks to the breeding of leaner animals and butchers trimming off visible fat, red meat today is leaner and lower in fat than in years gone by. However you don't need huge slabs of it. Just a small 100 to 125g serve with vegetables and pasta/potato is ample three or four times a week.
So 500g of beef strips stir-fried with plenty of vegetables in a wok should serve four people well. Records of hunter-gatherer diets show that our early ancestors were not vegetarian but rather evolved on a diet based on large quantities of fish and meat which helped shape brain development.
Myth # 3: Low-fat means kilojoule-free so I can eat as much as I like
'Low-fat' on a label does NOT give you permission to over-indulge! We devour half a tub of 'low-fat ice cream' when before we'd savour two scoops of the full-fat version or cut thick slices of the 'low-fat cheddar' instead of a thin slice of the usual cheese.
Low-fat only applies to foods with less than 3 per cent fat (3 grams per 100 grams) but these foods can still be high in kilojoules (thanks to extra sugar or starches) or can be concentrated kilojoules such as low-fat ice-cream or low-fat choc chip muffins. Easy to overconsume, easy to pile on the kilojoules.
Genuine low-fat foods that should be a part of your weight loss diet are vegetables, fruits, wholemeal breads, high-fibre cereals, low-fat milk or yoghurt and canned beans.
Myth # 4: The Cabbage Soup Diet will make you burn fat
Perennially popular, the Cabbage Soup Diet is one of the silliest fad diets and makes no nutrition sense! In its original form, on Day 1, all you eat is soup and any fruit except bananas. On Day 2, it's soup and vegetables, but NO fruit. Day 3 is soup, vegetables and fruit - but no potatoes. Day 4 you can eat up to three bananas per day - and alternate this with more of the dreaded vegetable-packed clear soup.
Fortunately most dieters only lasted the four days and then transitioned onto something more balanced. The low-fat soup itself is fine and can be incorporated into any diet plan as a high-fibre 'hunger suppressor' and between-meal snack. Have a mug of it instead of chips or muffins and you'll certainly shed weight. But ditch the weird diet concept.
Myth # 5: Fresh vegetables are always better than frozen
Frozen vegies can be as nutritious as fresh vegetables that you've cooked yourself - provided you follow the instructions on the pack and don't overcook them.
Freezing is one of the better forms of food storage as it retains more vitamin C, folate and other heat-sensitive nutrients than canning or drying.
Fibre remains unchanged during cooking while minerals such as potassium and magnesium are similar as long as you don’t leach them out into the cooking water. The trick is to use the least amount of water and to steam, boil or microwave them until just tender when pierced with a sharp knife.
Eating some vegetables fresh such as tomatoes, lettuces, cucumber or cabbage and is important for good nutrition but when the fresh produce is out of season or you can't get to the supermarket, then frozen are a handy and healthy stand-by.
More articles by renowned dietitian and nutritionist Catherine Saxelby