More Diet Myths

Oftentimes, you'll hear a 'fact' told by someone that makes no sense, but you listen to them because they appear to be well qualified. Here are a few of the more common myths that have likely found their way into your home.

Here's one: "This food I'm eating has too much fat in it, it's going to make me fat."

Incorrect. Fat does not make you fat. Calories make you fat. 3500 calories makes up one pound of bodymass. However, fat is the most calorically dense macronutrient there is. Many foods that have a lot of fat in them are also high-calorie. The fallacy lies in the idea that fat you eat becomes fat on your body. Simply untrue.

Smoothies, milkshakes, and things like that, while nice, really aren't what they're chalked up to be.

Often passed off as awesome, low-calorie highly-beneficial drinks that one could, perhaps, make at any time during the day because they are just so good for you, the fact is they are not.

Smoothies are very high-calorie, even moreso if you consider the things you put into them. Assuming milk, some fruit, maybe a little protein powder, maybe some icecream. Maybe.

A lot of what gives heavier fruit the ability to fill you up is that it's crunchy and slightly tough in your mouth, giving your brain a chance to realize that food is on the way, and you aren't as hungry. Drinking your fruit bypasses this by destroying a lot of the fiber in the drink. The lack of fiber also contributes to the 'insulin rush' effect.

And for the love of God, do not just make one randomly throughout the day on a daily basis. Once in a while is fine. But never, ever think that making a smoothie and chugging it down, and then wiping your smoothie-'stache off your face makes you in better shape (in any sense of the word) than the guy over there eating a whole, crunchy apple.

This brings me to my next point: milk.

"If you want to grow up big and strong, you've got to drink your milk."

Yes; milk is a good source of many things that a growing person needs. But there are a good few reasons why one should not drink it. For one, modern milk is pasteurized, filtered, processed, homogenized, among other things. This denatures the good fat in the milk that would normally rise to the top (the victim of homogenization, I'm sad to say.) and makes it into something that the body hardly even recognizes as fat.

Milk does, though, contain lots of protein and calcium. Good. It also contains lots of hormones from the cows that produced it. No, your typical dairy cow does not live the life the humorous commercials on TV would like you to believe. If you want to drink milk, drink it whole and raw. Raw milk is milk straight from the cow, just the way it used to be had in the good ol' days before pasteurization. Many states have made it illegal for 'health concerns', when in fact, more people have gotten sick from common pasteurized milk than those who have gotten sick from raw milk--the latter remaining a crisp, resounding 'none'.

Soy is alright, in moderation. But I don't suggest eating it daily, or in very large quantities. Soy, while high in protein and low in fat, also is high in phytoestrogens, which are converted into estrogen in the body. Estrogen taken in from food such as soy can result in some problems for men. You probably catch my drift. Extraneous estrogen can increase cancer rates, extra tissue growth, the reduction in capabilities for male sexual organs, among other unpleasant side effects.

If you have bought into any of these common mistakes, you may have been conned by the diet industry.

Drop and give me 50.