The 10 stupidest nutrition myths

What you need to know...

1. Soy protein is practically useless for stimulating muscle protein synthesis.
2. Detoxing the liver or "cleansing" the gut with coffee enemas is beyond stupid.
3. Stop worrying about growth hormones in milk.
4. You can't starve cancer by eliminating sugar from your diet.
5. You don't have to consume all your micronutrients in one day. Instead, you can look at your diet in blocks of two or three days, or even by the week.
6. The "hormone-free" label on poultry is unnecessary and misleading.
7. People who drink skim milk build up more fat than people who drink whole milk.
8. Stop being neurotic about fructose.
9. Eating turkey will not make you sleepy.

1 - Hey, soy may make your eggs shrivel, but at least it's good protein!

About 15 years ago, I broke the news to the physique world that some studies had shown that soy resulted in testicular shrinkage and lower testosterone levels. Despite this, some people are still adamant that soy protein is at least a good muscle building protein.

They had at least one argument for this, even if it wasn't particularly valid. Their reasoning was that soy protein differs from soy in that the isoflavones, which are blamed for lowering testosterone levels and testicular shrinkage, are removed during the soy protein manufacturing process and are therefore no longer present in the final product.

This may or may not be true, as some reports indicate that isoflavones are indeed present in some soy protein products. Regardless of which position you support, recent research gives us an entirely different reason to avoid soy.

A McMaster University study found that soy protein is no better than water when it comes to muscle protein synthesis. The scientists gave 30 men 0 grams of protein, 20 grams of soy or 40 grams of soy at rest and after resistance training. They then compared the results with a group of men who had used 20 or 40 grams of whey protein instead.

While 40 grams of soy slightly increased muscle protein synthesis, 20 grams of soy worked just as well as 0 grams of soy. However, muscle protein synthesis was significantly increased in the groups that consumed 20 or 40 grams of whey protein. The scientists theorized that whey protein worked so well (and soy not so well) because whey protein contains a much higher percentage of leucine - the primary amino acid for muscle building - than soy protein.

In addition, a higher percentage of the amino acids in soy protein - including leucine - are oxidized, making them unavailable for protein synthesis.

If you want to build muscle, then it's certainly best to avoid soy protein until the unlikely event that a miracle study convinces us that all soy-related problems have been solved.

2 - Your liver is a dumping ground! Detoxify it!

At some point, some well-meaning naturopath, herbalist or anal fetishist has come up with the idea that our bodies need periodic cleanses.

Advocates of this idea argue that the air, water and food we breathe and eat are overloaded with toxic chemicals. The naturopath and the herbalist recommend that we occasionally abstain from eating solid food and instead sip a nasty mixture of cabbage, celery and beets to cleanse ourselves of these toxins.

The anal fetishist argues that we should instead use the back entrance and flush our bowels with water, coffee or kitty litter (bentonite) to flush out the toxins.

Well, they're all half right.

The air, water and food we breathe or eat are indeed loaded with toxic chemicals, but the body has a fairly efficient detoxification system that includes our liver, kidneys and spleen. Furthermore, there is no generally accepted evidence that juice helps these organs do their job more efficiently.

However, these systems need nutritional support. Paradoxically, fasting deprives the liver of amino acids (cysteine, glutamine, glycine) that are needed for this natural detoxification process. Furthermore, amino acids make toxins more water-soluble, making it possible to remove them via bile acid.

And colon cleansing? That's just too ridiculous and stupid to even go into.

3 - The growth hormones in milk will make you grow a second head!

Stop this growth hormone phobia already. Yes, some sectors of the dairy industry use growth hormones to increase milk production and yes, some of this does seem to make its way into the milk we consume. Big deal.

Growth hormones are huge protein molecules that, once consumed, are broken down into their amino acid components in the digestive tract - just like milk and other proteins that have to go through the wild ride through your digestive system.

That said, these are growth hormones for cows and unless one of your parents was a ruminant with four stomachs wearing a bell around its neck, these growth hormones won't have any effect on you anyway.

4 - Cancer feeds on gummy bears!

In 2007, some bastard spread an internet hoax titled "Cancer Update from John Hopkins." Among other things, this article stated that cancer feeds on certain foods like sugar.

This scared the hell out of cancer patients all over the world and made many of them avoid sugar. Things got even worse when the honorable show 60 Minutes aired a program in 2012 about a doctor who made pretty much the same claim.

Fear-driven cancer patients began purging their cupboards of anything that might contain sugar. The problem here is that many things contain sugar, and if you know anything about cancer patients, you know that one of the biggest problems they face is getting enough calories and nutrients, which is primarily related to the fact that they often lose their appetite due to chemotherapy.

There are several obvious problems associated with inadequate nutritional intake, but one of these is particularly serious. Studies from the 1980s that looked at malnutrition in AIDS patients tell us that, regardless of anything else going on in our bodies, once our body weight falls below 66% of our ideal weight, we die. Therefore, cancer patients need to eat everything possible to keep their calorie intake high enough.

That being said, cancer does not feed on sugar per se. Sure, it will use sugar, but since Adolf Krebs, who discovered the famous Krebs cycle, started chopping up pigeon breasts in his lab, we know that the common metabolic intermediate for any energy requirement is 6-carbon sugar molecules, which includes all carbohydrates, not just sugar.

Can you starve cancer cells to death by eliminating all carbohydrates? Maybe, but everything else will suffer before the cancer is starved. So this cancer/sugar myth is a myth that should be dispelled as soon as possible.

Oh yes, people might want to remember that simply appearing on TV does not automatically confer real expert status on the person in question. Producers book people based on controversy and fads, not caring about the consequences.

5 - Oh no! Giant chickens with gyno are coming to get us!

I suppose it's commendable that moms who mean well dig around in the freezer section of the supermarket looking for chicken labeled "hormone free" or "natural," but this is wasted motherly love.

The "hormone-free" label is redundant and manipulative, since the use of hormones is banned in poultry anyway. As for the "natural" label, this simply means that there are no artificial additives or preservatives in the chicken, but this applies to almost any poultry in any supermarket.

And while we're on the subject of labels: The "free-range" label suggests that the chickens live an idyllic life, foraging on the prairie for grasshoppers and the meaning of life.

Unfortunately, this label really just means that you have access to the outside, which may just mean that there's a hole in the wall that they could theoretically squeeze through to get outside, or that they may have access to a small fenced-in concrete area that's right next to a highway.

6 - Oh no! I didn't get my daily requirement of riboflavin!

I've written about how people who only eat foods with a high nutrient density can theoretically eat as much as they want without gaining weight. The 'trick', of course, is that foods with a high nutrient density are usually not particularly calorific and so you automatically fill up on low calorie foods so you don't gain weight.

However, I have found that there is a subset of people who manage to get fat despite eating a 'healthy' diet. They have obviously found a loophole in my argument and are shamelessly exploiting it.

Here's what happens: They'll eat breakfast. They'll order eggs and wholemeal toast with organic butter. And some yogurt. And granola. Oh yes, some orange juice and a bowl of fruit. And bacon. I almost forgot the bacon.

They've internalized the idea of whole foods and nutrient dense foods, but they've taken it to an absurd extreme by trying to get all their nutrients at every meal. As a result, their calorie intake is off the charts. Despite their sensible food choices, they are getting fatter and fatter.

They have neglected the fact that they don't need to get all their nutrients at every meal. It's like the old beans and rice thing practiced by vegetarians. Rice lacks the amino acids lysine and threonine, so you need to combine rice with beans to get a complete protein, since beans contain the lysine and threonine that rice lacks.

Well, that's true so far, but you don't have to eat these foods as part of the same meal. You can eat your rice and have some lysine-rich food later in the day.

You don't even have to get all your micronutrients in one day. Instead, you can look at your diet in blocks of two or three days, or even weekly blocks. Although there are daily requirements for many vitamins, many others are stored for later use.

An extreme example is the daily requirement for vitamin B12, which is about the size of the dot at the end of this sentence. However, the body recycles some vitamin B12 and stores can last from 5 months to 30 years before any deficiency becomes apparent.

Eat foods with a high nutrient density, but there is no need to consume every macronutrient, vitamin, mineral, phytochemical or antioxidant with every meal, you fat bastard in waiting.

7 - Whole milk is what they used to kill Rasputin!

For years, America treated whole milk as if it was a liquid medium used to carry the Ebola virus. People thought that whole milk made them fat, raised their cholesterol and hardened their arteries, so they chose low-fat or fat-free milk, which is kind of like the Claustaler of milk - i.e. colored water.

Surprisingly, plenty of evidence has emerged showing that those who drank whole milk (and ate high-fat dairy products in general) were less likely to get fat than those who consumed the low-fat versions.

The studies appear to be consistent and significant - no three-person pool of subjects and no studies funded by a company that had a financial interest in a particular study outcome. One of the studies monitored men who ate high-fat dairy products over a 12-year period and the other study was a meta-analysis that included 16 studies. Both showed that a high-fat diet was associated with a lower risk of obesity.

The theory that remains to be proven is that high-fat milk contains some bioactive substance that alters the metabolism in a way that helps to use and burn fat for the purpose of energizing the body. Of course, this "bioactive substance" could just be conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) - a fatty acid that has long been known as a fat burner.

As for the health concerns, few people realize that in addition to saturated fat - whose role in heart disease is now considered minimal to non-existent - whole milk also contains oleic acid, or oleic acid - the fatty acid that nutrition experts believe makes olive oil so valuable.

Of additional importance is the vitamin paradox represented by low-fat or fat-free milk. Milk contains fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D, E and K. However, when you remove the fat from a dairy product, you also remove most of the fat-soluble vitamins, which then need to be added back.

However, as long as you don't consume fat with your fat-free milk or haven't recently eaten some fat or plan to eat some fat soon after your glass of milk, many of the vitamins will be floating around in your digestive tract waiting in vain to be picked up and distributed throughout your body instead of experiencing the shame of being excreted and ending up in the toilet.

If you are a calorie counter, then you will probably continue to choose low-fat or fat-free milk. Others may want to give whole milk a chance.

8 - Of course you're fat, have an unpleasant body odor and suffer from acne! You've eaten some fructose!

The human body prefers glucose as its energy source. However, it will also readily accept fructose.

After consumption, fructose is transported to the liver (if you are not suffering from a real energy deficiency) and then to the liver mitochondria, which store the fructose either as glycogen for short-term use or as fat.

Although this process is reversible, it is not good for the health and function of the liver if it continues. Some scientists have even gone so far as to refer to fructose as "alcohol without the high".

Unfortunately, the fact that fructose can be stored as fat and potentially damage the liver has created a disproportionate fear of fructose - a condition I call "fructose delusion syndrome".

The science does not support these fears. John Sievenpiper, a nutritionist at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto, Canada, looked at 41 human studies and noted that people who ate the same amount of calories, regardless of whether those calories were in the form of fructose or another carbohydrate source, gained the same amount of weight.

And you can also easily do an empirical observation and see that despite the mass avoidance of all things fructose, the rate of obesity has continued to increase.

But let's apply some logic to the situation. The most "effective" fructose blend - the high fructose corn syrup that many dread - has a fructose content of 55%, while the remaining 45% is glucose. Compare this to sucrose aka table sugar, which is a mixture of 50% fructose and 50% glucose.

This means that if you were to consume 100 grams of high fructose corn syrup per day, which is slightly more than the amount contained in three cans of cola, you would consume 5 grams more fructose than if you were to consume the same amount of sucrose.

This difference is not really worth mentioning...

9 - Don't eat turkey if you still have to drive!

Some people believe that turkey will make you sleepy because it contains the amino acid tryptophan, which is a precursor to the relaxation and feel-good hormone serotonin.

Yes, turkey contains tryptophan, but so do all other complete protein sources. That being said, tryptophan is a large, cumbersome amino acid that has a hard time squeezing its molecular framework through the narrow doors of the blood-brain barrier.

When tryptophan is consumed as part of a complete protein, some of the other smaller and more nimble amino acids reach the blood-brain barrier first, blocking tryptophan's ponderous attempts to cross it.

However, if you consume tryptophan on its own, it's a completely different story. Without competitors, tryptophan could manage to squeeze through the blood-brain barrier in larger quantities and do its serotonin thing. But the claim that turkey makes you sleepy is utter nonsense.

What makes you fall asleep at Thanksgiving or Christmas in the puddle of gravy on your plate is more likely the enormous 3000 kcal meal overloaded with fat and carbs you just ate.

10 - Normal salt will make your head explode!

I'm not going to talk about why the link between sodium consumption and high blood pressure is tenuous at best. Instead, I'm going to talk about something far more insidious that has something to do with what the "salt is bad" myth has done to most of us nutritionally speaking.

You are aware of the fact that the body needs iodine, right? The body uses iodine to make the thyroid hormones T3 and T4. If your diet doesn't contain enough iodine, you can develop nodules in your thyroid glands or even a monstrous goiter on your neck.

A milder deficiency can make it hard for you to stay slim or plague you with mysterious fatigue, depression, unexplained autoimmune disorders, a psychiatric disorder, fibrocystic breast disease or even cancer. Other less serious symptoms may include dry skin or constipation.

If you live by the sea, you probably get plenty of iodine (provided you eat locally grown food). However, the further away from the sea you live, the harder it will be for you to get enough iodine.

Fortunately, the clever people at the Morton Salt Company started adding iodine to their salt in 1924. This solved the problem of iodine deficiency in the US, as people in Kansas were now getting as much iodine from their diet as people in Massachusetts.

But then came the doctors. They started telling people to limit their salt intake or they would develop high blood pressure and promote heart failure. People listened to the doctors. As a result, they began to develop iodine deficiency.

But there are other factors that make it statistically likely that you are iodine deficient. Chemicals in drinking water such as chlorine and fluorine compete with iodine for the same receptors in the body. Then there are people who exercise a lot and lose a lot of valuable iodine through sweat.

What's left is a society where, according to some estimates, up to 74% of adults are iodine deficient.

What many need to start doing again is using iodized salt. Don't think you're off the hook just because you eat a lot of salt if you eat at restaurants or eat a lot of food from canned goods or Doritos. Restaurants or processed food manufacturers do not use iodized salt.

Likewise, sea salt and the gourmet pink salt from the Gobi Desert that your cosmetic and deodorant-avoiding naturalist friend uses contain meager amounts of iodine.

Get some old-fashioned iodized salt, leave the salt shaker on the dinner table and use it liberally (always assuming, of course, that you don't suffer from sodium-related hypertension).

From TC Luoma | 12/08/14

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/10-dumbest-diet-myths

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