Nutritional myths are still in large supply, even in today’s scientific age where so many things can be observed, tested and experimented upon. It seems we are still learning the basics of health and nutrition. Once a (false) idea gains traction in people’s heads, it can be very hard to remove, and gets propagated by repetition without investigation. Watch out for the 6 modern nutritional myths blow, which may be affecting your dietary and food shopping choices.
Nutritional Myths #1: Fish Oil Supplements Are Good For You
Omega 3 fats have been all the rage for awhile. This is understandable, since they do offer health benefits for your heart and brain, and prevent inflammation and diseases like arthritis, Crohn’s, ADHD and cancer. However, as I covered in the article The Ideal Ratio of Omega 6:3 Fats – And How Both Can Stop Cancer, omega 6 fats play a far more important role in the body. Health expert Professor Brian Peskin coined a new term regarding this issue: “Parent Essential Oils” or PEOs, which describe the 2 true essential fatty acids which are the foundations of the others (linoleic acid – LA – omega 6 and alpha-linoleic acid – ALA – omega 3). Too many omega 3s distort the best ratio of omega 6:3, which is around 10:1.
In light of this, people need to be wary of fish oil supplements. Omega 3 rich fish oil is extremely reactive, and quickly goes rancid (this is not surprising, given it used to be in the body of fish at cold ocean temperatures, rather than at room temperature on land). The human body is composed of far, far more omega 6 fats than omega 3 fats. It is more beneficial to focus on getting high quality omega 6 fats (e.g. cold-pressed olive oil) – not hydrogenated fats or trans fats – and getting omega 3s naturally in your diet by eating chia seeds, hemp seeds/oil, flax seeds/oil and fish, without any supplementation.
Nutritional Myths #2: Everyone Must Avoid Gluten At All Costs
The gluten-free movement has reached all corners of the world. It is now a pervasive nutritional myth that gluten must be avoided at all costs by everyone. However, for the overwhelming majority of people, a little gluten is not going to cause any problems. As I covered in more depth in the article Gluten-Free: “Fad” or Not? Studies Suggest Most Gluten Sensitivity Is Imagined, people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by demonizing wheat. The problem isn’t wheat itself, but rather the fact that most non-organic wheat is doused with Monsanto’s carcinogenic glyphosate before harvest, and also that most people are eating refined, processed wheat, rather than organic whole wheat in a form like sourdough bread.
The Paleo Diet, to its detriment, excludes complex carbohydrates / whole grains from its protocol. It’s also a meat-based not a plant-based diet – not good for longevity.
Nutritional Myths #3: The Paleo Diet is the Best Diet
While the Paleo Diet (which includes meat, fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables, and excludes grains, legumes and dairy) may offer benefits to some, especially to those who seem to thrive on eating meat, it has some major drawbacks. Centering the diet on animal products rather than plants means you’re going to be giving your body a whole lot of fat and protein – probably more than you need – all the while contributing to the problem of 150 billion animal deaths per year. Many of the healthiest cultures in the world, including those whose members have the greatest longevity, use plant-based not animal-based diets. Additionally, the Paleo Diet rejects healthy complex carbohydrates (in the form of whole grains) from its protocol. Complex carbohydrates offer many health benefits, offering the body a slow and steady source of energy. This means nutritious foods like brown rice, oats, whole wheat and others are excluded. As this articlestates:
“The foods that Paleo enthusiasts object to have been staples of the human diet for millennia. The modern epidemic of diet and lifestyle-related disease, on the other hand, has emerged within the last hundred years. Perhaps the problem isn’t that we started eating dairy and wheat, but that we started making Cheetos and Frosted Flakes out of them.”
Saturated fat in moderate amounts is actually good for you and necessary for good health. Likewise, cholesterol is an important fat molecule in the body which performs a variety of functions.
Nutritional Myths #4: Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Bad For You
Ever since the chemical companies started branching out their activities to get into food production, there has been a conspiracy afoot to convince people to choose adulterated trans fat products like margarine (“plastic fats”) instead of natural saturated fat products (like butter). As I covered in the article Plastic Oils vs. Saturated Fats: Busting the Propaganda, Dr. Ancel Keys was the “scientific expert” used to brainwash the public into thinking that saturated fat caused heart disease.
Saturated fat is a crucial component of our body. It is essential to animal life. It forms 60% of our brains, coats and protects our organs, traps toxins, keeps us warm, provides a stored supply of energy for hard times and yields a steady source of energy (with more calories per gram) than proteins or carbohydrates. Likewise, cholesterol is a essential fat molecule which is synthesized by all animals. It is a crucial structural component of our cells, helping with respiratory and gastrointestinal problems, creating vitamin D and forming part of the healing mechanism of the body.
Calcium supplements are normally made from inorganic (non-food based) calcium, such as from rocks or fossils. Putting that stuff in your body is toxic!
Nutritional Myths #5: Calcium Supplements Are Good For You
Another pervasive nutritional myth is that calcium supplements are good for you. Almost all calcium supplements on the market are not derived from food (organic), but rather are made from inorganic forms of calcium, meaning rocks, dirt, bones and other fossilized material. The human body was not designed to digest and assimilate this stuff. By ingesting inorganic calcium supplements, you are actually increasing the likelihood of calcification in your body, which is a precursor to death.
Dirt, rocks, ground minerals and inorganic matter are not good for the human body to ingest. We need to eat organic matter. We need to eat plants which have already eaten inorganic matter and transformed it. We need to feed minerals to our plants and then eat the plants.
The Big-Pharma sponsored nutritional myth: there’s no difference between synthetic and natural forms of vitamins or supplements. Which would you prefer?
Nutritional Myths #6: Synthetic Supplements are Just as Good as Natural, Food-Derived Supplements
Finally, the last of the modern nutritional myths to be looked at here is the notion that synthetic nutrients made in a lab are just as good for you as natural, food-derived nutrients. Did you know that around 99% of vitamins on the market are synthetic? Corporations deceptively claim their synthetic supplements are “natural” when in fact they are petroleum (coal tar) derivatives processed with hydrochloric acid, acetone or even formaldehyde (for more on the background to this read Western Medicine is Rockefeller Medicine – All The Way). Many synthetic vitamins are derived from corn, processed with acetone, isolated and made crystalline. As outlined above, other supplements (such as calcium) are nothing more than ground-up rocks with added acid and very harmful to the body. Just as sodium fluoride is industrial waste from the aluminum mining industry, so do many other industrial waste ingredients end up in synthetic vitamins.
Synthetic vitamins were only developed because they were cheaper and easier to standardize; they can’t compare to the bioavailability of natural vitamins derived from living whole foods, which are far superior. Natural vitamins derived from food contain the cofactors necessary for the body to recognize the vitamin as food, and to properly digest and assimilate it, whereas synthetic vitamins lack these cofactors. Synthetic vitamins, in the long run, promote the deficiency they are trying to correct, by robbing the body of other nutrients.
Conclusion: Make Health and Nutrition Choices Based on Sound Principles
One way to navigate through all the conflicting health information is to make nutrition choices based on sound principles, which can act as solid guidelines and beacons when you are confronted with all sorts of varying opinions. Here are 3 which work well:
The best and healthiest food comes from a farm or field, not from a factory. Do you want to eat plastic food or plastic oils? Avoid any synthetic ingredient or supplement, period.
Eat food in its whole form as much as possible. So much of our food is overly processed and refined. Important nutrients and phytochemicals get stripped away in the process, transforming food that was once healthy (e.g. whole wheat, sugar cane juice) into junk food (white flour-laden breads and pastries crammed with sugar). Nature has its own wisdom. Sometimes a plant contains certain nutrients to counterbalance other nutrients which are present; if you isolate and separate components, you will miss this balancing effect and end up causing imbalance (disease) in your body.
Eat food in its raw form as much as possible. The raw food diet is not for everyone, but nonetheless, almost everyone can benefit from including more raw and fermented foods in their diet. It connects you more closely with Nature and offers the biggest range of vitamins and other cofactors in food untouched by processing or heat. Remember, the bacterial cells in our body outnumber the human cells at a ratio of around 10:1. Eating raw and fermented food introduces micro biomes (bacterial flora) into your system to help achieve the best balance for optimal health.
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