I make no apology for using the word idiots! Is such strong language justified? As far as I’m concerned, health ranks right up there with religion and politics for causing rifts. As a professional naturopath of several decades, having helped countless sick people when others could not, you can imagine how I feel when people who seem to lack even a modicum of common sense, contradict helpful advice that I have shared free of charge!
The two top sources of “health information” for most people seem to be government advice and TV ads. Next come bits of hearsay that you have cobbled together in your own mind to convince yourself that what you are eating is great for health. Here are some examples.
Fat makes you fat, so don’t eat any fat at all
Yes, a friend of mine is so firmly wedded to this belief, that she won’t even keep olive oil in her house. Her husband is so hungry all the time (fat/oil helps you to feel full for longer) that he never stops snacking. So he has gained weight and she doesn’t understand that she is to blame. By the way, she has gained weight too. After all, we have to eat something. All those calories from starchy foods have been collecting into an apple shape. Calories from fats don’t do that. They form fat evenly around the body.
I once mentioned in a Facebook post that I like to eat avocado with a little lemon juice and olive oil dressing. I got a finger-wagging reply from a facebooker stating that avocado is a “high fat food” therefore I should not dream of adding more fat to it!
And all because we had 30 years of government advice to “Enjoy your food and eat less fat”, plus countless magazine recipes telling us to remove the skin from chicken meat…
Salt gives you high blood pressure so don’t eat any salt at all
Some years ago the UK government started clamping down on food manufacturers, telling them not to put so much salt in processed food. Media headlines screamed that we were all eating too much salt! In a conversation with a friend’s mother who suffered from blindness due to macular degeneration, I suggested that she start drinking vegetable juice, since carotenoids in vegetables are known to combat this type of problem. My friend strongly objected. “No! Vegetable juice contains salt!”
Can you see the lack of logic?
By all means, people with high blood pressure should be careful with salt, and may need to reduce the seasoning in their food. But many people (including myself) have quite low blood pressure, in which case reasonable seasoning of your food will do you no harm.
Manufacturers were adding far too much salt to staple foods like bread, and the problem was that it’s hard to control your salt intake when you have to rely on foods that have already been heavily salted.
Low carb diets help you lose weight, so the less carb you consume the more weight you will lose
Certain carbs (sugar and refined starches) should be carefully rationed since they contribute little or no real nourishment and cause insulin spikes. Insulin makes you accumulate fat around your internal organs (creating the famous “apple shape”) and also stops you breaking down body fat. These effects start to become noticeable when you are in your forties.
I would never include whole-grains (like oats), or fruit and vegetables (like bananas, potatoes and carrots) in this rationing. To lump them under the same “carb” umbrella as sugar and starch is completely missing the point.
If anyone has lost a lot of weight on a low-carb diet, this is very likely water weight and nothing to do with carbs at all. Merely avoiding grains that contain gluten will often do the same job. Gluten sensitivity can cause swelling and water retention, which people think is fat. So when their weight suddenly decreases because they have peed it all away on their “low-carb diet”, they religiously continue searching for more and more foods that they can give up, that may have a slight carbohydrate content, hoping the scales will continue in a downward direction. This can develop into an obsession.
You can’t absorb nutrients from plant foods, so you don’t really need to eat them
This is a favourite among people who like to eat lots of meat. It’s a flimsy half-truth. Yes, the cellulose in plant foods is difficult to digest, but that’s why we cook it. And yes, iron in plant foods is less well absorbed than iron from animal products. But only if no vitamin C is present in the meal. Vegetarians who don’t eat a whole-food diet are certainly risking some deficiencies that meat might have prevented. But it is a fact that changing to a whole-food plant-based diet is increasingly being shown to reverse diseases. Avoiding meat raises your blood pH, which helps increase blood oxygen levels, and reduces clot formation and kidney stress. These are major factors in preventing accelerated ageing and all the diseases of later life. (Find out more.)
Sugar gives you energy so you must have some sugar in your diet or you won’t have any energy
I haven’t heard this one for a while, but I’m sure some people still believe it. This is a deliberate fallacy created by teaching nutritionists to use the word “energy” when they mean “calories”. When a nutritionist refers to the energy content of food, they are not talking about how energetic the food makes you feel, only about how many calories it contains.
Chocolate is full of antioxidants therefore it is a health food
This refers to the early days of organic chocolate, when the makers were trying to get it accepted into health food stores. Many stores refused to stock it, saying their customers would not contemplate chocolate as a health food, even if organic.
This all changed when it was announced that “dark chocolate is a rich source of antioxidants”.
The media loved that. It meant we could indulge without guilt in our favourite snack which was suddenly healthy after all! Chocolate, especially dark chocolate sales exploded.
Unfortunately the research failed to mention that dark chocolate is also a rich source of xanthine alkaloids. A small square of dark chocolate is enough to kill a small dog. Humans are a bit less sensitive to these alkaloids than dogs, but if you have ever binged on dark chocolate you may have noticed palpitations. If your liver function is poor, there is a real chance of chocolate poisoning.
If you’d like to read some more facts about diets and dieting, here’s my e-book, which compares them all. I promise you will learn a lot!
Great article Linda
One point you mentioned about rifts and religion being a top causer.. A few of us discussed this just the other night and realised that media, for decades, have taken the slant that religion causes war.
A real look at so-called religious wars points to the truth that it's not really religion but colonialism and especially British colonialism at fault. An even closer look shows that English colonialism actually originated in Germany.
Anglo saxons came from Germany
Took over most of the islands of the Celts (now geographically called the British Isles)
English monarchs then spearheaded colonisation of much of the world.
English monarchs made laws illegalising much of others culture: music, language, religion, land use, economics etc. Key parts of culture.
For example, in 1603, a law was imposed by England on Ireland saying all harps should be burned and all harpers hung. Irish harpers flees in to exile. That was significant as the harp was the instrument of Irish kings (Brian Boru ex.) and the symbol of Ireland. Many of such laws were put on us and Ireland also suffered extreme famine while food was shipped out to England. To be catholic was made illegal because King Henry had made his own protestant church in order to divorce a wife.
The colonisation of people by the English (really German) monarchs was the beginning of our modern day globalisation, cancel culture and depopulation agenda of freemason elitists.
Catholics versus protestants, in Ireland, is what the media label it. It is really Irish versus British to gain our total independance from a cruel coloniser. If both sides were of the same faith, there would still be conflict as it is about ethnicity and freedom. Coming out from under cruel colonisation. Murdoch-dominated media will hardly highlight the truth of the beginnings of globalisation and the move to a one world order under British colonisation.
Hindus versus Muslims in India, another example where British colonisation brought division, a disputed border and tension between India and Pakistan, not Hindus and Muslims. If both sides were of the same religion, there would still be conflict.
Some of our discussion from this week.
Keep up the work!!
Kind regards
Deirdre