Food Gossip: False Facts in the Food World

Hello everyone! It's been awhile. I've been happily assisting many people from all over the world to transition to a whole foods plant-based diet. I consider it a significant privilege & honour to be able to do so.

In the process of providing research-based info to folks about this way of eating, they tell me popular "fake news" about diet. The statements usually begin with "My doctor told me that..." or " I've heard that...." or even "We were taught in school that...". Sadly, what follows is usually a bunch of nonsense regarding needing meat for protein, dairy products for calcium, oil for fat, etc.

In the past, I also believed such false-facts. I can tell you, it hurt & I felt betrayed when I first realized that the people in positions of authority upon whom I had relied for accurate information, were repeating little more than "food gossip".

What are some other statements of "food gossip" (oft repeated false claims about diet)?

Here's one: "Bananas are high in potassium."

Have you checked the figures on that? It turns out, lots of plant foods have much more. When we compared similar quantities, chestnuts, sweet & white potato, greens & beans have approximately twice as much. For anyone who is wanting the facts, the USDA database is available to us all! :-)

https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/3084?manu=&fgcd=&ds=

I already called-out coconut milk in a previous blog called "Wild Claims". So how about some of the more exotic food gossip, like "wine is good for you" or "eating carbohydrates makes us diabetic" or "eating cholesterol has no impact on our blood cholesterol level".

• True or false? :-)