Carbs make you fat. Eating superfoods like chia seeds and avocados automatically improves your health. Keto is the best way to lose fat. Myths, all myths. That’s according to Graeme Tomlinson, the self-proclaimed ‘fitness chef’ who has 5 years of personal training and nutrition coaching under his belt.
In a recent post to his 333,000 Instagram followers, Tomlinson debunked some of the biggest nutrition myths of the last 30 years and some of were quite surprising.
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Pointing out myth from fact is one thing, but explaining them is another. Tomlinson went into detail with each myth, explaining the intricacies that mainstream beacons of today’s health and fitness may often overlook (Tomlinson calls these “the unregulated plethora of doom that is the nutrition/diet industry” who brush shoulders with charlatans, cherry pickers and outright liars).
Just a bit savage. But here’s what he had to say about each myth.
- Starvation mode exists and can make you fat – “The belief that starvation reverses the theory of energy balance can instantly be disproven if we consult the Minnesota starvation experiment of 1944. Subjects were confined to aggressively low caloric conditions and significantly reduced body fat.
- Carbs make you fat – “There is no evidence to suggest carbohydrates directly store fat any more than protein or fat.”
- Keto is the best way to drop fat – “Fat can only be reduced on the Ketogenic diet if in a state of caloric deficit. The claim that more fat can be burned on Keto may be valid, but this only because high amounts of fat is consumed.”
- Eating superfoods automatically makes you healthier – “Some foods have more micronutrients than others. But the overall diet and lifestyle determines overall health, not an alleged ‘superfood’.”
- Eating fast food makes you fat and unhealthy – “Eating fast food is a single event out of a multitude of eating episodes and lifestyle decisions. In isolation, it is merely calorie dense food which can fit a controlled overall diet.”
- Refined sugar makes you fat, natural sugar doesn’t – “Any form of sugar contains the same calories. Fruit proposes additional benefits in the form of micronutrients and fibre, but these are nutritionally unrelated to sugar.”
- You must detox your body with a raw diet/juice cleanse – “If one has functioning organs, they rid us of toxins already. The detoxifying effect of a £299 detox cleanse is benign.”
- Sweeteners gives you type 2 diabetes – “It is impossible for sweeteners to affect insulin or give you type 2 diabetes because the doses consumed contain no calories and no sugar.”
- Aspartame in soft drinks gives you cancer – “In 2019, after decades of research, there is literally no meta analysis linking aspartame consumption with cancer.”
The take away message from Tomlinson’s analysis is that these myths still exist today because people want them to be true, for whatever reason. Instead the fitness chef recommends working on your impulses when it comes to food whilst ignoring these mythical concepts.
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