1: Pasta Makes You Fat
As the carb-avoidance craze rages, many are dismayed to see pasta
lumped with pappy white bread in the “white and refined” sin bin. Now, a
concerted push is on to rehabilitate its nutritional reputation. Is it
true that, as pasta company Barilla claims,
its unique resistant starch structure makes it more slowly digested
than the same amount of flour made into bread? As long as you eat it “al
dente”, white pasta does indeed have a glycaemic index comparable with
buckwheat or brown rice – so the argument that it gives a steady release
of energy that keeps you feeling fuller longer, is plausible. It’s also
a whole lot more appetising than a plateful of wholewheat spaghetti.
2: Dates Are The New Sugar
Thanks to the promotional efforts of “clean-eating” gurus, we can’t
move these days without bumping into delicacies sweetened with dates.
Are these sticky fruits any better than bad old sugar? If you’re talking
about baking, the answer is yes. Weight for weight, dried dates contain
about 68% total sugars, as opposed to actual sugar, which is 100%.
Dates are also an excellent source of soluble fibre, and have a
relatively low glycaemic index: the fibre stops the sugar from causing
an insulin spike in your bloodstream. Unlike straight sugar, dates are
packed with useful micronutrients: iron, potassium, B vitamins and more.
Dried dates do contain much more sugar than the sweetest fruits, but if
you’re eating them as a substitute for cakes and confectionery rather
than fruit, they’re a good way to lower your sugar consumption and
gradually un-sweeten your palate.
3: Kale Is A Super-Veg
Current king of the brassicas, kale offers a convincing portfolio of
antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxifying micronutrients that
appear to reduce our risk of major degenerative diseases, cancer in
particular. Is kale nutritionally richer than cabbage or broccoli, or is
it just popular because it makes great crisps? Well, kale’s stand-out
quality is its impressively high levels of vitamin K, which supports
bone health, so it’s great if you’re trying to avoid bone loss and
fractures. Plus it’s dead cheap, and grows abundantly pretty much
anywhere.
4: Coconut Oil Is Best For Frying
Look,
almost anything has got to be better for you than the industrially
refined, heat-treated, chemically deodorised stuff widely known as
vegetable cooking oil; but cold-pressed coconut oil – the solid white
stuff that’s sweeping the shelves in wholefood stores – does have lots
to commend it. Raw, unrefined coconut oil doesn’t get damaged by
oxidisation and go rancid the way other cold-pressed vegetable cooking
oils do. It is a naturally resilient oil that stands up to the heat of
frying without degrading nutritionally. It is also exceptionally rich in
medium-chain fatty acids, which have antiviral, antifungal, and
antibacterial effects. Medium-chain fatty acids are immediately
converted by your liver into energy, not stored as fat; some research
studies suggest that eating foods rich in them can help you lose weight.
So far, it looks as if the only negative thing about raw coconut oil is
its price.
5: Red Meat Is A Killer
Is Mother Nature a psychopath who designed red meat to shorten the
life span of humans? Rich in essential fats, complete protein, vitamins
and minerals, red meat is one of the most nutritious foods you can eat.
The dodgy dossier against red meat is based on the shakiest type of
evidence: observational studies in which researchers look for patterns
in data drawn from notoriously unreliable diet questionnaires. It’s a
tough morsel for the anti-meat lobby to chew, but a solid health case
against red meat has simply not been made. For now, free-range,
grass-fed, organic or wild red meat stays on the menu.
6: Bone Broth Is The New Super-Food
We’ve been bubbling up bones for soup since the stone age, but with the triumphant opening of the Brodo Broth Company in New York, and the UK patronage of the influential Hemsley sisters,
stock made from bones has never felt more cutting edge. Bone broth is a
DIY alternative to several expensive food supplements, providing you
with minerals such as calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. Dissolved
material from cartilage and tendons make it a natural source of
chondroitin and glucosamine (sold as supplements for arthritis). It’s
super-cheap to make, very satisfying, and the liquid essence of
nose-to-tail eating: the frugal use of carcass parts that are all too
often wasted.
7: Whole Milk Is Back
Now that the anti-saturated fat consensus is in meltdown, choosing
the skinny latte no longer looks like the best option. A robust study
published last year found that people who consume full-fat dairy
products are less likely to develop “metabolic syndrome”, the
combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity associated with
greater risk of heart disease and stroke. Time to ditch white water and
return to whole milk, organic, unhomogenised and – if you can get it –
raw.
8: Kimchi Boosts Your Immune System
Fermentation is all the rage now that intense scientific interest is
trained on the microbiome, or the population of bacteria in our guts.
Fermented (cultured) foods teem naturally with lactic acid bacteria. The
thinking is that, by eating them, we can reintroduce a healthier
bacterial variety to our microbiomes, which have been depleted by
antibiotics and sterile processed food. The health benefits of cultured
vegetables, from eastern European sauerkraut to Korean kimchi, are not
in question – but the efforts of newcomers to this ancient skill can be
challenging. There are some grisly experiments out there (kimchi pizza,
anyone?). Your microbiome might like it, but will your tastebuds?
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