Random Food Myths (17 items)

• 

  (#11) Pork Must be Overcooked to Avoid Parasites

  This used to be true, but isn't really anymore. The risk of contracting the parasite trichinosis has all but vanished in the United States thanks to food safety regulations, regular inspections, and better hygiene. The USDA has actually reduced the minimum safe temperature for pork to from 165 degrees to 145 in response to the reduced risk of trichinosis. You still don't want to eat pork raw, but you don't need to blast it into dry, gray oblivion.
  
• 

  (#2) You Should Drink 64 Ounces of Water Every Day

  A fragment from a government report from 1945, the idea that everyone needs to drink 64 ounces of water was seized upon by anti-soda crusaders. But what people forget is that the 1945 study said that while that much water was best, people would get most of it from prepared food. There's no scientific research that confirms how much water people need, and you don't need to drink anywhere near that much. It is still better for you than soda, though.
  
• 

  (#8) Cooking Vegetables Robs Them of Nutrients

  It doesn't. This is a combination of the naturalistic fallacy and misinformation from raw food diet advocates, and it isn't supported at all by scientific research. While it's true that boiling vegetables in water does cause some of their nutritional value to wind up in the water, steaming, sauteing, or grilling vegetables is a way to get around this. Not to mention that cooking vegetables makes them easier to chew and digest. This is why many mammals spend large parts of their waking hours chewing.
  
• 

  (#10) High Fructose Corn Syrup Must Be Avoided

  From a chemical standpoint, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the same as table sugar. It has the same two primary chemical compounds, glucose and fructose, that sugar does - they're just not bound together. This means HFCS can be blended with different amounts of each, so some HFCS is sweeter than other types. HFCS is primarily used in America for a simple reason - corn is cheaper and easier to grow here than sugar.

  Your body processes every type of sugar the same way, and while it's a smart idea to limit your sugar intake in general, limiting one in favor of another is scientifically pointless.
  
• 

  (#16) Eating Carrots Makes You See Better

  This is a myth created by the World War II era British Ministry of Information to boost public morale by claiming British pilots fending off German bombers could see better because they ate carrots. So war-weary citizens were encouraged to grow carrots to send to the Royal Air Force. They also wanted children to feel like eating vegetables was better than eating sweets, which were strictly rationed.

  Somehow it became common knowledge that eating carrots helped your night vision, but there's really no science behind the claim. Carrots don't make your night vision better.
  
• 

  (#9) Eating Late at Night Makes You Fat

  This myth stems from a misunderstanding of how digestion works. A large meal eaten late at night doesn't simply sit undigested in your gut. Your metabolism doesn't just stop and magically turn food into fat when you sleep, though it does slow down. Food is turned into fat because of inactivity - and that can be anything from sitting at a desk to lying down for an afternoon nap. What you eat, how much you eat, and how much you move determines if you get fat - not what time of day you eat it.
  

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking