MYTHS AND FOODS

[maria angelica sassone]

The growing interest shown by the power of society is accompanied by numerous dietary recommendations from many different sources. Most are based on myths and irrational beliefs that they forget the principles established by scientific research in nutrition and in some cases, run counter to well-documented knowledge with which it has currently .

- Image : Davide Guglielmo -

Incompatibility of milk with citrus fruits, acidic fruits are bad for rheumatism; fruits at the end of fattening food , feed the fish unless the meat and raw egg is better than cooked. These are some of the falsehoods food they had, and still have, some credibility in our environment. Now , experts from the Provincial Delegation of Social Affairs, Social Services and Health Sciences College of Education at the University , all institutions of Granada , have developed a compendium of such falsehoods and myths that influence eating habits nutrition of many people.

Food incompatible

No food is inconsistent and therefore not necessary in order intake

In the last decades have seen an expansion of beliefs about foods that are mutually incompatible and therefore can not be eaten together in the same meal , as honorary president of the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) and Professor of Physiology at the University of Granada , José Mataix Verdú. Certain inconsistencies and a certain order of food intake, such as taking the fruit and salad before the main course , have been so strongly rooted in our country that are difficult to refute.

Experts in Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Granada , the Andalusian Health Service and the Provincial Delegation of Social Affairs of Granada , in his review article "Erroneous beliefs about food" argue that " such is the variety of foods and their mixtures, and the investigation of the interaction of nutrients is so sophisticated and expensive techniques that scientific studies on the subject are limited and expensive. "

However , they argue forcefully that no food is inconsistent and not required to establish an order intake. At least that endorse the current knowledge on the digestion and absorption in the digestive and thousands of years of human experience eating food in a different order , depending on the culture and the particular time in history. In this sense, other experts, such as Pilar Cervera, director of the Center for Higher Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (CESNID) Declare that, as a general rule, to mix the different food groups to ensure proper nutrition .

Wisdom and ignorance in the tradition

Popular sayings as " one who eats his health sensibly seeks "or" big dinners are filled with graves , "are unquestionably true, as is known about the metabolic triad intake , booking and energy expenditure and its impact on health, of which the best known is the negative aspect obesity.

The food group they belong to the meat and fishRich in protein, has, throughout our history, gastronomy, numerous sayings and rhymes with educational aspirations , some of them with strange and original foundations, which fortunately today's science has been responsible for dismantling.

The idea that " fed meat more than fish "could be supported , as Rosaura Farré, i Nutrició professor of Food Science at the University of Valencia, in the fact that, with less fat and connective tissue , fish more easily digested and provides less gastric fullness . In addition , previously was difficult to maintain the cold chain for the conservation of fish , the more easily disturbed than meat, so it was a common idea that the seafood was less healthy than their terrestrial counterparts . Surely more poisoning caused by its alteration and the subsequent formation of histamine , responsible for hives by the chemical action of bacteria and hence the myth of their lower nutritional content.

Another example is the false belief that egg feeds more than cooking oil , when in fact the opposite is true . When you fry, bake or poach this food , the heat coagulates the proteins that are more easily attacked by digestive juices in the stomach and take advantage by 92 % compared with 50 % of the clear advantage when it's raw , apart health risk Salmonellosis if eaten raw.

THE ORIGIN OF MYTHS

Because food is a fact as biological and cultural, there is great diversity of opinions and beliefs in this regard. According to Abel Marine, Jaume Serra and Maria del Carme Vidal- Carou , coauthors of the book " Popular wisdom i FOOD , it is logical that over time have accumulated knowledge based on practice and to give associations between food and effects have resulted in behaviors and attitudes towards food, which have been steeped in lore.

The beliefs of the past on the relationship between diet and health can be contrasted with current scientific circles and it is interesting to compare the difference to be discerned among the myths created today by the advertising trend, which has deepened over the ignorance, and those old beliefs with an empirical basis , transmitted over generations by oral tradition . In any case, what science is needed now more widespread that belies those relationships is wrong and yet are attributed to food and its impact on health and human behavior.