Dispelling Nutrition Myths That Won’t Die

When we started publishing the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter almost 15 years ago, it was with the purpose of dispelling myths and providing information that would allow people to make sensible, healthy choices about their lifestyles. Not surprisingly, nutrition became a major focus of our efforts.

Unfortunately, no matter how much accurate information is published, the misinformation and disinformation about nutrition just keep piling up. Much of the nutritional hype now centers around supplements and what they will--and probably won’t--do. But there are still some food and nutritional myths that will not die. Two examples: Celery has negative calories, and toasting removes calories from bread.

Here are some others that we have assembled:

* Myth: Fresh vegetables are more nutritious than canned vegetables.

Fact: Unless the fresh vegetables are really, really fresh, they may have begun to lose nutrients by the time you purchase them at the supermarket. Nutrients are more or less locked in when produce is frozen or canned.

* Myth: Drinking hot tea with a high-fat meal will reduce the fat content of that meal.

Fact: Although drinking hot liquids with high fat meals may make your mouth feel less greasy, no beverage will keep you from digesting and absorbing the fat you have eaten. (This tea myth parallels the idea that if you drink diet soda with a hot fudge sundae, you can cancel out the calories, or that you can cancel out the fat in chocolate by eating white and dark varieties together.)

* Myth: Lean meat has less cholesterol than fatty meat.

Fact: Because the concentration of cholesterol is the same in fat and lean tissue (20 to 30 milligrams per ounce), it doesn’t matter whether the meat is fat or lean. The reason to avoid fatty meat or, at least to trim the visible fat, is that the intake of saturated fat, more than the intake of cholesterol, is what stimulates the body’s production of cholesterol and raises levels in the blood.

* Myth: There is a nutritional difference between orange juice labeled “from concentrate” and “premium, not from concentrate.”

Fact: No. Go for the one that costs the least and tastes the best. Six ounces of just about any orange juice you can buy will supply more than the daily recommended daily allowance for vitamin C (60 milligrams). Vitamin C deteriorates when it comes in contact with the air and the loss of nutrients parallels the loss of flavor. Fresh-squeezed orange juice has the most vitamin C initially, but if the juice sits around the vitamins will quickly be lost.

* Myth: Sweet potatoes are higher in calories than white potatoes.

Fact: A 4-ounce serving of cooked sweet potato contains only about 120 to 140 calories, just like its white counterpart, but nearly half the daily recommended dietary allowance of vitamin C and two to five times the recommended amount of beta carotene (which the body transforms to vitamin A). As with white potatoes, it’s what you add to sweet potatoes that can make them high in calories and fat.

* Myth: Fresh pasta is better for you than dried pasta, and spinach pasta is more nutritious than plain.

Fact: Fresh pasta may taste better than dried, but check to make sure it doesn’t contain egg yolk, which means it has some cholesterol. The amount of actual spinach in spinach pasta is so small that the nutritional contribution it makes is negligible.

* Myth: If you’ve had too much to drink, eat popcorn. It soaks up the alcohol.

Fact: Food can slow the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, but only if it immediately precedes or accompanies the alcohol. And after a certain point, nothing you eat or drink can keep alcohol from making you drunk. Coffee is widely believed to counteract the effects of alcohol--another myth. If you’ve had too much to drink, the only cure is the passage of time. Have someone drive you home so you can sleep it off.

* Myth: Brown sugar and fructose are more nutritious than regular table sugar.

Fact: Sugar is sugar is sugar. Brown sugar is just sucrose (or table sugar) that has a little molasses added for coloring. The molasses does not add a significant amount of nutrients, even when used by itself. Fructose (the kind of sugar found in fruit) and the other more complex sugars will all break down to glucose in the body. So, fructose offers no real advantage as a sweetener unless it’s still in the fruit so that you get the advantages of other nutrients and fiber.

* Myth: Calories don’t count.

Fact: In order to lose weight you have to use more calories than you take in. You can rely on diet or exercise or (ideally) a combination of the two, but calories do count. A pound of body fat yields 3,500 calories. To lose a pound of fat in a week, you must, on average, consume 500 calories fewer or burn 500 calories more each day, above and beyond what is necessary to maintain your current weight.

* Myth: Carob is healthier than chocolate.

Fact: Carob is quite similar to chocolate nutritionally, except that it contains considerably more sugar. Both come from a bean, and both are mixed with fat and sugar during processing. Some carob bars have more saturated fat than an equal amount of chocolate candy. It’s true that carob has no caffeine, but chocolate is low in caffeine--a cup of cocoa generally contains less than 10 milligrams (compared to 60 to 150 milligrams of caffeine in a 5-ounce cup of coffee). Moderate amounts of caffeine have never been shown to have adverse health effects, anyway. The major advantage of carob over chocolate is for people who are allergic to chocolate.

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In last week’s Eating Smart column, facts and figures about chocolate’s fat content were misstated. Here is a reprint of the paragraph with the correct numbers:

For the purposes of comparison, here is a table showing the calorie and fat percentage composition of chocolate products per ounce:

* Bitter (dark) chocolate has 197 calories, 55% from fat.

* Bittersweet (semisweet) chocolate has 170 calories, 45% from fat.

* Sweet chocolate has 162 calories, 35% from fat.

* Milk chocolate has 150 calories, 30% from fat.

* Cocoa (powder) has 121 calories, 15% from fat.

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Dr. Sheldon Margen is professor of public health at UC Berkeley; Dale A. Ogar is managing editor of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter. They are the authors of several books, including “The Wellness Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition.”