The rich have their own quirks
Dietary myths of wealthy Muscovites and the truth
Recently, the founder of the XX2 century website Sergey Markov wrote a comic post on Facebook about dietary myths that exist among wealthy Muscovites. The post received a lot of reposts and likes, and in order not to leave the joke just a joke, but also to make it work for the benefit of society, we asked experts to comment on each myth mentioned in the post. The experts were a toxicologist, a scientific journalist and popularizer of science Alexey Vodovozov and a flavor chemist, a specialist in food chemistry and a well-known fighter for the rights of GMOs Sergey Belkov.
1. What is expensive is by definition useful. What is cheap is designed for the mass consumer – it is useless, or even harmful.
Black caviar is useful, capelin caviar is harmful.
Quinoa is healthy, potatoes are harmful.
Ice fish is useful, pollock is harmful.
Food from "Urban Cafe", "MØS" – useful, food from "McDonald's" – harmful.
The opinion that food cannot be cheap and that cheap food is something bad is common in all segments of the population. But it is most common among those who can afford to buy more expensive food. Moreover, we are talking not only about the differentiation between black caviar and capelin caviar, but also about purposeful shopping in more expensive, premium stores as opposed to economy supermarkets.
The most surprising thing about this is that, even when it comes to one product of the same brand, produced at the same factory, the more expensive is considered more useful. Or, at least, more delicious. From the point of view of consumer behavior, such a choice can be fully justified by the phrase "I can afford it". It's usually not about benefits or calories. Choosing a more expensive product is often just a way to stand out, and invented more "useful" properties are just a way to rationalize such a choice.
No, of course, the usefulness or harmfulness of food is not determined by the price. Proteins, fats, carbohydrates, dietary fiber and other components, superimposed on your lifestyle, determine these properties. And in general, cheap affordable food is the best thing that modern civilization has given us, and let it stay like this longer and get cheaper further.
2. Animal fats are harmful, vegetable fats are harmless (palm oil is an exception, sunflower oil is at risk). Olive oil is useful, butter, lard is harmful.
Fats are a mandatory component of our diet. A sharp reduction in their consumption or complete rejection is not only not useful, but also harmful. This, for example, is evidenced by a fairly large-scale retrospective cohort study (more than 135 thousand participants from 18 countries), the results of which are published in The Lancet journal.
After normalization by age, gender, waist/hip index, smoking, physical activity, diabetes mellitus, living in urban or rural areas, geographical region, caloric content of the daily diet, the following graphs of the effect of fat and carbohydrate intake on mortality from common causes and the most common cardiovascular diseases were obtained.
As you can see, "fats are innocent", moreover, reducing their share in the diet is simply dangerous, and this applies even to "deadly harmful" saturated fats. But carbohydrates – yes, they actually harm, without any quotation marks, especially with an immoderate passion for them.
Well, the myth about the usefulness of replacing animal fats with vegetable ones grows from the infamous Minnesota coronary experiment (1968-1973), during which scientists changed the diet of patients in psychiatric hospitals and looked at what came of it. In 2016, the raw data of this study came up with the idea to recalculate. And it turned out that the published conclusions did not follow at all from the data obtained, which indicated just the absence of an effect. That is, for 40 years, dietetics promoted an initially erroneous trend. Moreover, a lot of arguments were found in favor of the most real conspiracy theory – indeed, the tilt towards "harmful fats" was a lot contributed by the sugar-producing companies interested in sugar.
The situation with palm oil is perfectly and very thoroughly analyzed in the article Sergei Belkov. In short, you need to compare comparable things with each other. Palm oil is offered as a substitute for milk fat, which is definitely more harmful in terms of qualitative and quantitative composition, since it contains really dangerous trans fats (5-10%), which palm oil does not contain at all (0%).
In general, much is tied to the pattern of consumption of this or that "harmful" product. If the fat on the table turns out to be in the form of a thin slice on bread once a week, it is never a disaster. It is much worse if every day a person consciously refuses any fats, preferring low-fat (and, as a result, carburized!) natural, fat-containing products.
3. Red meat is harmful, except for expensive steaks.
Of course, it all depends on the amount, but in general, red meat is really harmful, primarily because of its ability to cause cancer of the digestive organs. Including expensive steaks and even very expensive steaks and very, very expensive steaks made of very, very marbled beef. This is confirmed by large population studies, and has a theoretical chemical justification.
It's not about the fact that modern cows and bulls are somehow improperly fed with chemicals and antibiotics. When heated in meat (in any, and even in fish, but especially in red), different interactions of the substances contained in it occur. As a result, on the one hand, a lot of flavor compounds are formed, for which we love steaks so much. On the other hand, a bunch of different chemical filth is formed, such as heterocyclic amines, which have well-studied carcinogenic properties.
In general, take care of yourself and do not abuse.
4. All exotic food or food with fancy names is useful. Deflope is useful, ham is harmful.
Croutons are useful, crackers are harmful.
Pumpernickel with kumquat is useful, a bun with jam is harmful.
It's amazing how seemingly mutually exclusive things are often combined in the same people. On the one hand, there is an irrational tendency to switch to only local, farm and local products, because "they are being brought from nowhere" and "this is the traditional food of our ancestors, it is better for our health." On the other hand, there is the same irrational tendency to almost deify products (and recipes) overseas, which are just being brought from nowhere and which have never been not only the traditional food of our ancestors, but have never been traditional food at all.
As in the case of the dependence of imaginary utility on price, the desire to stand out from the crowd eating banal potatoes with a cutlet probably plays a role here, to show one's belonging to another, "not like everyone else", circle. It is difficult to find any rational explanations for this phenomenon. Food is not the name of food. Food is chemistry (and a little physics with biology).
5. All green food is healthy.
Examples: pasta with pesto, arugula, seaweed, green apples.
The green color of food (if it is not tinted with synthetic dyes) is usually due to chlorophyll, which in itself is not harmful and not useful. Rather harmless and useless at the same time. To some extent, it can serve as a marker that food is of plant origin, rich in vitamins, dietary fiber and relatively low in calories. But not necessarily. This does not apply to pasta with pesto, for example. In addition, the green color may be a sign of the presence of mold in the product, not necessarily in cheese and not necessarily noble.
6. Everything that is indicated as E in the list of ingredients is harmful, the substance becomes harmful from the very fact that its E-designation is given. Vitamin C is useful, E300 is harmful.
Index "E" (from "Europe") – the first component of the code for substances approved for use as food additives (initially – on the territory of European countries, hence the letter in the index). This means that they have passed all the necessary safety checks and the permissibility of eating. Details can be found in Codex Alimentarius, an international food standard developed by two UN bodies – WHO and FAO.
In contrast to the common misconception, the "E" list contains substances including "natural and natural", for example, some vitamins, plant pigments, etc.
This is how, for example, the formula of ethyl alcohol looks like:
And this is the formula of the food additive E1510.
As you can see, these are two fundamentally different substances. Joke. According to the laws of chemistry, two substances, even obtained from different sources, but having the same chemical formula (including spatial structure), do not differ from each other in their chemical properties. So "Vitamin C" = "E300" in all senses and meanings.
The list is constantly being updated. Additives, the potential harm of which is shown in benign studies, are excluded, new ones are included in it. Sometimes they are excluded under pressure from the public, whose fear of all "chemistry", as you know, has very big eyes. So there are situations when the same additive is allowed in the EU, but banned in the USA. Or used throughout the EU except Norway. Or used in all types of products except confectionery. All this information is publicly available, no one is hiding anything from anyone.
And yes, the composition of any food product can be recorded using substances under the index "E". It will not become less natural or more dangerous from this.
7. Anything that contains an indication in the name that it is a chemical substance (the name "acid", ending with "-ol", "-at", etc.) is harmful. Vitamin C is useful, ascorbic acid is harmful. Vitamin D3 is useful, cholecalciferol is harmful.
Do you know what gamma-lactone 2,3-dehydro-L-gulonic acid is? This is the name of the "useful" vitamin C in accordance with the requirements of the IUPAC. And in the CAS registry, the same "vitamin" is just the index 50-81-7. Does this affect the properties of the substance in any way? No way. The girl Alexandra can be called Shura, and Sledge, and Sasha, Alya, and even Lesya. From this she will not cease to be either a girl or Alexandra.
8. Adding a definition to the name of a food component reduces the degree of its harmfulness.
Salt is harmful (or, at least, useless), sea salt is useful, sea salt of the Dead Sea is very useful.
It is believed that modern food is all dead, refined. And along with the definition, those substances that dilute the refinement with impurities and can be useful are added to the product. Sea salt, for example, really differs in mineral composition from the salt "Extra", but the big question is whether it becomes healthier from this.
In addition, the question is also in quantities. So, brown cane sugar is considered healthier than ordinary white beet sugar, because it has dietary fiber. However, unfortunately, to cover the need for dietary fiber, such sugar must be devoured by a couple of bags. It turns out like in an old story: "Only 26 liters of beer cover a person's daily need for calcium. Healthy eating is very simple."
9. Steamed is healthy, fried is harmful.
In general, this is true. When cooking food, chemical reactions always occur. The nature of the substances formed, and therefore, in part, their usefulness or harmfulness, is influenced by both the composition of the food and the cooking conditions. Steaming is very gentle, there are few chemical transformations. In the case of frying, especially at high temperatures and with a large amount of oil, various carcinogens or substances that supposedly contribute to aging are guaranteed and sometimes in significant quantities. For example, in the case of meat or fish, it can be heterocyclic amines, in the case of potatoes – acrylamide. Not to mention the fact that by itself the addition of fat to food during frying can not always be called a useful action due to its high calorie content.
10. Tasteless is useful.
Raw broccoli is useful (actually a combo, since item 5 also works), pork chop is harmful.
A complete delusion. It is absolutely elementary to make any, even the most harmful food tasteless. I think that everyone has such a familiar craftsman, and some, especially the unlucky ones, even have a wife or husband. On the contrary, it is more difficult to make healthy tasty, and sometimes they even resort to the help of food chemistry for this.
The fact is that the main "harmful" components of food, from the point of view of caloric content and redundancy for the nutrition of a modern person, are fats and sugars, which have a very specific, pleasant taste. A lot of fat is delicious. A lot of sugar is delicious. Low in fat and/or sugar – fu. Here, in part, you can write down salt, which is also delicious, but in large quantities (and on average it is eaten more than it should be) it does not add health and negatively affects the cardiovascular system. If it is possible to make a sweet taste without using sugars by replacing them with synthetic sweeteners, then no adequate substitutes have been invented with fat and salt yet, so you have to eat either tasteless or harmful.
Separately, it is worth noting glutamate. Which, of course, is delicious and which is used as a "flavor improver" in the production of food. And which, unlike sugar, salt and fat, is harmless.
11. The meat of fat animals is harmful (the principle of sympathetic magic in cooking).
Pork, broiler chicken meat is harmful, quail is useful.
The harmfulness and usefulness of meat should be evaluated not in magical terms of the appearance of its owner, but in chemical terms of composition. The composition of meat, by and large, consists in the amount of protein and fat. Pork is fat. Poultry (quail or broilers) – dietary. Actually, everything. Differences in the amino acid composition of protein or the fatty acid composition of fat are not fundamental.
12. Food that is made in a factory or in a large farm is harmful, in a farm it is useful.
The food that does not cause harm is useful. And it does not matter where it is produced, if all the rules and regulations are observed, and from and to, starting with the selection of raw materials and ending with the storage of finished products. Another thing is that it is much easier to comply with them in large–scale production - the company structure may have a whole control service, a staff of inspectors, its own chemical-analytical and microbiological laboratory, everything that a farm cannot afford. Therefore, the risk of failure in the latter is higher.
If we trace the history of outbreaks of food infections in the United States, they will mainly come from small producers. This also applies to listeriosis from frozen vegetables, salads, cheeses and natural farm milk, and salmonellosis after eating coconuts and poultry, and infections caused by "combat" strains of E. coli that lived in pizza, spinach, hazelnuts, beef and asparagus. Yes and in The EU's largest recent outbreak was caused by enterohemorrhagic E. coli strain O104:H4, which contaminated "natural sprouted grains for healthy nutrition" just farm production.
13. Any food additives are harmful, the more harmful the more incomprehensible their names are. Food without additives is healthy. The exception is supplements with a pronounced ethnic theme in the name.
Puffer fish is useful, puffer fish with salt is less useful, puffer fish with sodium chloride is very harmful, puffer fish with sodium glutamate is deadly, puffer fish with aji–no–moto is very useful.
"As you name the ship, so it will sail," Captain Vrungel liked to say. In science, however, this principle does not work. Whatever you call the substance, whether it is an antioxidant, vitamin or E666, its properties do not change. Whether it's Azinomoto, E621 or glutamate, it's still the same substance with the same properties.
Strictly speaking, it is the presence of an E-index in a substance that indicates its safety. The very principle of compiling a list of permitted food additives with indexes "E", the so-called "list of safe food additives" is that only the most proven and harmless substances fall into this list.
From the point of view of a rational view of the world, the presence of two dozen E in the ingredient list of the product indicates that the manufacturer cares about you and adds only scientifically proven components. The presence of strange names, such as "lily extract", indicates the presence of something, the consequences of which have not been scientifically tested. In this sense, the "ethnic" themes in the titles do not speak at all about usefulness, rather about potential harmfulness.
However, we are not talking about the usefulness of "E-shek". They carry only a functional load during the production of the product. Additives "E" in food are harmless. When choosing a meal, focus on the calorie content and the content of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, and not on the absence of "E".
14. If something is handmade, then it is more useful.
Dumplings are harmful, hand–made dumplings are useful.
Candy is harmful, handmade candy is useful.
Made with love, made with soul – this is how some manufacturers often position their "artisanal" products. But it has nothing to do with utility. Love does not affect the chemical composition of food, and there is no soul at all (however, love is not for everyone). From the point of view of natural sciences, there is absolutely no difference whether you made a dumpling on a machine with a capacity of 10,000 dumplings per hour or with the help of 50 hired employees with a capacity of 200 dumplings per hour.
In the second case, however, the risk of the appearance of various unnecessary microflora in the product will be slightly higher. And although it makes the product more alive, it does not make it useful. The choice of products of "manual" or artisanal production can be justified when it comes to a private bakery near the house, the bread from which is really tastier due to the reduction of time from the oven to the table. It can be justified if you want to support a local cheese producer with whom you may have gone to school together. But buying hand-made industrial goods, such as dumplings and sweets, seems to be an extremely irrational act.
15. Sweets are harmful, especially sweeteners (except sweeteners with more "natural" names). Sugar is harmful, cyclamate, saccharin is deadly harmful, fructose is useful, stevia is very useful.
More than a strange and even logically inconsistent statement. Well, yes, "fast" carbohydrates in large quantities are not good, everyone seems to agree with this, even fastidious researchers, and in P. 2. we have already mentioned the carbohydrate danger. But with sweeteners, everything is not so simple. Firstly, they are very different, for example, metabolized in our body and non-metabolized. If a certain molecule was used exclusively to deceive the taste buds, and then left the body unchanged, what harm could there be in this? She did not react to anything, she was not noticed in connections that discredited her…
Again, we recommend the materials authored by Sergey Belkov, who literally disassembled the topic into molecules. There are acesulfame, corn syrup, sweet enhancers, stevioside (the one that is "very useful" from stevia), sucralose, cyclamate, aspartame, and saccharin, and even a detailed analysis of the study, which shows the relationship of aspartame and diabetes mellitus (spoiler – the study was done as not it is necessary), and even the extremely mythologized topic of the connection of sweeteners with obesity is touched upon. In short, sweeteners are demonized absolutely not on merit. Nothing "like that" is listed for them. But in some problematic situations (for example, overweight or obesity) can even help a lot.
Yes, and fructose, which is promoted as a "healthy sugar substitute" primarily for people with diabetes, is far from healthy. It plays a very important role in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
16. Large, beautiful and large fruits are harmful, since they are undoubtedly GMOs.
Large, beautiful and large fruits are likely to be polyploid, that is, having more than one set of chromosomes in the cells. This phenomenon can also occur in natural conditions on absolutely flat ground, such polyploidy is called spontaneous. The creation of polyploids is a well–known method of breeding, for example, wheat with 28 (diploid) and even 42 (triploid) chromosomes, triploid sugar beet, etc. have been created. Sometimes the creation of polyploids is almost the only way to make hybrids fertile in the sense of offspring.
And this is quite a traditional selection. How to make a cell acquire an additional set of chromosomes? To intervene with a mutagen (for example, colchicine). What do you think, where did the usual homemade plum come from? They crossed a thorn (from which the crown is the same) and a cherry plum, as a result they got a polyploid hybrid with 48 chromosomes on board. GMOs weren't even lying around here.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru