What if almost everything we know about healthy eating is wrong?

Eggs and meat are regularly bashed as unhealthy foods, but what’s the truth? Are they really like that? One of the latest large-scale studies is about to turn everything upside down and make us rethink our notions of good and bad.

Are you also one of those people who critically skip the butter and instead prefer to spread your morning slice with margarine? All those “experts” , who until now confidently claimed that we should absolutely eliminate all saturated fats from the menu and replace them with unsaturated ones are about to rethink their theories and are becoming more and more uncertain.

Not long ago, Professor Jeremy Peterson of the British Heart Association attempted to pool together 72 different studies conducted since 2010 and covering over 600,000 people and prove that there is no direct link between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular problems.

Of course, if you ask margarine manufacturers, they can explain at length how their product is better than ordinary butter. Besides all this, there are still more secular countries that still emphasize, albeit in an increasingly hesitant tone, the heart benefits of consuming margarine instead of butter.

Lead researcher Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury is pushing for more research into the effect of fat on human health, and believes there are quite a few interesting things to be discovered. According to him, it is time to rethink what is useful and what is harmful. He stresses that saturated fat should indeed be reduced, but so should white bread, white rice and potatoes.

Perhaps you are already confused? Even a little angry? Yes, indeed, this game of “this is useful and that is harmful” has started to tire a lot of people, but here Peterson is trying to make it clear. He emphasizes again that although there are no clearly defined boundaries between healthy and unhealthy eating, we should still not forget that in all cases eating too much fatty food is harmful to the heart.

Of course, it is normal to feel the bitter taste of disappointment, especially if for a long period you followed a strict diet and ate no more than two eggs a week because you wanted to protect yourself from high cholesterol, and now everything this turns out to be less dangerous and harmful. In fact, eggs have been shown to have almost no effect on cholesterol levels, no matter how hard you want to believe it.

In practice, the long-standing delusion about eggs has only had a negative effect, and in more ways than one. For example, many egg producers around the world have been forced to abandon this business just because someone has decided that this food is harmful. On the other hand, consumers, out of fear for their health, have given up such a useful, healthy and nutritious food, which, above all, is also very cheap and accessible. So subtly instead of a portion of scrambled or poached eggs for breakfast, we subtly turned to “healthy” breakfast cereals in cardboard packages with smiling and happy animals on them.

Perhaps even more damaging is replacing butter, such a pure and natural product, with margarine or other spreads that are entirely based on refined liquid oils.

The dominance of margarine lasted until 2010, when it was proven that after passing through the chemical processes of solidification of liquid fats, they become quite dangerous for health and help to clog blood vessels.

After the big fuss that arose about the negative impact of polyunsaturated vegetable oils after the hardening process, a number of manufacturers have reoriented themselves to new models of processing the oils, which are said to be kinder to the human body.

However, this is hardly enough reassurance for people who for many years have consumed margarine instead of butter, thinking of it as the healthier alternative, and after all, it turned out that margarine is inferior to butter not only in taste, but also as health benefits.

Maybe we will all learn the lesson a little less, namely that things are not always what they seem. Sometimes it is important to do everything in moderation, because we can never be sure that something we have believed in unconditionally will not turn out to be harmful to health. And here is an example:

For many years we have been told that the most important thing in losing weight is simply counting calories, but this is not quite the case. When a person includes proteins, proteins and a little fat in his menu, he will notice that his hunger is satisfied for a much longer time than if he makes her eat chips, for example. So if you’re thinking of losing weight with chips and other contraptions, we wish you luck, but we’ll tell you that it’s unlikely to happen. You are much more likely to lose weight if you include products of the egg variety in your menu, because they are a very strong and nutritious food and will keep you full for a very long time.

And while until recently it was claimed that in order to be in good shape we should eat mainly carbohydrates, a number of critics of this food model call it an “unhealthy eating model”< /em>. Many scientists believe that in order to have good health and a nice figure, we should focus on proteins rather than carbohydrates. We can take an example from farm animals. When we feed them carbohydrates they become very large and fat. Why should this affect them and not us?

At the height of this era, in which avoiding fat became a religion, a number of manufacturers began to sell all kinds of junk that we wouldn’t even call food, simply by sticking a “fat-free” label on them. However, in order to consume the astonishing loss of taste after the fat was removed, manufacturers began to add disturbing amounts of sugar. Thus, the craze for healthy eating has subtly taught us to eat more harmful and unhealthy foods than at any time in human history.

From everywhere they are bombarded with information about how harmful red meat is, but the truth is that in fact this is not the case at all. In fact, beef and lamb, for example, contain a number of ingredients that reduce the risk of cancer, diabetes and the accumulation of overweight. In addition, we are always bombarded with “disturbing” news about one or another infection “sliding” into the free-grazing herds of cattle, as if those animals raised in isolated and sterile farms and stuffed with some kind of chemicals are more useful.

Let’s not forget the salt. We are constantly bombarded with warnings to be careful with salt, but no one tells us that the most salt is where we won’t think of it. Chips, crackers, canned goods – they all make up for the astonishing lack of taste and nutrients by adding salt to give them a strong and appealing taste. But can anyone argue that salt is harmful when it is used for cooking at home in quite normal and reasonable quantities?

What we need to know is that we should always bet on a variety of natural foods and avoid anything processed and artificial. For example, a number of processed foods could appear on store shelves with warning signs about the risks they carry. This would not be much different from the labels that appear on cigarette packs in many countries around the world, but we are unlikely to see anything like this, at least not in the near future.

The key phrase “avoid processed foods” doesn’t appear anywhere, but it should be a rule of thumb for you to follow on a daily basis.

What is good for you and what is not?

Eggs

For many years we have been told not to consume more than two eggs a week. Well, this has already been proven not to be the case. You can eat eggs without restricting them, especially considering that they are one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can imagine.

Oil

After it turned out that margarine is very harmful to health and clogs blood vessels, you will be much better off if you bet on good old butter – tested over the centuries and much tastier.

Red meat

Consumption of processed meat full of preservatives is not recommended, but if you occasionally eat meat from free-range animals you will not go wrong. It contains ingredients that protect against cancer, diabetes and obesity.

Salt

Salt in canned foods is huge, and that’s really too much, but so far there is no evidence of harm from using moderate amounts of salt in cooking at home.

Sugar

It is good to reduce sugar and even avoid it. If you can’t live without sweets, try to consume them only occasionally and in small quantities.