Carmine

Myth: Milk is a wonderful drink for weight loss and you should swill down 3 tall glasses every day!

Truth: Drinking milk everyday will definitely contribute to body fatness and sabotage your weight loss goals. The hormones and chemicals in milk stay lodged in your fat cells and make you hold the body fat that you have even if you are restricting calories. The homogenization process turns milk into an unnatural product that may scar your arteries leading to cardiovascular disease.

Myth: Potatoes, Bananas or carrots can make you fat because they are high glycemic carbs.

Truth: Potatoes, Bananas and carrots are high glycemic carbs but they also contain fiber (especially carrots and potatoes with the skin-on) which slows down the glycemic effect on blood sugar. Eating carrots raw also slows down the glycemic effect a great deal. You would have to sit down and eat a huge pile of these foods to negatively impact your fat levels and the health benefits of eating these tremendous gifts of nature far outweighs any concerns on there insulin spiking abilities. I suppose if you sat down and ate a big pile of bananas it could be fattening but this is true of many healthy foods and not a reason to avoid them. Avoiding or reducing dairy products would be a better fat loss strategy.

Myth: Peanut Butter is a great healthy food to be eaten often and used for dieting!

Truth: Most commercial Peanut Butter has had its natural oil removed and then been replaced with trans-fat oil to make it spreadable and give it longer shelf life. Even natural peanut butter is not a great choice as some studies have shown that peanuts may contribute to heart disease. Cashew Butter, Almond Butter or fresh raw nuts are a better alternative.

The Creating of a Myth

Popular myths and facts about health and nutrition which are really biased opinions are created by the media or fad diet gurus. Foods are often promoted as healthy choices because they are cheap or government subsidized not because they are really top picks for optimal health. The problem with using the media (television news, internet news, magazines, newspapers, etc.) for your health, fitness, and nutrition information is that they are biased towards there advertisers. Wouldnt you be if you were in there shoes? The biggest media advertisers these days are large publicly traded pharmaceutical, processed food and soft drink companies. It would not be good business for the media to print or air anything that negatively effected there advertisers, they would surely be upset and start talking to the competing networks. News stories have to be carefully censored to not upset important, high paying customers.

On the cover of BusinessWeek several months ago I saw the title The Organic Myth. So I picked up the magazine and read the article. Debunking organic food and saying that buying organic was not worth it was the focus. The article was well designed to make the reader believe that all organic food is a scam and that you should just relax and keep eating the same way you are eating. Diane Brady, senior editor at BusinessWeek, reports the fact that large food corporations are now trying to cash in on the organic food movement and creating and promoting organic brands at your local supermarket. Assuming that everyone shops at supermarkets, Ms. Brady only makes one negative reference to hippies with Birkenstocks, wilted, rotten produce and co-ops.

You will not find very much good, healthy, food at any major supermarket anyway, just aisle after aisle of processed snack foods, soft drinks and cereals. The health food or organic produce is usually relegated to a small section and I question even the quality of these products based on the way major supermarkets buy. Supermarket buyers are always trying to buy products cheap to manage there departments efficiently and pass on the savings to you. Sounds good right? Wrong. What this means is it is always about the money and rarely about the food quality or about your health.

Take charge of your health and do some shopping at your local Health Food Store or Co-Op where they care about your health and make conscientious decisions when they do there buying. Yes, it is more expensive, but not as expensive as chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, obesity or heart disease brought on by a lifetime of poor diet choices. It is amazing to me how much money people will spend on their car or their home but balk at the idea of increasing there food budget. We have gotten used to living on cheap, unhealthy, convenient food in America and this is our downfall and the cause of our diseases. Pharmaceutical companies will continue to prosper because they have many new drugs to help you after you get sick.

The two biggest helpful things that I started doing were to shop primarily in health food stores and avoid the news media. Take a closer look and I think you will probably start to see what is true and what is biased.

While Researching BusinessWeek to find out why they might not like the Organic Food Movement, I found some interesting information that will be the topic of my next health newsletter.

The BusinessWeek magazine is owned by a conglomerate media company known as McGraw-Hill who also owns the ABC television network. You may recognize this name because they are responsible for a large amount of our school text books and educational materials used throughout the USA. IF you went to school in America you probably learned from their text books in the topics of history, health, nutrition etc. You may be very interested to know who sits on there Board of Directors and controls the company!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ian Kelley is the author of The Organic Body fitness and cookbook. Ian is a lifelong chef, competitive natural bodybuilder, holistic health advocate and writer. His website, www.organicbodybuilding.com, provides informative articles and resources on natural/organic bodybuilding. Ian is now offering a FREE copy of his "Organically Ripped" Pre Contest Diet to all who subscribe to his FREE newsletter.