A guest article by nutrition expert Daniel Schenk about nutrition myths in soccer and why we shouldn't believe everything we get told about food.
Excessive elaborations and secret tips: from acquaintances, from Internet forums, from so-called trade magazines, Netflix documentaries or even influencer videos.
What would not be so wrong with our diet — and how you could find your way back from your own wrong path! On the so-called virtue path of macros and microphones?
Over and over again, foods or individual nutrients are either denounced or praised to heaven. And declares each supplement of the month a vital basis.
We encounter nutritional myths time and time again and in changing forms. Sometimes easier, sometimes harder to understand. Disseminated by self-proclaimed experts, vitamin popes and even Nobel Prize winners.
In today's blog post, we therefore address the four most persistent myths about nutrition.
Do what? How can you distinguish these supposed truths from actual facts? And debunk nutrition myths?
Very important, deal with the topic seriously! We don't expect you to read every study carefully now. But after all, this is about your body and your health.
That's why your favorite influencer's blog might not be quite enough as a scientific basis. When in doubt, it is always worthwhile to obtain at least a second expert opinion. And the guy at the gym next door isn't always the expert either.
But now for a brief overview of the classic dietary myths. Always right in the middle: the macronutrients.
Depending on where and when you get information: one of the three macronutrients simply doesn't get away well. Either the fats are bad, the proteins are to blame, or the carbohydrates are bad.
The result: increasing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, death or poor performance on the soccer field!
But of course it's all a bit more complex.
Since macros — as you may already know from our nutrition course — are extremely important, we tell you: leave fats, proteins and carbohydrates on the menu. Just everything in moderation. Keyword calorie balance.
You get fat from fats, right? However this myth came about, it was and still is stubbornly held to it. “Low fat” diets are still up to date, and there are still enough people who resort to “light” variants because they regard them as beneficial to their health. There is absolutely no reason for that:
There is no difference in weight loss between “Low fat” and “Low carb”as long as the calorie balance and the minimum amount of protein are right.
It is also a rather bad idea to restrict the fat content of food too much because we still need the essential fats, i.e. just Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
By the way, saturated fats are not generally the “bad fats” they are often made into. Here, too, you have to look at the overall lifestyle. If you look at French eating habits, for example, which consume a lot of saturated fat but are statistically doing quite well when it comes to overweight and heart disease, in an international comparison.
Although the risk of heart disease increases (slightly) with a higher proportion of unsaturated fatty acids, there is still a lot that must come together so that you eventually become heart disease. Layne Norton recently suggested that SFAs (saturated fatty acids) be reduced to less than 10% (ideally around 7%) of total calories in order to keep LDL cholesterol low.
The only type of fat that can actually be classified as questionable due to its effects on blood lipid levels is the so-called trans fats, i.e. primarily hydrogenated, i.e. hydrogenated vegetable oils.
While carbohydrates and fats get their proverbial fat over and over again, especially when losing weight, the negative press is unfortunately not spared even the proteins.
Who is not familiar with the statements about broken kidneys or brittle bones, which seemingly simply cannot be banished from people's minds, no matter how many times these prejudices have already been refuted.
loss of bone density: More protein in the diet results in a higher calcium content in urine, also because the calcium from bone stores can be used in the short term to buffer the increased acidity caused by the protein — if correct.
However, the conclusion that more calcium would be missing in the bones is absurd. Rather, you should of course not only look at the calcium that leaves the body, but must also take into account the additional calcium available from protein sources.
Lo and behold: higher protein consumption also correlates with higher calcium absorption, while low protein consumption is more likely to be associated with bone fractures, particularly in the hip. The current state of science is therefore more likely to speak of a neutral to a protective effectwhen it comes to bone health.
kidney damage: There is a marker, the so-called “glomerular filtration rate” (GFR), which is the rate of formation of primary urine. A higher value can also mean additional stress for the kidneys.
However, looking at a marker without context is a rather bad idea in most cases. The initial assumption that higher amounts of protein, which increase the value, could actually damage healthy kidneys could not be confirmed in further RCTs.
Of course, people with existing kidney problems should talk to their doctor about their diet before adding higher amounts of protein to their diet plan. That should be logical.
So how much protein is okay? How much for a healthy person perhaps slowly, shall we say, questionable? There are numerous computers on the web that you can recommend. One of the best German speakers can be found here.
When asked how much could be too much, Kamal Patel, CEO of the supplement database Examine.com, gave a figure of 6g and more, per kilogram of body weight per day.
But probably above all because an 80-kilo person already covers almost 2,000 daily calories — without fats, carbohydrates and soluble fiber, which are all positive factors for a healthy and varied diet.
Good old sugar, once again it's not doing well in public. For decades, fat was the bogeyman, and now carbohydrates seem to be the devil when it comes to the culprit of our widespread diseases overweight, diabetes and heart disease.
The low-carblers don't like him, the keto community doesn't like him anyway, the Paleo disciples also find him stupid because he isn't “clean.” Only the brain smiles softly and demands its glucose.
But let's start with the glycemic index on. It ranks foods according to their influence on blood sugar levels. Glucose is usually used as a reference, with a value of 100.
The problem is: According to current knowledge, diets with a very low GI are not or only very slightly better than comparable diets with a high GI, in terms of factors that lead to metabolic syndrome.
Even with diabetes and better control of blood sugar levels, low-GI diets do not necessarily seem to be more effective.
The carbohydrate-insulin model, which states that overweight is a direct result of carbohydrates and their effects on insulin levels, is also not exactly supported by science.
In 2017, there was a meta from Kevin Hall from 32 controlled studies. In all of these studies, participants were served meals with the same amount of calories and protein — calculated based on body weight, of course — but with different distributions of fat and carbohydrates.
Result: The low-fat group actually always had a higher decrease — but at an average of 16 grams per day, it was virtually irrelevant from a physiological point of view. This is also what further studies with realistic design show:
If the calorie balance is right and there is sufficient protein, then the distribution of the remaining macros makes no difference in terms of a decrease.
Here, too, you have to be careful and look at the overall lifestyle — it's just the mix that makes it.
Media are often good at spoiling relatively healthy foods for us by jumping on a single characteristic of taking this characteristic out of context or not being able to correctly classify the underlying mechanisms and subsequently misinterpret them.
The egg is a prime example in this regard.
Eggs are generally relatively unproblematic. Following evidence from observational studies of causality, randomized studies found no evidence of concern about blood lipid levels in healthy people with up to six eggs per day.
With regard to the fats or cholesterol contained, it will probably be particularly problematic if the HDL level is generally already low (e.g. due to poor overall nutrition) or if you belong to a few so-called “hyperresponders”, i.e. simply genetically predisposed and therefore hypersensitive people.
Three to four eggs a day, combined with a grain-free or low-carbohydrate diet, were unproblematic with regard to cholesterol and heart disease, even in people living unhealthily.
What is not a good idea, however, is to eat eggs raw in quantities, as the avidin they contain binds certain B vitamins (e.g. biotin) and could cause a deficiency. Boiled or fried, however, is Kahn's famous saying:
“Eggs, we need eggs! ”
And we call it a classic.
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Our nutrition specialist Daniel Schenk originally comes from handball. He played in the major leagues both in Bavaria and in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In addition to his full-time job as a computer scientist, the 43-year-old is also active as a trainer and athletic trainer.
He is passionate about nutrition. In this area, he completed, among other things, the “Nutritionist” continuing education courses at International Sports Science Association (ISSA, USA) by Dr. John Berardi/Precision Nutrition and “Science of Nutrition” from the Clean Health Institute (Australia) by Biolayne (Dr. Layne Norton) off.
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