Inside: Some nutrition advice is wrong, misguided, or just plain silly. You are hereby encouraged to ignore these seven ill-advised nuggets.
The world is full of nutrition advice–dispensed by dietitians, doctors, personal trainers, bloggers, moms at the bus stop, and complete strangers in line at the grocery store.
Some of it is good (eat more leafy greens!). Some of it is bad (avoid fruit, it’s too sugary!). And some pieces of advice gets passed around so much, nobody stops to consider whether they actually make any sense.
Here are 8 pieces of nutrition advice you can officially ignore:
1. Only shop the perimeter.
If I only shopped the perimeter, I’d eat fruits, vegetables, fish, milk, meat, eggs, and cheese. And donuts! (The bakery happens to be on the perimeter of my store too.) If I avoided the middle aisles, I’d never again buy beans, lentils, brown rice, whole grain pasta, olive oil, nuts, nut butters, oatmeal, canned tomatoes, whole grain bread, spices, frozen fruit, flaxseed, dark chocolate, or cereal. And we’d never floss again either.
Obviously, the intention of this advice was to encourage people to eat more whole, unprocessed foods. But though a lot of highly processed foods live in those middle aisles, so do a lot of healthy staples.
2. Avoid ingredients you can’t pronounce.
Many people are seeking out products with simpler ingredient lists. That’s all well and good, but there are lots of ingredients with lengthy or scary-sounding names that aren’t harmful, like acetic acid (vinegar) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).
Sodium bicarbonate sounds like a harmful chemical, but it’s actually baking soda. You’ll spot lactobacillus acidophilus, on the label of some yogurts– a mouthful of a name, but it’s a strain of beneficial bacteria that’s good for the gut. Some products are also fortified with nutrients that are important for health but happen to have confusing names, like cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) and calciferol (vitamin D).
3. Only buy organic.
It’s much more important to buy and eat fruits and vegetables than whether you get organic or conventional. Researchers haven’t found evidence that organic produce is healthier in terms of nutrition or that eating organic is better for long-term health.
What is known for sure: Diets rich in fruits and vegetables are good for everyone. Even the Environmental Working Group, best known for its Dirty Dozen list, says “EWG always recommends eating fruits and vegetables, even conventionally grown, instead of processed foods and other less healthy alternatives.” So buy the produce you can afford and serve it often.
4. Schedule ‘cheat’ days.
I’m not a fan of the term “cheating” when it comes to eating. Ditto for the phrases “I was good”, “I was bad”, or “I’m on a diet”. A diet so restrictive that you need to spend an entire day eating all the foods you’re normally not allowed to have is not sustainable in the long term. It sets you up for failure, which makes you feel bad about yourself–and drives you straight toward the very foods you’re trying to limit.
It’s okay to plan a special eating occasion, like a trip to the ice cream shop with your kids on the weekend. But not because you’re “cheating” or “being bad”.
Get More: I Went on a Diet. Here’s What Happened.
5. Switch to sea salt for less sodium.
By weight, sea salt and regular table salt contain similar amounts of sodium. Varieties of sea salt that have large, coarse granules may have less sodium per teaspoon simply because you can’t get as many granules in the measuring spoon. While we’re at it, brown eggs aren’t any better for you than white (they’re just laid by a different breed of hen). Ditto for white sugar and brown sugar (brown sugar is simply white sugar with molasses added to it).
Get More: Is Salt Bad for You? Here’s the Surprising Truth.
6. Don’t eat anything white.
This seems to be something people are hearing from their family doctors, who are probably suggesting that they cut out bread and pasta to lose weight. But it’s not great advice. It’s true that pigments that give color to plant foods have health-protecting qualities. But white fruits and veggies actually have beneficial compounds in them too, including foods some people think of as nutritionally wimpy like white potatoes (they’re actually high in vitamin C and fiber) and even celery (it’s got a decent amount of vitamin C and folate).
And though white bread and white pasta have less nutrition than their whole grain counterparts, they certainly aren’t devoid of nutrients. So if your kid is stuck on white bread and pasta, rest assured they are still getting nutrition on their plate.
7. Don’t eat anything processed.
So much advice about processed food is unrealistic, like “avoid anything in a package”. As if! Unless you live on a farm and spend all day in the kitchen, that’s impossible. Fact is, most foods are processed in some way, including plenty of healthy staples, since processing includes canning, freezing, and chopping.
A more accurate and helpful way to think of foods is the degree of processing they’ve undergone. Ultra-processed foods have more ingredients like dyes, stabilizers, and emulsifiers, and contain very little intact, unprocessed foods (like chicken nuggets, soda, and boxed cereal). They tend to be high in calories, low in nutrients, and associated with some health risks. So it makes sense to eat fewer of them.
Get More: You Don’t Have to Avoid Processed Foods. Here’s What to do Instead.
