I blame the confusion primarily on the brilliance of food manufacturers, who do a damn good job convincing people of the health benefit/necessity for various nutrients. Sadly, taking nutrients out of context is one of the silliest things you can do for discussing the quality of a particular food.

When it comes to nutrition, we’ve forgotten that the whole is always much greater than the sum of its parts.

To help set the record straight, here’s my collection of “health” foods whose reputation exceeds their nutritional benefit. I had to limit myself to only eight, but there were many more deserving of this (dis)honour.

#1. Whole Wheat Bread

Admittedly, I have a thinly veiled disdain for most breads. This is just my opinion, but bread ranks second to none in foods that unwittingly ruin people’s physique efforts.

Now fortified with 100% more bogus health claims!

When a food product must be “fortified” with the nutrients it lost during processing… that should throw up a giant red flag that it’s just not that high quality a foodstuff. And sprinkling in a smidgen of fibre really doesn’t make whole wheat bread any more nutritious than its white brethren.

#2. Instant Oatmeal

Another product whose health benefits are quite poor. This is especially the case when oatmeal is delivered in a package with an equal volume of sugar and artificial flavouring.

While old fashioned, slow-cooking oats have their benefits, the highly processed variant that can be cooked in under a minute is pretty much just refined junk. And don’t even get me started on that oatmeal breakfast bars…

#3. Low-Fat Yogourt

From the annals of the absurd: why take a product that naturally contains fat (i.e. dairy) and remove the fat under the guise of making the product healthier? If we consider that most dairy products are fortified with vitamins A & D, both fat soluble vitamins, just how exactly are you going to absorb them properly in the absence of fat?

Does this make sense to you? I didn’t think so.

#4. Bran Muffins

These bad boys are one of the best scams known to fast food. Toss the words “bran” and “carrots” into a marketing campaign and suddenly you’ve dressed a pastry in health food’s clothing.

• Tim Hortons Wheat Carrot Muffin: 400 kcal, 19 g fat, 55 g carbohydrates
• Tim Hortons Boston Cream Donut: 250 kcal, 8 g fat, 40 g carbohydrates

It’s not even a question, the donut is the much better choice.

#5. Soy Milk

Soy milk is another one of those pseudo-healthy foods whose health claims aren’t really supported by science. In fact, there is enough of a plausible physiological mechanism surrounding soy’s potential negative role as a endocrine disruptor that I think cautious consumption is warranted.

While I think unprocessed soy products (tempeh, tofu, miso) in small amounts make good additions to the diet, overloading a diet with highly processed variants of soy used in soy milk, soy burgers and TVP is a recipe for disaster.

#6. All Bran Bars

If I told you I was going to give you some:

“Wheat flour, sugar/glucose-fructose, cereal (wheat bran, sugar/glucose-fructose, malt [corn flour, malted barley], salt, vitamins [thiamine hydrochloride, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, d-calcium pantothenate], iron), vegetable shortening (contains palm and palm kernel oils, TBHQ), oat hull fibre, fancy molasses, dried whole egg, milk ingredients, wheat bran, baking powder, soy lecithin, sodium bicarbonate, natural flavour, soy flour.”

something tells me you’d never guess in a million years that you were eating a “health” food.

Yet since the term “high fibre” is on the package of an All Bran bar, suddenly, this piece of junk becomes good for people?

Uh huh.

“High fibre” has got to be the most overrated health food claim… wait, that’s not true. That title of most idiotic health food claim goes to foods that are “cholesterol free”.

#7. Egg White Omelets

Speaking of “cholesterol free” foods, I may as well put the granddaddy of the cholesterol free foods on this list. Let’s be clear, I am totally fine with egg whites as a food stuff (they are a pretty versatile and affordable source of protein). However, avoiding egg yolks because they contain cholesterol shows a serious lack of nutrition understanding.

“Cholesterol free” = “D- in Biochemstry 101″

Cholesterol is a critical component of our grey matter and is the precursor substances of all our sex hormones. Therefore, avoiding dietary cholesterol means you may be creating problems for both your brain functioning, as well as your ability to build the hormones necessary to change your physique for the better.

Taken in that light, cholesterol avoidance really doesn’t sound too health promoting at all.

And if you believe that consuming dietary cholesterol has any negative impact on blood levels of cholesterol… then I suggest you go back and take an introductory biochemistry class.

If you don’t have a carton of real eggs in your fridge next to the box of egg whites, clearly the destruction of grey matter has already begun. But thankfully you can reverse this horrible trend… run to the store immediately and get some eggs.

Your brain and your boys will thank me.

#8. Nuts

Nuts are another somewhat surprise addition to this list but remember, this list is about overrated health foods. Given that nuts provide ~250 kcal per 1/4 cup, serious portion control is needed when making nuts a part of the diet.

Nuts are fine in small doses, but far too many people eat nuts like they are going out of style. Few things are as unhealthy as carrying excess body fat on your frame. So if eating too many nuts are the root cause of a spare tire… they get my label of as overrated health food.

And while we are on the topic of overrated aspects of nuts, can we get dietitians everywhere to repeat the phrase “peanut butter IS NOT a good source of protein…”?

Peanut butter is a great source of monounsaturated fat, but a pretty terrible source of protein.

Dishonourable mentions

• microwave popcorn, Lean Cuisine microwave meals, all boxed cereal

Well there you have it, a compilation of the foods that I think receive far too much “good publicity” in terms of health benefits. That doesn’t mean these foods can’t be part of your diet, they just aren’t quite as good as you’ve been led to believe.

Agree or disagree? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Some things never cease to amaze me. I particularly love how certain health myths continue to persist, despite a total lack of science to support them. One of my favourite myths is that "HIGH CHOLESTEROL WILL KILL YOU!" Of course, high cholesterol CAN be problematic, but typically isn't. Let's take a look at why.

Cholesterol is a soft, fat-like, waxy substance produced by the body or consumed in the diet.

Your body uses cholesterol:

• to build and maintain cell membranes
• to produce bile salts, critical for fat metabolism
• for the formation of vitamin D
• for the production of all of our sex hormones (estrogen, testosterone, progesterone,  etc)
• as an integral part of your brain

Quite the impressive list! As anyone with a 5th grade education could attest, these functions seem to be fairly critical to life, so clearly cholesterol can't be all bad. Yet cholesterol still carries a bad reputation; what gives?

The hubbub surrounding cholesterol stems from its role in atherosclerosis, the thickening and narrowing of arteries. As arteries narrow over time, not only is the heart stressed from having to work harder to deliver blood, but arterial narrowing can promote blood clots or vessel ruptures, both of which can be fatal. Clearly, preventing cholesterol from building-up in our arteries is a matter of life or death.

Ever since the the 1950's, anti-cholesterol campaigns have sought to "educate" the public about the dangers of elevated cholesterol; campaigns that continue in various forms even today. These campaigns present a clear message: elevated cholesterol = increased risk for heart attack. Not only are people being told elevated cholesterol is a health concern,  but they are being taught that cholesterol is either "good" (HDL cholesterol) or "bad" (LDL cholesterol), with the emphasis being on reducing LDL cholesterol at all costs.

*As a quick aside, HDL (high density lipoprotein) and LDL (low density lipoprotein) are actually protein carriers for cholesterol, and not in-and-of-themselves cholesterol at all. Cholesterol, being a lipid (i.e. a fat) cannot travel through the water medium that is the blood and must be "carried" to various sites bound to a protein. So the "good" and "bad" designation actually applies more to the protein carrier, than to the cholesterol itself, which is relatively inert.*

As part of this cholesterol education campaign, cardiac health organizations such as the American Heart Association and the Heart and Stroke Foundation in Canada recommend limiting the consumption of saturated fats and restricting cholesterol intake to no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day, which amounts to the cholesterol content of 1 1/2 whole eggs.

Given the purported dangers of too much cholesterol, this sounds like a prudent step to take. But does limiting dietary cholesterol result in a meaningful reduction in the amount of cholesterol in your body? Not really. Even a relatively small individual produces about a gram (1000 mg) of cholesterol every day. Your body's production increases if you reduce the cholesterol content of your diet, whereas production decreases if you consume more than 300 mg of cholesterol from your diet. Your body is smart that way. It's going to maintain a level of cholesterol that's pretty darn constant unless you force feed yourself grams of cholesterol each day. Therefore, unless you habitually indulge in 96 oz. steak eating competitions or have the genetic disorder for familial hypercholesterolemia (which occurs in at most 1 in 500 people), dietary cholesterol intake appears to have little to no impact on blood cholesterol levels.

Seeing as that reducing one's consumption of dietary cholesterol is a relatively futile approach to controlling cholesterol levels, conventional medicine has increasingly turned to the use of prescription medication to combat the "scourge" of high cholesterol. In fact, the class of cholesterol lowering drugs known as statins have rapidly become the best selling prescription drugs in history, prescribed to over 13 million Americans and an additional 12 million users worldwide. God Bless America!

Touted for their ability to reduce the risk of heart attack by 36%, it's easy to see why statins have become so popular. I'd love to decrease my chances of getting a heart attack by over a third! Except that this 36% reduction in risk contains a couple of caveats.

1. It's a 36% reduction in patients with multiple risk factors for heart disease
2. The study that investigated the benefit of statin use vs. placebo use found that over a  3-year time frame, 3% of placebo users suffered heart attacks whereas 2% of statin users did the same.

As highlighted in a brilliant article by Business Week:  Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?, this 36% reduction in risk actually means you would need 100 people religiously taking statins for a period of several years before seeing a benefit in a single individual. This of course assumes you are giving statins to high-risk individuals with multiple risk factors. When statins are being prescribed to individuals of lower risk, the number of users needing to take the drugs might number in the the thousands before even one will benefit (data accessed from Business Week: The Number Needed to Treat).

What is going on?!? Although statins do a phenomenal job of decreasing LDL levels (remember, that is supposed to be your "bad" cholesterol), they don't appear to do much in terms of decreasing your risk for cardiovascular disease. In fact, statins primarily benefit people who've already had a heart attack, and don't appear to prevent people from having a heart attack in the first place.

Wow, that's depressing. Haven't we always been told that the link between cholesterol levels in the blood and atheroscleroris/heart disease is an undeniable fact? Unfortunately, the reality appears to be a resounding: NO!

Much of the population data and a majority of the better designed intervention studies show that the link between blood cholesterol and heart disease is highly variable and often uncorrelated. In fact, the typical blood cholesterol-heart disease data that emerges looks something like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interesting. Now we start to see why cholesterol lowering interventions like forced dietary reductions of cholesterol or statin use yield such underewhelming results in terms of disease prevention. But if total cholesterol levels and LDL cholesterol levels are weak predictors of heart disease, what really is the issue?

One of the factors complicating the issue of LDL cholesterol is that there are actually numerous LDL subfractions. Generally, the larger, "fluffier" subfractions present little cardiovascular risk, whereas the small, dense subfractions seem to correlate with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. Simply testing for total LDL cholesterol content doesn't really tell you much about someone's risk, which helps explain why the fanatical obsession with reducing LDL levels has been met with failure. Unfortunately, too many doctors don't appreciate this subtlety about the LDL molecule and will rarely order a blood test sensitive enough to detect LDL particle size, thus continuing to misdiagnose people who aren't at risk.

Incidentally, while on the topic of LDL particle size, remember how I mentioned earlier that cardiac associations recommend limiting intake of both dietary cholesterol and saturated fats? Whereas dietary cholesterol had no impact on blood cholesterol, consuming saturated fat clearly does. So did the cardiac associations get half of the recommendation correct?

Nope! Yet another misinterpretation by conventional science. A number of research studies, which I'll highlight in a future article, have shown that consuming saturated fats tends to increase both HDL (our "good" cholesterol) and the large, fluffy LDL particles in the blood. Everyone seems to agree that increasing HDL is a good thing, and since large particle LDL doesn't seem to present any significant cardiovascular risk, it would appear there is little basis for avoiding saturated fats for most people. Kind of makes you wonder if returning to a diet with more natural sources of dietary cholesterol and saturated fats might actually be cardio-protective!

Breakfast of Champions

Conversely, what appears to be detrimental to blood chemistry is a diet high in carbohydrates. High carbohydrate diets (particularly those high in sugars and refined starches) increase the amount of small, dense subfractions of LDL as well as triglycerides, both of which correlate with an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease. Therefore despite the mainstream diet advice of the past 30 years, it appears most of us would be far better off ditching the breads and breakfast cereals in favour of eggs and steak. Consider it a gift to your heart.

Just remember that cholesterol is a natural compound that is primarily responsible for repairing and rebuilding cell membranes. Cholesterol on its own has zero affinity for attaching itself to arterial walls; why would it? Cholesterol only gets deposited on arterial walls in response to inflammation. Therefore, instead of obsessing about LDL cholesterol levels, the focus should be on avoiding triglyceride-forming foods and minimizing things that promote inflammation. Do this and your health will take a quantum leap forward!

Here as just a few lifestyle modifications that can help reduce inflammation and improve blood chemistry:

1. Smoking cessation
2. Decreased consumption of simple sugars
3. Decreased consumption of refined grains
4. Avoidance of most vegetable oils (exceptions: olive and coconut oils)
5. Limited consumption of processed meat products (i.e. bacon, sausage, lunch meats)
6. Limited consumption of caffeine
7. Increased consumption of anti-oxidant rich vegetables and fruit
8. Increased consumption of omega 3 fats, particularly from marine sources
9. Daily exercise

This is far from an exhaustive list; however, even incorporating a few of these lifestyle changes can help turn cholesterol worries into a thing of the past.

Remember that when it comes to your physique and your health advice that is simply, "good enough", isn't!

As always, I welcome any feedback, discussion or debate!