"Carbs make you fat": Common diet myths debunked

Clinical dieticians assist people with health and diet, focusing on helping them stay healthy and also treating illnesses.

This is according to author and registered clinical dietician-nutritionist Tabitha Hume.

Clinical dietician-nutritionists work alongside doctors and psychologists to assist patients with their diet.

READ: How to spot if your child has an eating disorder

Hume recently joined Breakfast with Martin to talk about the huge surge in eating disorders among children.

To Ozempic or not to Ozempic...

Back by popular demand, the dietician-nutritionist came back on Monday to assist grown-ups with the impacts of diet culture while debunking common diet myths. 

Food myths:

• Carbs make you fat. Gaining fat depends on how much they stimulate insulin. Something that stimulates lots of insulin and is combined with too much fat will be fattening. But a carb that hardly stimulates insulin combined with a modest amount of fat can’t be fattening. A measure of how carbs stimulate insulin is called the Glycaemic Index (GI). Examples of fattening combos of the wrong carbs with too much fat are croissants, doughnuts, rice cakes with peanut butter, slap chips, and rusks. Examples of non-fattening carbs that cannot make you fat are baked beans on Low GI toast or Italian pasta with Nepolitana sauce.
• Sugar is the Devil. Sugar is bad because it tastes so yummy. And because of this, us humans are prone to either have too much, or else having lots of sugar and forgetting to have nutritious food. The WHO advises <9 tsp sugar in women and <12 in men as very moderate. Adding small amounts of sugar to an otherwise nutrient-rich diet will present no problems. Having a doughnut and a cola instead of a wholewheat sandwich and salad for lunch is how sugar can become the staple of someone’s intake, and they become devoid of any nutrients or fibre, developing disease. In essence: everything in moderation, but focus on small amounts of sugar added to a very healthy diet.
• Vitamin B keeps you awake. This is easy to misunderstand. If one has a vitamin B deficiency, one feels very exhausted. However, this exhaustion lifts to normal energy levels when Vitamin B intake increases and replenishes the deficiency. But if one does not have a deficiency, taking Vitamin B will have no effect. Vitamin B only lifts a pathologically low energy to normal. It is not a stimulant, like caffeine. In fact, Vitamin B has been suggested to improve sleep quality. Just check that your Vitamin B supplement doesn’t include a stimulant like guarana/caffeine because this will disrupt sleep.
• Protein only comes from animal products. Protein has traditionally been taught to only come from meat, chicken, fish, dairy,  and eggs. However, protein comes from beans, lentils, chickpeas, oats, pasta, soya, tofu, meat substitutes, quinoa, nuts, and even broccoli and chia seeds! One does have to have more of these plant foods in order to get in enough protein, but who is worried about being told to have more of something?! And these plant proteins are cholesterol-free, extremely low in fat, and keep insulin levels to a minimum! Dieticians will encourage people to reduce their animal protein intake and include much more plant-based proteins where they can (such as having less mince in spaghetti and adding lots of lentils of soya mince).
• Fruit contains too much sugar and should be reduced. The sugar in fruit is called fructose, which is biologically unavailable for energy. It has to pass through the liver to become glucose, which can be used for energy. This transformation takes a long time and is fairly energy-expensive, so the amount that is eventually available for energy is a lot less than one thinks. Besides, the amount of soluble fibre in fruit is so high that it reduces the amount of fructose able to be absorbed into the body and makes it even slower. This is why fruit is now encouraged to reduce blood glucose levels in diabetics.

Foods that people think are good for us but aren't really:

• Detox diets; eating only veggies, juices and water. This puts huge strain on the liver and is completely devoid of sufficient energy and nutrients. It may 'look' like 'clean' food, but it actually causes more damage than good, and slows metabolism. 
• Fruit juice. Although it contains lots of vitamins and some minerals, drinking one glass of, say, orange juice, is equivalent to about six oranges (much more than one would be able to eat in one sitting). This means that six oranges’ worth of fructose hits the liver quicker than it can process it. The liver goes into overdrive and starts converting the fructose to a type cholesterol, causing risk of heart disease and a fatty liver.
• Coconut oil. This craze is a huge social media farce! It started with one research paper which stated that people who ate coconut oil had higher good cholesterol levels. So everyone went potty and started thinking this was the new wonder-food. However, what people are not aware of is that coconut oil also contains a huge amount of saturated fat which pushes up the two bad cholesterol levels hugely, negating the effects of the good cholesterol effects. What’s more, people said it gets altered less than other oils when cooking. Unfortunately, this is only better if you compare it to other oils that have been used over and over again. But most people don’t re-use the small amount of olive oil that they use. Small amounts of olive oil is still king.
• Carb-free. This sounds clever because it stops the body producing insulin. But research has shown that the body becomes more insulin-resistant after following a carb-free diet. So, if you are someone who has lost weight on this plan, you may find you gain weight very rapidly should you eat carbs again, and then sadly, will have a real problem losing weight ever again. What’s more, this plan has shown to lead to major chronic gastrointestinal problems and an increase risk of certain cancers due to a high protein content and poor fruit intake.
• Honey. This is a sweetener that feels more ‘natural’ than sugar. However, pure honey actually spikes blood glucose levels much faster than sugar, and causes the release of much more insulin which leads to lifestyle disorders. Raw honey (different to pure honey) has not been heated or spun, and so it has exactly the same effect on blood glucose levels and insulin as sugar. So it boils down to flavour differences, not health differences.

Foods that people think are bad for us but are good:

• Processed foods (especially vegetarian meat substitute products). Over-processed foods are often dangerous because they have removed much of the goodness of the original foodstuff and have often added unhealthy additives. However, processed foods do not automatically contain less nutrients than their original source, nor do they automatically contain unhealthy additives. People say "I'll never touch those vegetarian meat substitutes, they're so processed”. And yet they contain no less protein that their origin (in fact, often a little more) and only contain other vitamin fortifications! They are processed, yes. As processed as your honey (processed by the bee), your boerewors sausage (has lots of carcinogenic nitrates and nitrites added), or your beer/wine can't get more overprocessed than this, but one will happily consume this regularly. 
• Tomato ketchup. This was thrown to the dogs because it contained sugar. But, if you have 2 tbsp of tomato sauce on your sweet potato chips, you will probably be having only ½ tsp of the 14 tsp you are allowed daily. Is this a problem? NO! Besides, it has also been found to contain a huge amount of lycopenes, well known to prevent prostate cancer in men!
• Bananas. People always think that bananas are fattening. This only somewhat applies if they are very soft, when they convert to bioavailable carbs which can lift blood glucose and insulin levels. If they are firm, then they contain fructose which barely lifts insulin at all, and contain so much soluble fibre that they contribute to preventing insulin-related lifestyle diseases. And they contain very valuable magnesium and phosphates for athletes.
• Maple syrup. The word “Syrup” conjures up delicious but unhealthy pictures of pancakes. The pancakes aren’t slimming, but the Maple syrup is the sap of the Maple tree, and, again, is made from fructose. So, used in healthy food, there is nothing wrong! It’s lovely to add a little to cooked butternut and mash with cinnamon…. Great way to make delicious butter-free indulgence that is also ridiculously good for you!
• Coffee. This gives us an energy and dopamine 'high' (not just because of the caffeine, but there appears also to be another stimulant in it, which does the same. The bad part is that coffee stimulates an increase in BP, anxiety, leads to poor sleep patterns - even only one cup in the morning!), and causes a huge dopamine crash later in the afternoon, which often causes people to be too shattered to cook a sensible meal for dinner, and also leads to that person seeing a dopamine ‘high’ again, leading to binge-eating on chips, chocolate, biscuits, take-aways or alcohol. All of which shoot up dopamine again once the coffee has depleted it 

You can reach Tabitha Hume at:

• Website: https://tabithahume.com/
• Phone: (011) 702-8510
• Facebook: Tabitha Hume - Clinical Dietician
• Instagram: tabithahume

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