Food was once seen as a source of sustenance and
pleasure. Today, the dinner table can instead begin to
feel like a minefield. Is the bacon on your plate culinary
asbestos, and will the wheat in your toast give you
“grain brain”? Even the bubbles of gas in your fizzy
drinks have been considered a hazard .
Worse still, the advice changes continually. As TV-
cook Nigella Lawson recently put it : “You can guarantee
that what people think will be good for you this year,
they won’t next year.”
Many of our favourite foods are not the ticking
time bomb we have been led to believe
This may be somewhat inevitable: evidence-based
health advice should be constantly updated as new
studies explore the nuances of what we eat and the
effects the meals have on our bodies. But when the
media (and ill-informed health gurus) exaggerate the
results of a study without providing the context, it can
lead to unnecessary fears that may, ironically, push you
towards less healthy choices.
We’ve tried to cut through the confusion by weighing
up all the available evidence to date. You may be
pleased to learn that many of your favourite foods are
not the ticking time bomb you have been led to believe.
The food: Bacon
The fear: Processed meats are as dangerous as
cigarettes.
The facts: While the World Health Organisation has
announced overwhelming evidence that bacon (and
other kinds of processed meat) can contribute to
colorectal cancer, the real dangers are not quite as
worrying as the subsequent headlines would have us
believe .
As Cancer Research UK points out in an astute blog ,
colorectal cancer is itself relatively rare. If you eat
barely any meat, there is a 5.6% risk of developing the
disease over your lifetime; even if you pig out on bacon
and ham every day, it only rises to about 6.6%. In other
words, for every 100 people who stop eating bacon,
only one will have avoided cancer. To put that in
perspective, consider the figures for tobacco: for every
100 smokers who give up, 10-15 lives may be saved .
The two are hardly comparable.
Even so, you may want to reconsider a 20-rashers-a-
day habit. The UK government advises that an average
of 70g a day is still healthy – about three rashers, or
two sausages.
In a nutshell? The odd English breakfast may not do
you as much good as a bowl of granola – but nor is it
gastronomic asbestos.
The food: Coffee
The fear: Our caffeine addiction will drive us to a heart
attack.
The facts: There is very little evidence that a cup of Joe
will send you to an early grave; in fact, the opposite
may be true. In 2012, the New England Journal of
Medicine reported on the health of 400,000 Americans
over the course of 13 years. The scientists found that
people who drank between three and six cups a day
were around 10% less likely to die during the 13-year
period , with lower rates of heart disease, stroke,
diabetes and infections. Considering a string of studies
examining the health of more than a million individuals,
a review in 2014 painted a similar picture: people who
drank four cups a day were around 16% less likely to
die at any one time .
Note that these were only observational studies .
Although they tried to account for other factors, there’s
no way of knowing if the coffee itself was protecting the
heart, or if there’s some other, hidden, explanation.
Perhaps healthier people are just more likely to be
drawn to coffee. But as “addictions” go, it’s pretty
harmless.
In a nutshell? It’s probably not the elixir of life that
some claim, but based on this evidence, you can at
least savour that morning espresso with impunity.
The food: Wheat
The fear: So-called “grain brain” could contribute to
Alzheimer’s disease.
The facts: First things first: a very small number of
people – around 1% of the population – do have a
genuine gluten allergy known as celiac disease, that
can damage their intestines and lead to malnutrition.
Others may not suffer from celiac disease, but they may
instead be “sensitive” to wheat; although they don’t
suffer symptoms if they only eat a small amount, they
may experience some discomfort if they eat too much
bread.
Explanations for this “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” are
controversial: rather than the gluten in wheat
specifically, it may instead be caused by a range of
sugars and proteins that are also found in many other
foods, including fruit and onions. If so, simply cutting
wheat would not relieve the symptoms .
Then there are the people going gluten-free even
without experiencing definite symptoms at all, because
wheat itself is seen as being toxic. As Peter Green at
Columbia University commented recently : “People who
promote an anti-grain or anti-gluten agenda sometimes
cite our work in celiac disease, drawing far-ranging
conclusions that extend well beyond evidence-based
medicine.” One popular claim, for instance, is that
wheat-based foods trigger inflammation throughout the
body, which could contribute to “brain fog” and
increase the risk of serious conditions like Alzheimer’s .
But while diets heavy in carbohydrates and sugars may,
over time, lead to neural damage, whole wheat is still
better than other energy sources, such as potatoes,
since it releases its sugars more slowly.
In a nutshell? Humans have been eating wheat for at
least 10,000 years – and unless you have been tested
for an allergy, there seems little reason to stop until we
have far more evidence.
The food: Butter, cheese and full-fat milk
The fear: Dairy products will clog up your arteries and
contribute to heart disease.
The facts: For decades, the message has been simple:
“saturated” fats from cheese, butter, and full-fat milk
will raise the cholesterol in your blood and put you in
danger of a heart attack. For this reason, many health
organisations had encouraged us to lubricate our diets
with margarine and vegetable oils, replacing the
saturated fats with “poly-unsaturates” typically found
in the (famously healthy) Mediterranean diet.
Yet over the last few years, we’ve seen a stream and
then a torrent of deeply puzzling findings that
contradict the accepted wisdom. Taking all the evidence
into account, one major review in the Annals of Internal
Medicine recently concluded that “high levels of
saturated fat intake had no effect on coronary disease ”.
Again, these were only observational studies, but one
team decided to put it to a test with a carefully planned
intervention, feeding their participants 27%-fat Gouda
cheese every day for eight weeks. At the end of the
trial, they had lower cholesterol than controls asked to
stomach a zero-fat alternative.
The oddest finding? Despite the fact that full-fat milk
and butter are packed with calories, people eating full-
fat dairy were no more likely to be obese than those
drinking semi-skimmed milk; 12 separate studies have
in fact found them to be leaner. It’s possible that the fat
itself could help regulate the metabolism, meaning that
you burn off energy more efficiently; or it could be that
full-fat dairy keeps our hunger locked away for longer,
making us less likely to fill up with unhealthy snacks
later on.
In a nutshell? We still don’t understand why, but “full-
fat” may be the new “skinny”.
The food: Pasteurised milk
The fear: Pasteurisation could contribute to eczema,
asthma and other immune disorders.
The facts: It’s not just full-fat milk that has come
under fire. A common assumption is that the more
“natural” a food is, the healthier it must be, and this
has led some to shun pasteurised milk. Proponents
claim that pasteurisation damages many of the useful
nutrients in milk, including proteins that may protect us
from allergies. The process of pasteurisation, they
believe, also kills “friendly” microbes in the milk that
could add to the microbiome in our gut, aiding
digestion, strengthening the immune system and even
protecting against cancer.
Many doctors, however, believe this is premature. The
mild heating involved in pasteurisation should leave
almost all the nutrients intact , and it seems unlikely
that the friendly bacteria in raw milk will bring many
benefits : its colonies would need to be thousands of
times bigger for enough of the bacteria to survive
digestion and make their way to the intestine. And
although there is some tentative evidence that people
who drank raw milk as children tend to have fewer
allergies, it’s hard to be sure this was caused by the
milk itself, and not just the fact that many of these
children mostly grew up on farms. Living among so
many animals, their body may have been trained to deal
with allergens at a young age, making them less likely
to suffer as adults. What’s more, drinking raw milk could
be potentially dangerous: we pasteurise the drink for
good reason, to kill microbes that could cause serious
disease, like tuberculosis, Salmonella and E coli.
In a nutshell? Before you risk a nasty infection, you
might want to wait for the evidence to match the
extravagant claims.
The food: Eggs
The fear: A heart-attack in a shell.
The facts: Like full-fat milk, eggs were once thought to
cake our arteries in cholesterol and increase the risk of
heart disease. There may be some truth in these claims,
but provided you are otherwise healthy, eating up to
seven eggs a week seems to come with no ill-
consequences.
In a nutshell? Besides the risk of flatulence and
constipation, eggs are a safe and valuable source of
protein.
The food: “Diet” soft drinks
The fear: Artificial sweeteners can contribute to cancer
risk.
The facts: We already know that too much sugar leads
to obesity, diabetes and heart disease – but what about
the artificial sweeteners we add to “diet” drinks to try
to lessen the impact? One common fear is that they
promote the growth of tumours. But as Claudia
Hammond recently explained on BBC Future, the risks
may have been exaggerated; a vast study conducted by
the US National Cancer Institute found no increase in
the risk of brain cancer, leukaemia or lymphoma in
people consuming aspartame, the most common
sweeteners, and the same seems to be true for other
sugar alternatives. There is, however, a chance that
they might contribute to glucose intolerance, and type
2 diabetes – though it has yet to be proven.
(Incidentally, Hammond has also punctured the idea
that the bubbles in soft drinks are themselves a hazard,
debunking claims that it could harm your stomach and
weaken your bones.)
In a nutshell? Artificial sweeteners may be the lesser of
two evils – they may carry some risks, but are still
healthier than the full-sugar alternatives.
Bbc
David Robson is BBC Future’s feature writer.
pleasure. Today, the dinner table can instead begin to
feel like a minefield. Is the bacon on your plate culinary
asbestos, and will the wheat in your toast give you
“grain brain”? Even the bubbles of gas in your fizzy
drinks have been considered a hazard .
Worse still, the advice changes continually. As TV-
cook Nigella Lawson recently put it : “You can guarantee
that what people think will be good for you this year,
they won’t next year.”
Many of our favourite foods are not the ticking
time bomb we have been led to believe
This may be somewhat inevitable: evidence-based
health advice should be constantly updated as new
studies explore the nuances of what we eat and the
effects the meals have on our bodies. But when the
media (and ill-informed health gurus) exaggerate the
results of a study without providing the context, it can
lead to unnecessary fears that may, ironically, push you
towards less healthy choices.
We’ve tried to cut through the confusion by weighing
up all the available evidence to date. You may be
pleased to learn that many of your favourite foods are
not the ticking time bomb you have been led to believe.
The food: Bacon
The fear: Processed meats are as dangerous as
cigarettes.
The facts: While the World Health Organisation has
announced overwhelming evidence that bacon (and
other kinds of processed meat) can contribute to
colorectal cancer, the real dangers are not quite as
worrying as the subsequent headlines would have us
believe .
As Cancer Research UK points out in an astute blog ,
colorectal cancer is itself relatively rare. If you eat
barely any meat, there is a 5.6% risk of developing the
disease over your lifetime; even if you pig out on bacon
and ham every day, it only rises to about 6.6%. In other
words, for every 100 people who stop eating bacon,
only one will have avoided cancer. To put that in
perspective, consider the figures for tobacco: for every
100 smokers who give up, 10-15 lives may be saved .
The two are hardly comparable.
Even so, you may want to reconsider a 20-rashers-a-
day habit. The UK government advises that an average
of 70g a day is still healthy – about three rashers, or
two sausages.
In a nutshell? The odd English breakfast may not do
you as much good as a bowl of granola – but nor is it
gastronomic asbestos.
The food: Coffee
The fear: Our caffeine addiction will drive us to a heart
attack.
The facts: There is very little evidence that a cup of Joe
will send you to an early grave; in fact, the opposite
may be true. In 2012, the New England Journal of
Medicine reported on the health of 400,000 Americans
over the course of 13 years. The scientists found that
people who drank between three and six cups a day
were around 10% less likely to die during the 13-year
period , with lower rates of heart disease, stroke,
diabetes and infections. Considering a string of studies
examining the health of more than a million individuals,
a review in 2014 painted a similar picture: people who
drank four cups a day were around 16% less likely to
die at any one time .
Note that these were only observational studies .
Although they tried to account for other factors, there’s
no way of knowing if the coffee itself was protecting the
heart, or if there’s some other, hidden, explanation.
Perhaps healthier people are just more likely to be
drawn to coffee. But as “addictions” go, it’s pretty
harmless.
In a nutshell? It’s probably not the elixir of life that
some claim, but based on this evidence, you can at
least savour that morning espresso with impunity.
The food: Wheat
The fear: So-called “grain brain” could contribute to
Alzheimer’s disease.
The facts: First things first: a very small number of
people – around 1% of the population – do have a
genuine gluten allergy known as celiac disease, that
can damage their intestines and lead to malnutrition.
Others may not suffer from celiac disease, but they may
instead be “sensitive” to wheat; although they don’t
suffer symptoms if they only eat a small amount, they
may experience some discomfort if they eat too much
bread.
Explanations for this “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” are
controversial: rather than the gluten in wheat
specifically, it may instead be caused by a range of
sugars and proteins that are also found in many other
foods, including fruit and onions. If so, simply cutting
wheat would not relieve the symptoms .
Then there are the people going gluten-free even
without experiencing definite symptoms at all, because
wheat itself is seen as being toxic. As Peter Green at
Columbia University commented recently : “People who
promote an anti-grain or anti-gluten agenda sometimes
cite our work in celiac disease, drawing far-ranging
conclusions that extend well beyond evidence-based
medicine.” One popular claim, for instance, is that
wheat-based foods trigger inflammation throughout the
body, which could contribute to “brain fog” and
increase the risk of serious conditions like Alzheimer’s .
But while diets heavy in carbohydrates and sugars may,
over time, lead to neural damage, whole wheat is still
better than other energy sources, such as potatoes,
since it releases its sugars more slowly.
In a nutshell? Humans have been eating wheat for at
least 10,000 years – and unless you have been tested
for an allergy, there seems little reason to stop until we
have far more evidence.
The food: Butter, cheese and full-fat milk
The fear: Dairy products will clog up your arteries and
contribute to heart disease.
The facts: For decades, the message has been simple:
“saturated” fats from cheese, butter, and full-fat milk
will raise the cholesterol in your blood and put you in
danger of a heart attack. For this reason, many health
organisations had encouraged us to lubricate our diets
with margarine and vegetable oils, replacing the
saturated fats with “poly-unsaturates” typically found
in the (famously healthy) Mediterranean diet.
Yet over the last few years, we’ve seen a stream and
then a torrent of deeply puzzling findings that
contradict the accepted wisdom. Taking all the evidence
into account, one major review in the Annals of Internal
Medicine recently concluded that “high levels of
saturated fat intake had no effect on coronary disease ”.
Again, these were only observational studies, but one
team decided to put it to a test with a carefully planned
intervention, feeding their participants 27%-fat Gouda
cheese every day for eight weeks. At the end of the
trial, they had lower cholesterol than controls asked to
stomach a zero-fat alternative.
The oddest finding? Despite the fact that full-fat milk
and butter are packed with calories, people eating full-
fat dairy were no more likely to be obese than those
drinking semi-skimmed milk; 12 separate studies have
in fact found them to be leaner. It’s possible that the fat
itself could help regulate the metabolism, meaning that
you burn off energy more efficiently; or it could be that
full-fat dairy keeps our hunger locked away for longer,
making us less likely to fill up with unhealthy snacks
later on.
In a nutshell? We still don’t understand why, but “full-
fat” may be the new “skinny”.
The food: Pasteurised milk
The fear: Pasteurisation could contribute to eczema,
asthma and other immune disorders.
The facts: It’s not just full-fat milk that has come
under fire. A common assumption is that the more
“natural” a food is, the healthier it must be, and this
has led some to shun pasteurised milk. Proponents
claim that pasteurisation damages many of the useful
nutrients in milk, including proteins that may protect us
from allergies. The process of pasteurisation, they
believe, also kills “friendly” microbes in the milk that
could add to the microbiome in our gut, aiding
digestion, strengthening the immune system and even
protecting against cancer.
Many doctors, however, believe this is premature. The
mild heating involved in pasteurisation should leave
almost all the nutrients intact , and it seems unlikely
that the friendly bacteria in raw milk will bring many
benefits : its colonies would need to be thousands of
times bigger for enough of the bacteria to survive
digestion and make their way to the intestine. And
although there is some tentative evidence that people
who drank raw milk as children tend to have fewer
allergies, it’s hard to be sure this was caused by the
milk itself, and not just the fact that many of these
children mostly grew up on farms. Living among so
many animals, their body may have been trained to deal
with allergens at a young age, making them less likely
to suffer as adults. What’s more, drinking raw milk could
be potentially dangerous: we pasteurise the drink for
good reason, to kill microbes that could cause serious
disease, like tuberculosis, Salmonella and E coli.
In a nutshell? Before you risk a nasty infection, you
might want to wait for the evidence to match the
extravagant claims.
The food: Eggs
The fear: A heart-attack in a shell.
The facts: Like full-fat milk, eggs were once thought to
cake our arteries in cholesterol and increase the risk of
heart disease. There may be some truth in these claims,
but provided you are otherwise healthy, eating up to
seven eggs a week seems to come with no ill-
consequences.
In a nutshell? Besides the risk of flatulence and
constipation, eggs are a safe and valuable source of
protein.
The food: “Diet” soft drinks
The fear: Artificial sweeteners can contribute to cancer
risk.
The facts: We already know that too much sugar leads
to obesity, diabetes and heart disease – but what about
the artificial sweeteners we add to “diet” drinks to try
to lessen the impact? One common fear is that they
promote the growth of tumours. But as Claudia
Hammond recently explained on BBC Future, the risks
may have been exaggerated; a vast study conducted by
the US National Cancer Institute found no increase in
the risk of brain cancer, leukaemia or lymphoma in
people consuming aspartame, the most common
sweeteners, and the same seems to be true for other
sugar alternatives. There is, however, a chance that
they might contribute to glucose intolerance, and type
2 diabetes – though it has yet to be proven.
(Incidentally, Hammond has also punctured the idea
that the bubbles in soft drinks are themselves a hazard,
debunking claims that it could harm your stomach and
weaken your bones.)
In a nutshell? Artificial sweeteners may be the lesser of
two evils – they may carry some risks, but are still
healthier than the full-sugar alternatives.
Bbc
David Robson is BBC Future’s feature writer.
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