The Worst Lies That Mainstream Nutrition Has Told You

When it comes to our food choices, many of us do the best we can to ensure that what we're putting on our plates are the healthiest and most nutritious foods possible. But given so many choices, it's not easy to know exactly what we should be eating — so we put our trust in conventional wisdom, common sense, and what the experts have to say.

But what if the experts are wrong? A lot of the science is now showing that many commonly held beliefs about what a healthy diet should look like are utterly wrong. Here are the top 11 biggest lies, myths, and misconceptions told to us by mainstream nutrition.

1. Eggs Are Unhealthy

There's one thing that nutrition professionals have had remarkable success with...and that is demonizing incredibly healthy foods.

The worst example of that is eggs, which happen to contain a large amount of cholesterol and were therefore believed to increase the risk of heart disease.

But recently it has been proven that the cholesterol in your diet doesn't really raise the cholesterol in blood. In fact, eggs primarily raise the "good" cholesterol and are NOT associated with increased risk of heart disease (1, 2).

What we're left with is one of the most nutritious foods on the planet. They're high in all sorts of nutrients along with unique antioxidants that protect our eyes (3).

To top it all of, despite being a "high fat" food, eggs are proven to cause significant weight loss, compared to bagels, as a breakfast food (4, 5).

Bottom Line: Eggs do not cause heart disease and are among the most nutritious foods on the planet. Eggs for breakfast can help you lose weight.

2. Saturated Fat is Bad For You

A few decades ago it was decided that the epidemic of heart disease was caused by eating too much fat, in particular saturated fat.

This was based on highly flawed studies and political decisions that have now been proven to be completely wrong.

A massive review article published in 2010 looked at 21 prospective epidemiological studies with a total of 347,747 subjects. Their results: absolutely no association between saturated fat and heart disease (6).

The idea that saturated fat raised the risk of heart disease was an unproven theory that somehow became conventional wisdom (7).

Eating saturated fat raises the amount of HDL (the "good") cholesterol in the blood and changes the LDL from small, dense LDL (very bad) to Large LDL, which is benign (8, 9).

Meat, coconut oil, cheese, butter… there is absolutely no reason to fear these foods.

Bottom Line: Newer studies have proven that saturated fat does not cause heart disease. Natural foods that are high in saturated fat are good for you.

3. Everybody Should be Eating Grains

The idea that humans should be basing their diets on grains has never made sense.