How do you know if what you eat is healthy? Sometimes it’s not easy, because there are so many interests to confuse you. More and more dietitians, nutritionists and doctors are raising their voices against some habits that we take for granted but which in reality are not. What happens, is that for a long time we have been told that foods like wine are healthy, or we need to take dairy because we need calcium in our diet. However, some of these recommendations are already obsolete. For example, wine is alcohol and, according to many experts, the amount of heart-healthy substances it may contain are not enough for us to take the risk of ingesting a toxicant such as an alcoholic beverage.
As for dairy products, it is true that they contain calcium. But also some nuts, vegetables, sardines … in short, we can meet the needs of calcium in the diet with other foods that have not been excluded, to give an example, of the prestigious ‘Harvard dish’ paradigm of how to eat sa, from Harvard University, in the United States. Therefore, we can answer the question of how to eat healthy: follow a healthy diet, such as the Mediterranean, but the traditional one, that is, that of our grandparents.
And so Dr. Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, a great expert on the Mediterranean diet and one of the most prestigious professionals. The specialist, epidemiologist, researcher and professor at the University of Navarra, has published the book ‘What do you eat? ‘(Ed. Planeta), a handbook that teaches us to understand why it’s so important to maintain good habits, to spot rumors in food, and to recognize the ploys they use to manipulate us and end up eating food that isn’t truly healthy.
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The Mediterranean diet is healthy
The specialist has granted HELLO! an interview in which he gives us the simplest and most reliable guidelines for starting, once and for all, to eat healthier. The specialist, a staunch supporter of the Mediterranean diet, urges us to consume real food. And how to distinguish them? With something as simple as looking at the label. The foods that we should always include in our diet are those that do not carry it, for example, the fruits, vegetables, legumes, Etc. And if we consume products with a label, look at the list of ingredients, which reflects from highest to lowest those it contains. To give an example, Dr. Martínez-González indicates that 70% of the weight of soluble cocoa is sugar. And we already know that this ingredient should be anecdotal in our healthy diet.
He also recommends eliminating red meats and replacing them with lean meats, or rather fish. Of course, when it comes to eating fruit, you better be whole. And preferably, three servings a day. When we cook, we should do it with extra virgin olive oil without fear of gaining weight because studies on this food indicate otherwise. That is, it does not contribute to weight gain. Just as nuts do, highly recommended foods and also satiating.
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The ‘no miracle’ of miracle diets
As for these, the specialist is very forceful and insists on fleeing from any promise to guarantee losing pounds in record time or with unorthodox methods. All these food ‘guidelines’ can achieve is to make us lose weight fast and badly, leading to the rebound effect, in addition to the problems it can cause in our health. The best thing, he emphasizes, is to return to the diet of our grandparents, the Mediterranean for real.
The author of the book ‘What do you eat?’ invites us to reflect on our shopping cart and try to make ultraprocessed, packaged foods with many ingredients and many chemical additives not our ‘everyday bread’ and limit them to very sporadic situations. He cites pizza as a food that has ‘made us believe’ that it is healthy, when in fact it is not.
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The trick of drinking wine in moderation
And we come to the subject of wine, thorny for many, but clear to many experts who don’t overlook what it really is: an alcoholic beverage. It is true that it is linked to our tradition, which invites socialization, another ‘ingredient’ of this Mediterranean style so praised for so many years. However, according to the specialist it is not so true that wine reduces cardiovascular risk. And their recommendation is: if you have no heart problem: zero alcohol.
But it does invite coffee, whether it’s caffeinated or decaffeinated, as it points out that there’s a lot of epidemiological evidence that coffee reduces death from cardiovascular disease, reduces diabetes, prolongs life, and I would encourage people to consume coffee.
The professor also alludes to the egg, a demonized but healthy food and highly recommended. So much so that we could even eat egg every day. And how these ‘false truths’ are more.
If you want to know the ten great lies to which Dr. Ángel Martínez-González alludes, Keep reading.
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