Often those who turn to the nutritionist tend to ask questions dictated by false beliefs and rumors: here are the 10 that should be avoided.
Lose weight in a healthy and correct way it is a process that requires effort, patience and determination. To obtain lasting results that do not harm your health, the right solution is always to rely on an expert or a nutritionist. In fact, only a professional can have the necessary skills to establish the most suitable food plan according to the specific case.
It often happens that patients ask these figures rather abstruse questions because they derive from urban legends or fake news. The Corriere della Sera asked five nutrition experts which questions should be avoided because they are clearly based on outlandish and unfounded theories.
Diet, what should never be asked of the nutritionist: the most wrong questions ever
Let’s start with a couple of rather popular questions answered by nutritionist Laura Rossi, researcher at the Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Economics Analysis (CREA Alimenti e Nutrizione):
1.I want to lose weight immediately, how can I do it? “The possible advantage of a drastic attack action decided together with a specialist can sometimes be that of triggering a motivational boost to then follow a diet therapy. In general, however, the only way to slim down in a healthy way and not regain all the weight lost is to lose 1-2 kg per month”.
2.Why can’t I drink alcoholic beverages? “All alcoholic beverages are not necessary to meet nutritional requirements, they provide so-called empty calories. A glass of wine (75 g) has about 140 kcal, a glass of beer (250 g) about 90, a small glass (40 ml) of spirits at 30 degrees 120″.
Dr. Stefano Erzegovesi, nutritionist and psychiatrist answers two other very frequent and equally wrong questions:
3. Could it be because of the thyroid that I can’t lose weight? It is a false myth because, as the expert explains, it arises from the fact that people suffering from hypothyroidism tend to lose weight considerably. “The majority of those who fail to lose weight have very healthy thyroids. Therefore, there is no need to “kick” a healthy thyroid with more or less exotic products (often based on iodine) or, even worse, with extracts or thyroid hormones if you want to lose weight”.
4. I didn’t go to the bathroom so I didn’t lose weight today? Since feces are basically made up of fibres, water and intestinal bacteria, taking a laxative is useless because “the scale that drops is an effect of dehydration and not of weight loss”.
Here are three questions, including two of the most classic ones about pasta, erroneously considered a bitter enemy of all diets, answered by Roberto Mele, coordinator of the Biology of Nutrition area of the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.
5. Does pasta in the evening make you fat? “It depends on the doses, the quality of the product, the weekly habits, the presence of other nutrients. There are no fattening or slimming foods as such, there are foods with a higher or lower energy concentration”.
6. Is long pasta better for the figure? Although it is true that long pasta shapes have a lower glycemic index than short ones, “the difference is made by the dose, the frequency and the lifestyle, whether at the table or not”.
7. Is it normal to have lost/gained some weight since yesterday? “The variation in weight in 24 hours is typically due to changes in the water compartment: an opera singer, at the end of a concert, can find himself even 3 kg lighter due to profuse sweating”
We now come to two questions addressed to the nutritionist Andrea Ghiselli, former president of the Italian Society of Food Sciences:
8. What are the foods richest in…? “Regardless of the type of food, the question ‘Which foods are richest in…’ indicates the failure of all food education commitments, because every food has been ‘molecularised’. […] We have turned the real food lifestyle upside down, i.e. eating in a varied and balanced way, choosing unprocessed and mainly vegetable foods”.
9. What is spinach good for? “It is true that iron is present (2.9 mg every 100 g raw), but it is absorbed in lesser quantities than in meat”.
Finally, what everyone has asked themselves at least once in their life but which represents an erroneous question:
10. Why is it not possible to lose weight without giving up? As Anna Villarini, nutritionist biologist and professor in the Department of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Perugia explains, the foods richest in fat and sugar are those that create addiction. “A healthy diet is rich in many more foods than an unhealthy diet, it is not monotonous, it can change with each meal”.