How do you know if what you eat is healthy? Sometimes it’s not easy, because there are many interests that can mislead you. More and more dietitians, nutritionists and doctors are speaking out against habits that we take as well, but which, in reality, are not. What happens is that we have long been told that foods like wine is healthy or we need to take dairy because we need calcium in our diet. However, some of these recommendations are now outdated. For example, wine is alcohol and, according to many experts, the amount of heart-healthy substances it can contain is not enough to assume the risk of ingesting a poison 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 calcium needs in the diet with other foods that have not been excluded, for example, from the prestigious paradigm “Harvard dish” of how to eat healthy, at 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 Sea, but the traditional one, that is, that of our grandparents.
And this is how Dr. Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, a great expert in the Mediterranean diet and one of the most prestigious professionals, explains it to us. The specialist, epidemiologist, researcher and professor at the University of Navarra, published the book “What are you eating?’ (Ed. Planet), a manual that teaches us to understand why it is so important to maintain good habits, to detect food pranks and to recognize the tricks they use to manipulate us and we end up eating foods that are not really healthy.
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Healthy Mediterranean diet
The specialist awarded HELLO! an interview in which he gives us the simplest and most reliable guidelines to start, once and for all, eating healthier. The specialist, a staunch supporter of the Mediterranean diet, urges us to eat real food. And how to distinguish them? With something as simple as looking at the label. Foods that we should always include in our diet are those that do not include, for example, fruits, vegetables, legumes, etc. And if we consume products with a label, let’s look at the list of ingredients, which reflects the ones it contains from the largest to the smallest. For example, Dr. Martínez-González indicates that 70% by 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 meat and replacing it with lean meat or, better yet, fish. Of course, when it comes to eating fruit, it is better to be whole. And, preferably, three servings a day. When cooking, we must 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. Like walnuts, they are not recommended and are also satisfactory foods.
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“No miracle” of miraculous diets
In this regard, the specialist is very blunt and insists on running away from any promise that guarantees weight loss in record time or with unorthodox methods. All that these dietary “guidelines” can accomplish is to make us lose weight fast and badly, promoting the effect of recovery, in addition to the problems it can cause in our health. The best thing, he points out, is to go back to our grandparents’ diet, the true Mediterranean.
The author of the book “What do you eat?” It invites us to reflect on our shopping cart and try to make sure that ultra-processed, packaged foods with many ingredients and many chemical additives are not “our daily bread” and limit them to very sporadic situations. He gives an example of pizza as a food that “made us believe” that it is healthy, when in reality it is not.
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The trick to drinking wine in moderation
And we come to the subject of wine, thorny for many, but clear for many experts who do not ignore what it really is: an alcoholic beverage. It is true that it is linked to our tradition, which invites us to socialize, another “ingredient” of that Mediterranean style so praised for so many years. However, according to the specialist, it is not so true that wine reduces cardiovascular risk. And his recommendation is: if you do not have heart problems: zero alcohol.
But he invites you to drink coffee, no matter if it is decaffeinated or decaffeinated, because it points out that there is a lot of epidemiological evidence that coffee reduces death from cardiovascular disease, reduces diabetes, prolongs life and I would encourage people to drink coffee.
The teacher also refers to the egg, a demonized food, but healthy and highly recommended. So much so that we could even eat eggs every day. And like these “false truths,” there are more.
If you want to know ten great lies to which Dr. Ángel Martínez-González refers, keep reading.
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