Desert Luxury Realty
Deciphering facts from fiction about food can be a hard task these days, with multiple contradicting online sources. Can you eat eggs if you have high cholesterol? How long can leftovers stay refrigerated and still be eaten? These and many other food myths often haunt us when we’re raiding the kitchen at midnight.
Here’s our no-fluff breakdown of the biggest food myths debunked.
Myth: Eating eggs will increase your cholesterol.
Fact: According to Cooking Light magazine, eggs do not have much to do with the body’s cholesterol. Like most animal-based foods, eggs do have dietary cholesterol, but they will not greatly raise your blood’s cholesterol levels. Rather, what increases your blood cholesterol levels are saturated and trans fats, found in highly processed and fatty foods. As a comparison, one egg contains about 1.5 grams of saturated fat, while a single tablespoon of butter has more than 11.5 grams of saturated fat. Replacing butter with an alternative like olive oil would be a much smarter decision than skipping out on scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Myth: Organic foods have more nutrients than nonorganic.
Fact: While the increase in organic and sustainable farming is a great thing for workers, livestock, and the land, the myth that organic foods are more nutritious than conventionally produced foods is false. The results of one study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that there were zero nutritional differences between organic and nonorganic crops and livestock. The biggest concern with nonorganic foods is not nutritional value, but the presence of herbicides and pesticides, and their effect on the soil.
Myth: Never add extra sugar.
Truth: While you should refrain from indulging too much in your sweet tooth, sugar is not inherently bad for you except in excess. You can use natural sweeteners like Agave nectar and raw honey if you’re worried about over-processed foods. But sugar is in fact a great aid in the kitchen: it lowers the acidity of spaghetti or marinara sauce, makes that tart grapefruit or berry more palatable, and increases your enjoyment of more nutritional foods, like oats, tart fruits, plain yogurts, and juices.
Myth: Leftover are fine so long as they’ve been in the fridge.
Truth: Leftovers are usually fine to eat for up to five days if they’ve been properly refrigerated. If however they’ve been left out at room temperature or hot temperatures for a couple of hours, then it’s not a good idea to keep them - for any amount of time. Bacteria will grow at the slightest encouragement, and that’s typically heat and moisture. When you do store your leftovers in the fridge, mark the containers with today’s date. That way, when you come back two weeks later, you can toss it out knowing it’s too old, rather than accidentally eating it.
