diet myth #2: red meat is bad for you

Charcoal Cow Butchery Diagram

There is a big push for us to eat less meat, especially red meat.  There are some reasons why this is the recommendation, but not all red meat deserves a bad rap!

The Bad News: Red meat, in general, has more saturated fat than other more lean meats. In fact, red meat is the 2nd biggest contributor to saturated fat in the American diet (behind cheese!).  Saturated fat leads to many health problems, including cardiovascular disease. There have also been studies that correlate people who eat more red meat in their diet to higher risks of both disease and cancer (although this has not been scientifically proven, yet). 

nutrient rich beef

The Good News: Red meat has a ton of nutritional benefits.  For starters, it's a complete protein (which means it contains all of the essential amino acids your body needs).  Additionally, because they are from an animal source, many of the vitamins and minerals obtained by eating red meat are absorbed more easily than their vegetable counterparts. 

diet myth #1: food combining

Top 10 Secrets...

It wouldn't surprise anyone to hear that my classes spend time talking about current dieting techniques or "fad diets."  There are plenty of diets with outrageous requirements, like the watermelon diet or the grapefruit diet, but there are some that seem to work.  For example, Kate Middleton has famously lost weight on the high protein Dukan diet.  Food combining seems to be in this group of diets that appears to work, but like any diet, there are flaws.


The premise of the food combining diet is that foods are optimally digested in specific combinations.  The theory is that the stomach releases enzymes, either acidic or basic, depending on the food ingested.  However, if you eat food that requires both acidic and basic enzymes (ie. chicken with rice), the released enzymes will neutralize one another, thus making food hard to digest (slowing your metabolism and causing stomach pain).  By eating food in the "right" combinations, proponents of this diet say that you will increase your metabolism, lose weight, and ultimately feel better.  Here is a chart of the combinations and rules, but basically- there are 3 groups of foods: proteins, starches, and "neutral foods" like seeds and nuts. You can only eat a protein with neutral food or a carb with neutral food, but neither can be eaten together.  Further, fruit must be eaten in isolation.  (There are many rules, and I am dramatically generalizing it- please feel free to read about this diet on your own!!)