2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:20
You are among those who jump out of bed enthusiastically to have breakfast with a good dose of granola, convinced that you have started the day in the best way, that is, with a nutritious, rich but above all healthy breakfast?
Well, you got it all wrong.
Yes, because granola, the breakfast with the name of birdseed that Italians like more and more, is actually a bin.
And who says it is the New York Times, no less.
The newspaper, after the Food and Drug Administration - the US government body that regulates food and pharmaceutical products - decided to review the health standards of the foods most commonly consumed by Americans, submitted to the scrutiny of a large group of nutritionists and also to a large sample of common consumers 52 different types of food.
He asked everyone for an opinion on how much these foods can be considered healthy and beneficial for our health or, on the contrary, unhealthy and harmful.
Well, one of the more curious facts is that granola has been considered extremely healthy for more than 70% of Americans, but it has been degraded to a mass of sugars - added, moreover - by more than two thirds of nutritionists, and therefore not as healthy as the population instead imagines.
And here, it must be recognized that the readers of Dissapore, as we had seen from the comments to our posts on homemade granola, did not fall for it: good, energetic, also very trendy and with an undisputed US charm, but certainly not so healthy. as the fame that surrounds it would lead us to believe.
But the research has highlighted other very interesting aspects.
If the muesli follows more or less the same fate as granola, and is considered healthy by consumers but much less by nutritionists, as is the frozen yogurt or i Slim Fast model healthy drinks, just not to mention names, on the other hand there are foods, indeed, super foods that all experts agree in considering real health concentrates, while instead they are snubbed by the average American.
The most illustrious victim of this misunderstanding? There quinoa.
Super food so beneficial that it even becomes the object of satire (again in the States, we remember) is practically ignored by the sample of American consumers.
And so too tofu, Hummus, sushi, foods in the lead for their health virtues in the ranking of nutritionists, as well as i shrimps, for a long time considered carriers of harmful cholesterol and now re-evaluated, and even wine: all foods to which the sample of consumers does not recognize the same beneficial virtues that nutrition experts give them.
The fault, the research continues, seems to lie in the "novelty" of many of these foods, in the recent introduction of the same in the diet of the average American. As if to say, let's do a research in another twenty years and quinoa will have sprung up at the top of the minds of consumers as a healthy food. We will see, then, if the quinoa will resist the onslaught of time: we at Dissapore will be here (hopefully) to update you on time!
Then there are foods that nutritionists and consumers find in agreement; that is to say the foods that no one doubts about the positive effects on our organism and which turn out to be old knowledge: cabbages, spinach, egg, olive oil, almonds, oats, oranges, carrots, White meat Which chicken And Turkey, apples And bread or Whole grains.
While they all equally agree that there - also dietetics - French fries, chocolate cookies, ice creams And bacon are, alas, as good as they are harmful to our health, as well as, although not exactly on the same level as the previous ones, Pizza, beer, Hamburger, craker various White bread.
But there are also foods that are in a gray area, poor people, in a kind of limbo, foods that divide both experts and consumers, foods that no one really knows whether to include among the completely good or completely bad, and in fact they settle down. all on median values (although slightly rehabilitated by nutritionists compared to the past); as if to say, in uncertainty, we are in the middle which does not hurt.
These are foods like popcorn (!), pork chops, whole milk, butter, Red meat, peanut butter And cheese exclusively " Cheddar"(It is not clear why only this precise type of cheese, among other things quite unknown in Italy, entered the sample of representative foods, but so be it).
Such foods, especially red meat and chops, for years they have been considered by nutritionists to be too rich in saturated fats and harmful to the heart, while recent studies are much less categorical and tend to restore the right dignity to fats and proteins in our diet.
Slightly healthier than these are corn, baked potatoes, canned tuna, skimmed milk.
In short, what emerges from this survey is, in the end, a great confusion, both for nutritionists, committed to updating their knowledge based on changed food standards, and for consumers who would like to eat healthy but not they know more where to turn.
So much so that, at the end of the fair, they decide to give up experts and nutritionists and rely on good old Google.
In fact, a simple survey was tried. That is, Google was asked which foods have been most researched regarding the beneficial effects on our health (through the question "Is it - the name of the food, for example" quinoa "- healthy?").
And what were the results?
Well, the food that most of the Google searches have been done for, the food that most Americans are undecided about whether to consider healthy or evil was … the sushi! Sushi, this stranger!
But in good company, anyway: sushi is immediately followed by Hummus and then, true obsession of the Americans, again since pop corn and from peanut butter, it's still cous cous, oatmeal, tofu but above all, with great surprise, who do we find in eighth place? We find her: her, the Nutella!
The unsuspecting Americans wonder about her, oceans of questions about her, perhaps in the hope of finding the desired answer: "healthy", healthy, good benefits.
But then, average American, okay you don't know that granola is a can full of sugar, okay you don't know that quinoa is a powerhouse of virtue, but even twisting your finger in the sore and deliberately hurting yourself by asking silly questions to Google about the healthy virtues of our comfort food par excellence, the sweet, greasy and heavenly Nutella.
Then it really means that either you are a masochist, or you are a chicken!
So, you deserve to eat granola, moreover convinced of its excellent virtues, while we Italians will continue to eat our sweet and rich Nutella in peace, equally aware of its beneficial effects on our good mood.