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According to new research by food scientists, foods like peanut butter, avocado, eggs, coffee, and mushrooms may not be as bad for your diet as once perceived. In fact, scientists have discovered redeeming qualities in all of the aforementioned foods.
Peanut Butter
Peanut butter is fatty and high in calories, right? Right, but studies show that eating peanuts can lower the risk of coronary heart disease and lower cholesterol. In addition to that, these benefits don’t correlate with the expected weight gain from eating a diet rich in fatty foods.
Avocado
Like peanut butter, avocados have too much fat in them to be healthy, right? Wrong. The fat in avocados is the best kind for you (monounsaturated). This is a nice fact, but what researchers are really excited about is that avocados contain many anti-oxidants that help prevent cancer. Also, avocados seem to help the body absorb other anti-cancer chemicals found in the foods commonly served together with avocados such as lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes.
Eggs
The health benefits that you get from eggs aren’t worth the negative effects that come with their cholesterol, right? Not so fast…It seems that eggs contain chemicals that have been shown to improve memory and decrease the chance of developing macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness. Also, eggs are relatively low calorie, nutrient rich, high protein foods that are easy to incorporate into any diet.
Coffee
Coffee doesn’t do anything for you but keep you awake, right? Actually the health benefits from consuming some of the many chemicals found in coffee seem to outweigh the detriments associated with the caffeine found in coffee. In fact, new research seems to suggest that coffee can improve memory, increase efficiency, and reduce the risk of developing type II diabetes.
Mushrooms
Actually, I never knew that mushrooms had a bad nutritional rap. Supposedly, they’re a low calorie, nutrient poor food. However, lab reports on mushrooms suggest that they improve immune function and decrease tumor sizes of some cancers. And the very latest research suggest that fungi are the only source of a newly discovered anti-oxidant called L-ergothioneine. I sure hope that if I get cancer it isn’t best fought with L-ergothioneine because I sure hate mushrooms.
J.D.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Eric Nagel // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:01 am
I’m glad to see some of my favorite foods are on this list: PB, eggs, and coffee!
I used to go through at least 6 eggs / day. 4 at breakfast (2 whites, 2 whole) and at least 2 hardboiled (whites only) for snacks during the day.
As for coffee, nothing beats Tim Horton’s
2 liz // Jan 11, 2008 at 8:26 am
Be careful about the pb though. Usually extra “modified oils” and fats are added and so are other sugars and preservatives. But a good quality one (where the ingredient list says: peanuts, maybe salt) is FANTASTIC!
3 Sara // Jan 11, 2008 at 9:17 am
Yeah, there’s a big difference between organic peanut butter or fresh-ground peanut butter and the brands we’re all used to eating like Jif. They have tons of high-fructose corn syrup and added sugar… not good. The “low-fat” versions usually have extra sugar. They may look weird (the oil separates when it sits in the jar), but organic peanut butter or fresh-ground peanut butter is they way to go.
4 J.D. // Jan 11, 2008 at 10:15 am
I am a recent convert to raw peanut butter. I love it. Kris just bought two big jars of JIF on sale, but I don’t plan to touch them. I have two favorite peanut butters:
* Trader Joe’s has a peanut butter made from Valencia peanuts. It does have added salt, but I don’t care. I’m not salt-sensitive. And it tastes so damn good!
* At Bob’s Red Mill, a local natural foods store, I actually grind my own peanut butter. They have a hopper filled with plain peanuts. I turn a switch, and this machine grinds the peanuts to a gooey paste. This stuff is good, too, but has no salt.
I’m actually hoping to do a “whole grain bread” face-off in the near future. It’d make a great companion to the peanut butter worship…
5 metroknow // Jan 11, 2008 at 3:17 pm
To further the cause for eggs, there is a huge amount of data that suggests that cholesterol levels in blood are barely if at all affected by egg consumption. Here’s one link on it: http://www.unisci.com/stories/20014/1029013.htm
Of course, all things in moderation is the key, but the old advice on eggs (and avocados - YES!) is apparently simply not true.
6 Mr. Nickle // Jan 11, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Real peanut butter is available at most grocery stores. It’s the stuff with the oil floating on top, which you have to mix in when you open it. The ingredients should only be peanuts and salt (and maybe honey). The other kind of peanut butter is loaded with crap that will kill you (like partially hydrogenated oil). After I started eating real peanut butter, I loved it, and I’d never want to go back to eating the other kind, as it doesn’t taste nearly as good, and it doesn’t have the same gooey texture I’ve come to love.
7 Asithi from Small Steps to Health // Jan 12, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Have you read the “Abs Diet?” Some of these food are listed under their 12 power diet food that you can eat as much as you want without limitation. I don’t remember if they say you can eat peanut butter frequently or occasionally.
8 greenman2001 // Jan 13, 2008 at 8:33 pm
First they’re bad, now they’re good. That’s a relief, I suppose — until the wheel turns again and they’re found to be “bad”, or a different group thought to be “good” are shown to be “bad.” I’d suggest to you that this way of looking at food creates more problems than it solves, especially for guys like you and me, because it makes eating properly less automatic, and the more we hesitate to sate ourselves when hungry, the more likely we are to make a poor choice. When I’m hungry, I tend to pull in the calories closest to me, regardless of what the latest study shows or what I “know” to be true about it’s value.
Nutriotionists may not agree for very long whether an avocado is healthy, but what they do agree on is that eating omnivorously from across the spectrum of whole, unprocessed foods, including lots and lots of fruit and vegetables, is unreservedly healthy. This requires no thought, although it does require time. (That means peanuts instead of peanut butter. As the comments here show, peanut butter — once “bad”, now “good”, is still a veritable minefield of “bad” additives — salt! sugar! modified oils !– that require careful thought and consideration before consuming.)
If you’re going to lose weight, consuming the correct number of calories in the form of healthy food has to be as automatic as consuming too many calories has been for you up until now. You didn’t stop to think, “I need to polish off that bag of Fritos if I’m going to push my way through to 211 pounds,” did you?
In your Get Rich Slowly blog, you have a guest posting this week about automating your finances. We take it for granted that automating important tasks in our lives is a smart thing to do. But when it comes to healthy living, we believe the opposite: eating and exercising are contests between willpower and impulse, and I only hope I have the willpower to overcome my impulses! I suggest to you that there’s a way of approaching the food you eat that makes the question of whether mushrooms are “good” or “bad” completely irrelevant.
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