10 Food Habits Nutritionists Wish You’d Give Up
Cooking gluten-free everything
People with celiac disease or a gluten allergy, sensitivity, or intolerance should limit or eliminate gluten. If you aren’t part of that group, however, remember that there isn’t evidence a gluten-free lifestyle will make you healthier or help you lose weight, according to Malina Malkani, MS, RDN, CDN. Although a gluten-free diet can absolutely be healthy and complete, removing gluten unnecessarily makes it harder to get enough fiber, vitamins, and minerals the body needs to thrive since many of these micronutrients are in grains that contain gluten, says Malkani, a media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. So don’t assume that a gluten-free recipe or food is automatically healthier than one that contains gluten.
Adding salt before taste testing
Put down the salt shaker and pick up your spoon. Sollid wishes people would taste their food before blindly adding more salt. “While salt adds great flavor, some dishes don’t need extra,” he says. “Keep your sodium intake in check by following expert chef advice: salt to taste.” Chefs also use these 10 cooking tricks that they only teach in culinary schools.
Avoiding fruit because of sugar
Don’t get into the habit of avoiding fruit because it contains too much sugar, Malkani says. The body doesn’t digest the naturally occurring sugar in fruit in the same way it does table sugar, so it doesn’t have the same insulin-spiking effects. Unlike refined and processed sugars, fruit contains fiber, which helps slow the absorption of fructose, the main type of sugar found in fruit, into the bloodstream, Malkani explains. “The fiber also contributes to the good bacteria in our intestines, which in turn contributes to better gut health, and it helps us feel fuller longer, which in turn helps us eat fewer calories and better manage our weight,” Malkani says. The nutritional pros of fruit outweigh the cons, so don’t avoid it unless your doctor says otherwise. You can safely add these 10 foods that use to be bad for you, but now aren’t, back into your diet, too.