Common food myths, checked by a nurse who lived one

Most food myths hold a grain of truth, which is why they last. That eggs raise your cholesterol, coffee dries you out, brown bread is wholemeal and you should poo every day are all still everywhere, and UK guidance disagrees with every one. The first myth below is one I believed about my own body for years.

Is feeling bloated and tired something you have to live with?

No, and this is the one I lived. Bloating, constipation, reflux, brain fog, tiredness, bad skin, thinning hair: I had the lot, and I thought that was who I was.

It isn’t a personality. Feeling bloated regularly is a reason to see a GP, and so is still feeling bloated after you’ve tried changing your diet. Bloating with weight loss you can’t explain, or with blood in your poo, needs a GP too.

Do eggs raise your cholesterol?

For most people, not by much. My mum watched me crack three eggs one morning and asked whether I was worried about my cholesterol. It’s a fair question with an outdated answer.

An egg yolk does contain cholesterol, around 180mg in a medium egg. But for most people, the cholesterol in food has a much smaller effect on the cholesterol in your blood than was once thought, and saturated fat has a much bigger one. There’s currently no recommended limit on how many eggs you should eat, and for most adults one or two a day is unlikely to be a problem as part of a balanced diet.

What you cook them with matters more than the egg. Boiled, poached, or cooked in a little vegetable oil is fine. Butter, cream, bacon, sausages and fried bread bring the saturated fat. If you have familial hypercholesterolaemia, an inherited condition that pushes cholesterol up, talk to your GP or dietitian about eggs.

Does coffee dehydrate you?

No. Water, lower fat milk and lower sugar drinks, tea and coffee included, all count towards the 6 to 8 cups or glasses of fluid a day the government suggests. The simplest check isn’t counting glasses at all: most people should aim to drink enough that their pee is a clear pale yellow.

Caffeine is a separate matter. Some people are more sensitive to it than others, and its effects can last up to 7 hours, which is worth knowing if your last cup is at four in the afternoon. There’s more in do I need to give up coffee for my gut.

Do you need to poo every day?

No. Constipation means you haven’t had a poo at least 3 times in the last week, or you’re going less often than is usual for you, often with poo that’s hard, lumpy or a strain to pass. Going every other day without any trouble sits outside that definition.

The thing to watch is a change from your own normal. Needing to poo more or less often than is usual for you, or softer poo, diarrhoea or constipation that isn’t usual for you, is a reason to see a GP.

Do you need to cleanse your gut?

No. Your liver, kidneys, gut and skin remove waste all day and all night, and no pill, tea, patch or lotion does the job better. Teas sold for cleansing tend to work as laxatives, which carries its own risk. I’ve gone into the three and seven day plans in does a gut reset work.

Does it matter what time you eat?

For heartburn, it can. The advice for heartburn and acid reflux includes not eating within 3 or 4 hours before bed, along with eating smaller, more frequent meals. Lying down is one of the times symptoms tend to be worse, so a large plate at ten at night and an early bedtime is a combination worth avoiding if reflux is your problem.

Shift work makes this harder than it sounds. If you work nights, bedtime might be nine in the morning, and the hours to keep light are the ones before that, whatever the clock says.

Six more, quickly

The probiotic row deserves more than one line, and it gets it in should I take a gut health supplement.

Why do food myths stick?

Partly because so much of what we pick up about food comes from packets and headlines, and both are written to sell. On every ward I worked, I can’t remember a doctor sitting down with a patient to talk about what they ate. If the people looking after you never raise it, the packet does the teaching.

The back of the pack is where most of these get settled: the ingredients list, the fibre per 100g, the word wholemeal or its absence. If you’d like to see how many you’d catch, the label test quiz takes a few minutes.