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Who hasn't heard that bread is fattening, you shouldn't eat citrus fruits after drinking milk or legumes have lots of iron. These refrains are heard so often that no one questions their veracity and they are viewed as nutritional dogma. However, although a clich� or myth does tend to have some element of truth, in these and other cases reality is another thing altogether.

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One example is the idea that there are good foods and bad foods, healthy and unhealthy.
No food in and of itself is harmful for the body, unless it is rotten. But there are in fact diets that are inadequate or unbalanced. In other words, the combination of foods making up these diets is wrong, so that either through excess or shortage of some nutrients, they are bad for your health.

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Eggs tend to be included in this division between good and bad. Some time ago they were labeled as awful for the liver-a legend that has no basis in fact. Eggs can be hard to digest depending on how they are cooked. They have a high fat content, especially in the yoke, which stimulates secretion of bile. But these effects can only cause problems if you have gallstones. It is also said of eggs that you should not eat them if your cholesterol is high. What you should not do is eat too many eggs. Other foods rich in saturated fats (cold cuts, pastries and sharp cheese) are much worse for you than eggs. If you eat them three times a week, there is no reason for them to raise your blood cholesterol level.

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Another food product surrounded by myths is milk. Some say the best milk is that fresh out of the cow. Far to the contrary, milk should be subjected to technical procedures that assure it is harmless so as to avoid diseases such as Malta fever. In the same way, perish the idea that it is wrong to eat an orange after drinking milk. The stated reasoning for this is that the milk can curdle. Well, regardless of whether we eat an orange, tangerine or lemon after drinking a glass of milk, the latter is going to curdle anyway as soon as it reaches the stomach and comes into contact with the gastric juices.

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And what about bread? If you listen to the way people talk, you'd think bread is responsible for all of the world's weight problems. Bread is a complex carbohydrate, a kind of macro-nutrient which, according to many studies, is less fattening than fats because when the body needs energy the first thing it does is burn carbohydrates. Here again we must talk about nutrition because abuse is never a good idea. Another falsehood about bread is that toast is less fattening than fresh bread. Toasting the bread just removes water, not calories. And if you are counting calories, most are in the crust, not the soft part of the loaf. And whole-wheat bread is not less fattening than regular bread. What it does is fill you up quicker because of its higher fiber content. This means you eat less of it, and that obviously helps you watch your weight.

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And not even lentils contain a lot of iron. They don't lack it, but as with spinach, they contain a substance that hinders its absorption. To the contrary, other foods like tomatoes
or Brussels sprouts do just the opposite, facilitating the arrival of iron to the blood. Still within the world of vegetables and their myths, there is the widely held idea that there is nothing like fresh vegetables. This is true as long as the vegetables are in fact fresh. If not, it is best to eat them frozen because they have been processed as soon as they were picked and that is the best guarantee that they conserve their nutrients.

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And carrots do not improve your sight, as much as you might want to think they do. They can help your night vision if you have some problem with it that is caused by a lack of vitamin A. Carrots are rich in it. If you don't have this problem, munching on loads of carrots is not going to enhance your visual acumen.

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Another common myth is that it is best not to drink liquids with meals. This is truly only if you have a sluggish appetite because the beverage takes up space in the stomach and reduces the desire to eat. Aside from these cases, ingesting food and liquid simultaneously facilitates digestion and the action of fiber. And as for the belief that coffee is bad for hypertension, there are all kinds nuances. Coffee consumed in moderation is diuretic, a bronchial dilator, a stimulant for the central nervous system and not ruled out for people with high blood pressure. But what you should moderate as much as possible, and sometimes eliminate from your diet, is salt.

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To finish off, let's talk about dessert. Often we hear that ice cream helps digestion and is comforting after a big meal. This is true when it is made from lemon because the citric acids boost the working of the gall bladder and encourages digestion. Other kinds of sorbet or ice cream have no known nutritional benefit.