Random Food Myths (17 items)

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  (#5) Seared Meat Keeps Its Juices In

  It's actually just the opposite. The idea of searing meat to seal in its juice stems from a 19th century experiment conducted using two pieces of meat, one of which had been soaked in water before it was grilled. Naturally, this meat was wetter than the meat that had simply been grilled. In reality, seared meat is actually less moist than grilled meat. If you like the taste of seared meat, that's great and what you should eat - just not for its moistness.
  
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  (#4) Grilling Meat Can Lead to Cancer

  This myth seems to stem from the discovery of small amounts of the chemical acrylamide - a compound used in a number of industrial and manufacturing contexts - in some burned foods. While acrylamide has been linked to nervous system toxicity and fertility issues, you'd have to eat so much grilled meat to have a problem that you'd be dead long before you had any toxicity issues. Not to mention that acrylamide is found naturally in many foods.
  
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  (#3) Eggs Are Full of Cholesterol

  While it's traditional for people with high cholesterol to avoid eggs, it's not necessary, and not really even helpful. Eggs are high in cholesterol, but they have little saturated fat, and no trans fat - along with high quantities of over a dozen vitamins and minerals. And little of the cholesterol in eggs actually makes it into a person's bloodstream. If it's a serious issue for you, avoid the yolks and just eat the whites.
  
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  (#16) Eating Carrots Makes You See Better

  This is a myth created by the World War II era British Ministry of Information to boost public morale by claiming British pilots fending off German bombers could see better because they ate carrots. So war-weary citizens were encouraged to grow carrots to send to the Royal Air Force. They also wanted children to feel like eating vegetables was better than eating sweets, which were strictly rationed.

  Somehow it became common knowledge that eating carrots helped your night vision, but there's really no science behind the claim. Carrots don't make your night vision better.
  
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  (#17) If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It

  This is simplistic chemphobia that became popular thanks to food writer and activist Michael Pollan. In an NPR story from 2008, he advised readers: “Don’t buy products with more than five ingredients or any ingredients you can’t easily pronounce.” Because of this, we've been left with a notion that "chemicals" are always bad, and "natural" things, i.e., free of chemicals, are always good.
   
  But this doesn't take into account that everything is made of chemicals, and that many extremely important chemical compounds, amino acids, and vitamins have long, hard-to-pronounce names. If, for example, you see "Cyanocobalamin" on an ingredients list and avoid it, you're avoiding a form of vitamin B12. Likewise, if "Eicosapentaenoic acid" scares you, you're worried about an omega 3 fatty acid that's good for your brain. Foods should be eaten or avoided based on their nutritional contents, not the number of letters in some of their ingredients.
  
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  (#15) You Should Wash Chicken Before You Cook It

  No, you absolutely should not. The majority of bacteria found on raw chicken is found on its skin. Washing chicken doesn't remove or kill it, it only spreads it around your sink and your kitchen. The way to kill bacteria on chicken is to cook it. Save the washing for your hands for when you touch things after touching chicken.
  

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