Food fads and fallacies in Nigeria..

Food fads and fallacies in Nigeria…Food fads and fallacies examples…

FOOD FADS AND FALLACY ALERT❗❗❗

Two years ago i saw this post written by one “man of God” and online doctor who said that combinning banana and groundnut was very bad for health and could cause kidney, liver problem and all. Chai!!!😂😂😂

Many of his gullible followers were commending him for giving them a great solution to their problem which they never knew.

Being a bit fresh and still very emotional online then, I felt so bad how an unprofessional can deceive others in such a manner just because they had some influence online.

I decided to address the post as a professional even though i lost it at some point. The followers attacked people like me who were being objective enough to question his assertions. They said I should mind how I insult the man because he was a man of God.

I will use the response I gave to that post to teach you what you need to know when you see some of these kind of claims online without any iota of evidence.

As a Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist, let me first of all say that there is no food on earth that has only one nutrient. So all our foods have two or more nutrients in them.

A 100g of Banana contains 27g of Carbohydrate, 1g of protein and 0.3g of fat, calcium 7g, iron 0.5g, Vitamin A100IU while Groundnut contains 27g of protein, 45g of fat, 17g of carbohydrate, 50mg of Calcium.

If you look at the figures closely, you would discover that those two foods complements each other very well which is one of the basics for food combination.

There are different site for metabolism for each nutrient while the digestion for carbohydrate starts in the mouth, that of protein and fat starts in the stomach.

And since no food contains just one nutrient after preparation, this assertion is not evidence based and thus does not make sense at all.

Let’s do a little food biochemistry of Carbohydrate and fats

Banana is a fruit and contains about 22.84g of CHO and 0.33g of fat. Roasted ground nut is grouped under nuts and seeds and contains about 36.11g of CHO and 45.60g fat (Nig Fd Comp Table, 2017; West Africa Fd Comp Table, 2012).

When food is consumed, the different nutrients in the food are digested in the different parts of the GIT. The digestion of both Carbohydrate and fats take place majorly in the small intestine.

Carbohydrate digestion is halted in the stomach by the stomach acid but in the small intestine the pancreatic amylase breakdown the poly & disaccharides to monosaccharides that are absorbed.

On the other hand fat in the small intestine triggers the release of the hormone CCK which signals the gall bladder to release it’s store of bile for emusification of fat.

The emulsified fat is then acted upon by pancreatic and intestinal lipase to produce monoglycerides, glycerol and fatty acids which are then absorbed. With all these processes I don’t know where you got his own biochemistry.

All i’m saying in summary is as follows:

✅ No food has just one particular nutrient. We have more than just one nutrient in every food.

✅ Food combination is not bad. And so combining banana and groundnut is not a wrong combination. Variety is always a beauty.

✅ An individual’s experience does not need to be generalized. Our system at peculiar to us.

✅ Digestion of food and absorption of nutrients are two different things that takes place at different sites in the body.

✅ Food can give us different reactions as individuals but we don’t need to make a theory out of own experiences of a particular food.

Don’t listen to them because they are speaking from a very strong position of ignorance. They may sound so powerful and convincing but don’t pay attention to them ok.

I hope you got value reading this ? Have you read such thing online before? Which combination did you hear about? Let us know in the comment section ok.

Please help share for more people to get enlightened on this because many are being deceived daily.

Okereke Soromfechi (RDN)
(Nutrition LIFE).