The Myths, Gathered
TL;DR. Everything this book has corrected, in one place, with the chapter that explains it. Some of these are harmless folklore. Some cost people money. A few cost people their health, and those are marked.
Food and nutrition
| Myth | Reality | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| "Natural means safe" | Botulinum toxin, ricin, and amatoxin are natural. Origin says nothing about toxicity | 87 |
| "Chemical-free" | Everything is chemicals, including water | 87 |
| "Superfoods" | No definition; banned as a claim on EU packaging; ORAC scores were withdrawn by the USDA in 2012 | 35 |
| "Detoxes and cleanses remove toxins" | Your liver and kidneys work continuously. No cleanse has ever identified a toxin it removes. Aggressive green juicing has caused kidney injury | 87 |
| "Alkaline diets change your body's pH" | Blood pH is defended within 0.1 units. If food changed it you would be critically ill | 22 |
| "Fruit must be eaten on an empty stomach" | Nothing rots in a stomach at pH 2. Fruit after a meal produces a lower glucose response | 19 |
| "Don't combine protein and carbohydrate" | Your pancreas secretes the full enzyme set for every meal | 19 |
| "Eating six small meals boosts metabolism" | The thermic effect is a percentage. Six small bumps equal three larger ones | 19 |
| "Carbs after 6pm turn to fat" | Energy balance, not the clock. Late eating does matter, for circadian reasons, and not specifically for carbohydrate | 19 |
| "Celery has negative calories" | No food does | 45 |
| "Sugar causes hyperactivity in children" | Repeatedly tested in double-blind trials and repeatedly negative | 57 |
| "Honey / agave / coconut sugar are healthy sugars" | Sugar with trace minerals. Agave is the highest in fructose | 57 |
| "MSG is harmful" | Glutamate is in breast milk, tomatoes, and parmesan in larger amounts. Blinded challenges have consistently failed to reproduce symptoms | 90 |
| "E numbers are dangerous additives" | E300 is vitamin C. E440 is apple pectin. It is a filing system | 90 |
| "Frozen vegetables are inferior" | Frozen within hours of picking; often better than travelled fresh | 9 |
| "Raw food is always more nutritious" | Cooking multiplies carotenoid availability several-fold and removes antinutrients | 37 |
| "Microwaving destroys nutrients" | It is one of the better methods, because it uses little water and short times | 91 |
| "Spinach is a great source of iron and calcium" | Oxalate blocks both. Calcium absorption is around 5 percent | 38 |
| "Carrots improve your eyesight" | Only by correcting deficiency. The belief was manufactured as wartime propaganda to conceal radar | 41 |
| "Nightshades cause inflammation" | Not supported in the general population | 37 |
| "Lectins cause chronic disease" | The kidney bean hazard is real and specific; legumes are associated with lower disease risk everywhere | 47 |
| "Juice counts as fruit" | Fibre removed, structure destroyed. Whole fruit is associated with lower diabetes risk; juice with higher | 35 |
| "You must combine proteins at each meal" | Retracted by the author who popularised it. Variety across the day suffices | 12 |
| "High protein damages kidneys" | Not in healthy kidneys. It is restricted in existing kidney disease, which is where the myth came from | 12 |
| "Eight glasses of water a day" | No identifiable evidence base. Around 20 to 30 percent of fluid comes from food | 59 |
| "Coffee dehydrates you" | The fluid more than offsets the mild diuresis, and tolerance develops | 59 |
| "Bananas are the best potassium source" | Potatoes, beans, spinach, and dried apricots all beat them per serving | 21 |
| "Brown eggs are healthier" | Shell colour is the breed of hen. Yolk colour is feed | 54 |
| "Eggs raise your cholesterol dangerously" | The numerical limit was dropped in 2015. Saturated fat matters more | 54 |
| "Coconut oil is a health food" | 87 percent saturated; raises LDL more than butter in controlled trials | 34 |
| "Never cook with olive oil" | It is more oxidation-stable than most seed oils and fine for ordinary cooking | 53 |
| "Sea salt and pink salt are healthier" | Chemically the same sodium chloride, and usually not iodised, which is a genuine loss | 57 |
| "Seedless grapes and watermelons are GMO" | Natural mutation and chromosome-number tricks respectively | 24, 26 |
| "Figs contain dead wasps" | Most figs need no wasp; where one is involved, the fig's enzymes digest it entirely | 32 |
| "Peanuts are nuts" | Legumes, grown underground | 52 |
| "Apple seeds will poison you" | Only if you deliberately crush and eat a great many | 20 |
| "Supermarket apples are a year old and worthless" | Controlled-atmosphere storage pauses them. Vitamin C falls by a quarter to a third; the rest is intact | 20 |
| "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" | Tested in 2015. It does not | 20 |
| "Red wine is heart-protective because of resveratrol" | The dose is negligible, the researcher's data were falsified, and the cardiovascular benefit has largely dissolved | 24, 61 |
| "Houseplants clean indoor air" | The NASA study was in sealed chambers. You would need hundreds per room | 95 |
Medicines
| Myth | Reality | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| "Paracetamol is completely safe" | Narrowest overdose margin in the cupboard, and overdose produces no symptoms for a day | 65 |
| "You'd feel ill if you'd taken too much paracetamol" | You would not. This misconception kills people | 65 |
| "Taking NSAIDs with food prevents ulcers" | It reduces irritation. The ulcers come from systemic prostaglandin loss | 66 |
| "You can't take paracetamol and ibuprofen together" | You can, and the combination beats most opioid options for acute pain | 65 |
| "Enteric-coated aspirin protects your stomach" | It reduces indigestion, not bleeding risk | 67 |
| "Everyone over 50 should take daily aspirin" | No longer recommended for primary prevention after three large 2018 trials | 67 |
| "Aspirin is fine for children" | Reye's syndrome. Not under 16 | 67 |
| "Antibiotics help a cold" | Colds are viral. Coloured mucus is not evidence of bacterial infection | 69, 72 |
| "Always finish the course" | Being actively revised; shorter courses are non-inferior for many infections. Ask your prescriber rather than deciding yourself | 72 |
| "Antibiotics stop the pill working" | Only enzyme inducers (rifampicin, rifabutin) and St John's wort | 79 |
| "I'm allergic to penicillin" | Over 90 percent of people with the label are not, and it leads to worse antibiotics and worse outcomes | 72 |
| "Statins cause muscle pain" | In blinded trials the symptoms occur equally on placebo. Rhabdomyolysis is real and rare | 85 |
| "Antidepressants are addictive" | Physical dependence, not addiction. Real withdrawal, no craving or dose escalation | 77 |
| "Depression is a serotonin deficiency" | Always a simplification. Its collapse does not mean the drugs do not work | 77 |
| "Steroid creams are dangerous" | Steroid phobia causes undertreated eczema, worse disease, and more infections | 78 |
| "Reliever inhalers are enough for mild asthma" | No longer recommended for anyone. Heavy reliever use predicts asthma death | 78 |
| "Expired medicines are dangerous" | They lose potency. Most remain stable for years. The exceptions are specific | 86 |
| "Expired tetracycline damages kidneys" | From a 1960s formulation no longer in use | 86 |
| "Herbal means safe" | Herbal products are the second commonest cause of drug-induced liver injury in the US | 81 |
| "St John's wort is a harmless herbal" | Causes contraceptive failure and transplant rejection through CYP3A4 induction | 81 |
| "Multivitamins are a sensible insurance policy" | Trials in well-fed people show no benefit; beta-carotene and high-dose vitamin E showed harm | 15 |
| "Vitamin C prevents colds" | It does not reduce incidence. It shortens duration by about half a day | 15 |
| "Melatonin is a sleeping pill" | It is a circadian timing signal. Good for jet lag, weak for insomnia | 80 |
| "Antihistamines are a good sleep aid" | Tolerance within days; impairment and anticholinergic burden persist | 70 |
| "Antihistamines treat anaphylaxis" | They do not. Adrenaline does, and delay is what kills | 98 |
| "Vaccines cause autism" | The paper was fraudulent, retracted, and its author struck off. Studied in millions of children | 74 |
| "Too many vaccines overwhelm a baby" | An infant meets thousands of antigens daily. The whole schedule contains about 150 | 74 |
| "mRNA vaccines change your DNA" | No mechanism exists. mRNA never enters the nucleus and degrades within days | 74 |
| "Ivermectin treats COVID-19" | Large randomised trials found no benefit, and several early positive studies contained fabricated data | 73 |
| "Homeopathy works" | Beyond about 12C dilution no molecule remains. Systematic reviews find no effect beyond placebo | 81 |
Chemicals and environment
| Myth | Reality | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| "60 percent of what you put on your skin enters your bloodstream" | Invented, sourceless, and wrong by orders of magnitude. Typical absorption is 0.1 to 5 percent | 94 |
| "If you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin" | Physiologically backwards. Your gut absorbs; your skin resists | 94 |
| "Sunscreen is dangerous" | It has randomised trial evidence for reducing melanoma. The FDA absorption finding was a request for data, not a warning | 94 |
| "Parabens cause cancer" | Extensively reviewed and not supported. Their replacement caused a much worse allergy epidemic | 94 |
| "Deodorant / aluminium causes breast cancer" | Not supported by evidence | 94 |
| "Aluminium cookware causes Alzheimer's" | Extensively investigated and not supported | 93 |
| "Non-stick pans are dangerous" | Safe in normal use. Dangerous overheated empty, and lethal to pet birds | 93 |
| "BPA-free means safe" | Often means BPS or BPF: structurally similar and less studied | 93 |
| "Organic food is pesticide-free" | Organic permits an approved pesticide list, including copper, which accumulates permanently in soil | 7 |
| "Organic food is more nutritious" | Slightly more polyphenols, less cadmium, fewer synthetic residues. No demonstrated health outcome difference | 7 |
| "Pesticide residues on produce are dangerous" | Measured residues are typically well under 1 percent of the ADI. Eating less produce because of them is the one clearly harmful response | 6 |
| "GMOs are unsafe to eat" | Not supported by the evidence on approved products. The serious debates are about herbicides, patents, and corporate concentration | 5 |
| "Buy local to cut your carbon footprint" | Transport is usually under 10 percent. Red meat frequency, food waste, and air freight dominate | 9 |
| "Nicotine causes smoking-related cancer" | Combustion products do. This misconception keeps people smoking | 89 |
| "Vaping caused the EVALI lung injuries" | Vitamin E acetate in illicit THC products did | 89 |
| "Microwaves make food radioactive" | Non-ionising radiation. It makes water molecules rotate | 91 |
| "Ear candling removes wax" | It does not create suction, and it causes burns and wax deposits in the canal | 80 |
| "Cotton buds clean your ears" | They cause the impactions they are used to treat | 80 |
| "IgG testing identifies food intolerances" | It measures exposure and tolerance. Every major allergy body advises against it | 98 |
The ones that are true and get dismissed
Not everything popularly believed is wrong. These are genuine and are frequently waved away:
| Belief | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Green potatoes are dangerous | True. Glycoalkaloids, heat-stable, and they have hospitalised people (Chapter 18) |
| Undercooked kidney beans make you violently ill | True, from as few as four or five raw beans (Chapter 47) |
| Rhubarb leaves are poisonous | True (Chapter 45) |
| Grapefruit interacts with medicines | True, seriously, and for over 24 hours (Chapter 22) |
| Refrigerating tomatoes ruins them | True, and there is a measured genetic mechanism (Chapter 30) |
| Prunes relieve constipation | True, and they beat psyllium in a head-to-head trial (Chapter 25) |
| Ginger helps nausea | True, with reasonable trial support (Chapter 49) |
| Cranberry helps recurrent UTIs | True, modestly, for prevention only (Chapter 23) |
| Coffee is good for your liver | True as an observational association, and unusually consistent (Chapter 60) |
| Vegetables taste more bitter to some people | True. TAS2R38 variants (Chapter 39) |
| Coriander tastes like soap to some people | True. OR6A2 variants (Chapter 49) |
| Asparagus makes urine smell | True for nearly everyone; only some people can smell it (Chapter 45) |
| Some people go red when they drink | True, ALDH2 deficiency, and it carries a real oesophageal cancer risk (Chapter 61) |
| Frost makes parsnips and sprouts sweeter | True. Starch converts to sugar as antifreeze (Chapter 39) |
The last word
The pattern running through this list is that the confident claims are usually the weak ones, and the strong findings are usually dull. The things with the best evidence in this entire book are: do not smoke, eat plants and fibre, drink less alcohol, move, sleep, get vaccinated, treat your blood pressure, and know what is actually in the box before you swallow it.
Everything else is detail, and the detail is genuinely interesting, which is why the book is long.
Sources and notes
Every entry in this chapter is sourced in the chapter linked beside it, and the specific studies and agency positions are named there. The general pattern (that confident popular claims are usually the weakest and the strongest findings are usually dull) is discussed with its evidence in Chapter 97.
Open questions. A myth list is a snapshot. Several entries here reversed within the professional lifetime of people still practising, including aspirin for primary prevention, dietary cholesterol, HRT, early allergen introduction, and the antibiotic course. Some entries on this list will move too, and the ones most likely to are the ones currently marked as contested rather than settled.
👉 Reference: glossary and sources and further reading.