Processed meat goes with an 18% higher colorectal cancer risk per 1.8 oz (50 g) a day. Two 2019 reviews measured a smaller cut, three servings a week, and found about 1 fewer case per 1,000 people over a lifetime. Both are true. Here is why, what IARC's Group 1 actually means, and why steak is a weaker case.
Pooled across 72 measurements, instant oatmeal scored 75 on the glycaemic index and large-flake oats 53. Regulators have signed off on oats for cholesterol, at 3 g of beta-glucan a day, not for weight. On weight, pooled trials of beta-glucan from oats and barley found about 2 lb at best, and the newest, in overweight adults, found none.
Researchers measured urine pH across citrus juices: orange juice alkalised it; lemon, grapefruit and lime didn't. The ritual picked the wrong fruit. For kidney stones, lemon juice is unproven: the one randomised trial of it that counted new stones could not rule out chance, and one in five got heartburn.
The famous PREDIMED trial was retracted from the New England Journal of Medicine and republished — and the nuts arm did just as well as the olive oil arm. Across 92,000 Americans over 28 years, swapping butter or margarine for olive oil went with lower death rates. Against other vegetable oils combined, no significant difference at all.
Canola is rapeseed bred low in erucic acid — the name literally means Canadian oil, low acid. The FDA ban people cite was against mustard oil, not this. Erucic acid does fatten animal hearts at high doses, which is why it was bred down to trace levels and is capped by law. And in 13 head-to-head trials, canola lowered LDL more than olive oil did.
Cut dietary linoleic acid by up to 90% and arachidonic acid in the blood doesn't move — the arachidonic acid route to inflammation fails at step one. But two recovered BMJ trials found no mortality benefit, and in one, more men died on the oil. Here is the whole file, including what's wrong with both halves.
On an ordinary diet your muscle creatine is already 60–80% saturated, and supplementing fills the rest. Which is why, in one biopsy study given the same dose per kilogram, the group that gained most gained nearly six times the group that gained least — they started with the most room. Loading only changes how fast you arrive.
Pooled across 143 randomised trials: body mass up 1.9 lb on average, fat-free mass up 1.8 lb, fat mass unchanged, body fat percentage down. Skipping the loading phase does not skip the weight: trials that never loaded gained as much.
The whole scare rests on one 2009 study of 20 rugby players that measured DHT and never looked at anyone's hair. The 56% rise it found moved men from 0.98 to 1.53 nmol/L — the normal range is 0.8 to 3.5. In 2025 a trial finally examined hair directly for 12 weeks and found no difference at all.
Same trial, same 59 people, same 40-gram dose: lactitol caused severe symptoms across the board and maltitol caused no laxative effect at all. Both are labelled sugar alcohols. Europe's regulator set a limit on erythritol for diarrhoea — not clots — and refused to drop the warning label. And the erythritol and xylitol heart scares came from one dataset.