Vitamin C won’t cure your cold – Nutrition myths busted, part 4

We’re well and truly into winter now. And with colds, sniffles, and flus circulating I thought it was time for another edition of my busting nutrition myths series.

Starting with the age old idea of taking vitamin C to help cure your cold. I’ll also be talking about the myth that fat free products are healthier and the idea that chemicals are bad.

'Vitamin C will cure your cold'

Vitamin C is often sold as the best way to prevent or cure the common cold. While vitamin C does support the immune system and help protect your body from cellular damage, there’s no evidence that it can stop you catching a cold.

Research has shown that taking vitamin C when you have a cold won’t have an effect on how long the cold lasts or how severe your symptoms will be. 

There is some evidence that looked at people taking daily vitamin C supplements. When these people did catch a cold, it lasted for less time than for people that didn’t take vitamin C every day. 

However, this isn’t enough to recommend that people supplement vitamin C. As it won’t actually stop you from catching a cold there isn’t a great enough benefit.

'Fat free products are healthier'

Fat has been demonised for so long, due to the fact that it’s the most calorie dense nutrient. Fat free products are sold as a healthier alternative when they actually aren’t.

Fat is a great flavour carrier; you might have noticed that fried foods are often tastier than their baked counterparts. When you remove fat from a product, you need to add something else to make up for the flavour. An ingredient that’s usually added is sugar.

Fat free products are normally higher in sugar than the full fat products and sugar isn’t great for you in excess. For example, fat free mayonnaise has almost double the amount of sugar that full fat mayo contains. And reduced fat peanut butter has more than double the amount of sugar than regular peanut butter.

If you consume a lot of fat free or reduced fat products, it’s worth comparing food labels and seeing whether fat free products are the healthier option for you.

'Chemicals are bad'

Another myth I hate is that ‘chemicals are bad’ or other variations like ‘if you can't pronounce it, it’s bad for you’. Technically, everything is made of chemicals, so this myth doesn’t make much sense. But when people talk about chemicals, they're often referring to food additives.

Food additives are added to foods to improve the taste, appearance, or flavour and increase the shelf life. They're safe to use in food and have useful properties. But they get labelled as being bad because they have chemical names that people aren’t used to and don’t know how to pronounce.

One example of this is ascorbic acid which is an antioxidant – this means it stops food from browning and going bad. This is found in foods like bread and hams. The name ascorbic acid might sound scary, but it’s actually the chemical name of vitamin C. Another example is the chemical alpha tocopherol, which is added to cereal and cereal bars as an antioxidant. It’s also known as vitamin E.

Using the chemical name of anything can make it sound scary but the chemicals in food are safe to be there.

 

Key points:

• There's no evidence that vitamin C will cure your cold or reduce the symptoms.
• Fat free products are often higher in sugar to make up for removing fat.
• If you tried to avoid chemicals, you wouldn’t be able to eat anything. The chemicals added to food are considered safe for consumption.

 

I hope you enjoyed this blog post! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

My next post will be all about vitamin C and the things it can do for your body, even though curing the common cold isn’t one of them.

Bye for now! 👋

 

References:

Vitamin C: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8078152/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7655735/

Fat carries flavour: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9216570/ and https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00002.2015

Food additives: https://www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/food-additives