Fact or fiction: the answer to food myths

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the food lovers of online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat and what to cook. This time our chefs serve you: the 5 food myths unraveled.

Chocolate gives you pimples and if you have the flu you should drink fresh orange juice. Complete nonsense or not? We looked it up for you.

Cooking fruit or vegetables causes you to lose nutritional values.
Somewhat true. By cooking vegetables or fruit, you indeed lose some vitamins that are not heat-resistant, such as vitamin C and folic acid. The longer you cook it, the less nutritional value you retain. But on the other hand: there are also nutritional values that are activated when you heat vegetables or fruit. Apple pie, anyone?

Oranges are the solution for vitamin C deficiency.
Oranges do contain vitamin C. But did you know that strawberries score much higher? Seven strawberries contain your daily recommended amount of vitamin C. However, in winter, strawberries are outrageously expensive and you might as well eat an extra orange.

It takes seven years to digest chewing gum.
And if you swallow a cherry pit, a cherry tree will grow in your stomach. Fake news! It is indeed true that your stomach does not digest chewing gum in the same way as a cheese sandwich. And of course, we do not recommend that you swallow an entire pack of chewing gum now. But it all comes out the same way in the end. And not seven years later.

Chocolate gives you pimples
If we hoped that something was a myth, then this is it. And three cheers: eating chocolate does not give you pimples. Chocolate does contain sugar and fat, which is not good if you consume a lot of it. But there is no direct link between getting pimples and chocolate.

Sugar makes children hyperactive
Being a child makes children hyperactive. And that's not a bad thing at all. It has never been proven that sugar is the culprit. Not even in placebo experiments, where part of the children received sugar and the other part did not. So parents, come up with a new reason why your children shouldn't eat sugar before bedtime. Or just go for the old-fashioned way: ‘Why not?’ ‘Because not!’

Text: FavorFlav