A study from Dublin City University found that only about 2% of nutrition claims on TikTok could be verified as accurate when compared to public health guidelines. Two percent. And yet 87% of young adults use the platform for health advice.
That’s kinda scary actually.
If you’ve ever felt confused, overwhelmed, or anxious about what you’re “supposed” to eat, trust me, it’s not because you’re bad at nutrition. It’s because you’re swimming in misinformation, and most of it is designed to make you feel exactly this way. It’s a bit discouraging.
Unless you went to school for nutrition, like I did, much of what you’ve learned about food probably didn’t come from science. It came from diet culture – a system that profits from your confusion and self-doubt. Research confirms this: inaccurate nutrition posts consistently get more engagement than accurate ones. The algorithm literally rewards fear. It’s gutting.
Today I want to walk you through some of the most persistent nutrition myths I see keeping people stuck second-guessing themselves. Stuck in anxiety, over-thinking, and a painful relationship with food. Once you can see these for what they are – beliefs, not facts – you can build so much freedom to eat in a way that actually feels good and that is based in good nutrition science, not eating disorder click-bait and political-fueled propaganda.
Why Your Brain Grabs Onto Fear-Based Nutrition Information
Before we get into the specific myths, I want to explain something that might help you be gentler with yourself.
When you’re anxious about your body, your health, your eating, (like if you have an eating disorder) your brain is scanning for threats. Including food “threats”. Alarming headlines like “This Common Food Could Be Destroying Your Health” feel important. Your brain files them under “pay attention to this.”
Meanwhile, the boring headline saying “Most Foods Are Fine in Variety and Moderation” doesn’t even register – this one feels like a lie.
This is how anxious brains work. They’re trying to protect you by being hyper-vigilant. But this hyper-vigilance keeps you stuck in your food anxiety and disordered eating.
So if you’ve absorbed a lot of scary nutrition information over the years, that doesn’t mean you’re gullible or unintelligent. It means your brain was doing its job, just not in a way that serves you.
The myths below have a grain of truth buried under layers of distortion. That’s what makes them so convincing. Let’s pull them apart.
Myth #1: Carbs are bad (or will make you gain weight)
This might be the most pervasive nutrition myth of the last two decades, and it’s done tremendous damage.
What’s actually true:
Carbohydrates are your brain’s preferred and primary fuel source. Your brain uses approximately 120 grams of glucose daily and it gets that from carbs. Adequate carbohydrate intake is also essential for serotonin production, which affects your mood, sleep, and ability to feel satisfied after eating.
Here’s the part that might surprise you: research consistently shows that carbohydrate restriction is associated with increased binge eating, food cravings, and disordered eating patterns. If you’ve ever felt “out of control” around bread or pasta, that’s not a willpower problem. That’s your biology responding predictably to deprivation.
Studies following people over time show no consistent relationship between carbohydrate intake and weight when overall intake is similar. The fear of carbs isn’t based in science. It’s based in diet culture.
Your body can technically convert protein to glucose when you don’t eat carbs (a process called gluconeogenesis), but this is a stress response, not an ideal state. Your body wants carbs. It’s not confused.
Myth #2: Protein is the most important macronutrient
We all know how protein is having a real moment. It’s a bit gross if you ask me – putting protein in literally everything. For folks trying to lose weight or hang on tightly to their unsustainable low weight, protein gets put on a pedestal, along with veggies. Carbs and fats delegated to “bad”. This hierarchy isn’t based in nutrition science.
What’s actually true:
All three macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) serve essential, non-interchangeable functions. Your body needs all of them.
Protein needs are actually relatively modest for most people – approximately 0.8 to 1 gram per kilogram of body weight for general health. Even athletes rarely need more than 1.6 to 2 grams per kilogram. The “high protein” marketing you see everywhere is just diet culture dressed up as wellness.
When people focus so heavily on protein, they often displace carb and fat intake. This leaves you hungry, undernourished, and deeply unsatisfied. Which often leads to… you guessed it… feeling out of control with food later.
Myth #3: Eating after a certain time causes weight gain
“I can’t eat after 7pm.” Sound familiar? Nonsense.
What’s actually true:
Your digestive system doesn’t have a clock. For most people, the body processes food effectively regardless of what time it is. The research on intermittent fasting is heavily problematic (confounded to be precise) and has shown concerning associations with developing disordered eating patterns.
What does matter is eating regularly and adequately throughout the day. When you skip meals or go too long without eating, you set yourself up for intense hunger that can feel chaotic and uncontrollable.
Plus, these timing rules create anxiety without any real benefit. Sure, you don’t want to make a habit of eating a big meal right before bed, but there is really no need to make sure to eat before a certain time.
What actually helps is consistent, adequate eating that lets your body trust it will be fed. If you struggle with late-night eating, the solution usually isn’t more rules about when you can eat – it’s making sure you’re eating enough during the day and for dinner.
Myth #4: Sugar is addictive (or toxic)
This one has gained so much traction that it feels almost dangerous to challenge. But I’m going to.
What’s actually true:
The “sugar addiction” model comes primarily from rodent studies that involved restricting the animals’ food first. When humans exhibit “addictive-like” behavior around sugar, they are almost always restricting it in some way. The compulsive behavior typically resolves when people give themselves unconditional permission to eat sugar and actually eat enough overall.
Sugar is glucose plus fructose, which are compounds your body knows exactly how to process. You are not a lab rat.
Over the past ten years of working with folks on their relationships with food and sugar, I see very consistently the sugar problem. The feeling of being “addicted” to sugar is a sign of restriction, either actual or perceived. When you truly allow yourself to have sugar without guilt or plans to “make up for it,” the urgency around it decreases over time.
But don’t forget, you also have to be eating enough regular food, including carbs.
Labeling any food as “toxic” or “addictive” actually increases what psychologists call psychological reactance. Basically, you want it more. It also increases binge risk. All-or-nothing thinking about sugar is disordered eating.
Having some added sugar in your diet is normal, healthy, and enjoyable. Full stop.
If this is hitting close to home or you’ve felt “addicted” to certain foods, caught in cycles of restricting and then eating past fullness, or just exhausted by how much mental space food takes up, I want you to know you’re not ridiculous or a mess.
This is exactly what we work on inside my 6-month group program, Love Food Again. It’s about unlearning the food rules that are keeping you unhappy and learning how to relate to food and your body in a new way.
Myth #5: Fat makes you fat
The linguistic connection here… “fat” the nutrient leading to “fat” the body composition…makes this feel intuitively true. But that’s not how the body works.
What’s actually true:
Dietary fat doesn’t directly become body fat. Your body processes all macronutrients through complex metabolic pathways. This isn’t a simple input-output equation. Learning about this in grad school was incredibly confusing and complicated. Trust me, it’s not fat in, fat out. Nor is it calories in, calories out.
Fat is essential for hormone production, brain function, cell membrane integrity, and absorbing vitamins A, D, E, and K. The low-fat diet recommendations of the 1980s and 90s have since been largely revised because they weren’t based on strong evidence.
Fear of fat often leads to meals that don’t satisfy you, which fuels the restrict-binge cycle. Including fat at meals helps you actually feel full and content with what you’ve eaten.
Myth #6: Processed foods are always bad
“Clean eating.” “Whole foods only.” “If it comes in a package, don’t eat it.” This myth has become so pervasive that people feel genuine shame buying frozen vegetables.
What’s actually true:
“Processed” is an enormous category that includes everything from pre-washed salad greens to frozen fruit to canned beans to fortified cereals to… yes, also chips and cookies. Lumping all of these together as “bad” makes no sense nutritionally or practically.
Many processed foods actively support nutrition: fortified cereals and breads provide B vitamins and iron, canned beans are an affordable protein and fiber source, frozen vegetables retain their nutrients and reduce food waste, and iodized salt prevents thyroid problems. These are not health threats.
They’re freaking great nutrition inventions to feed our huge population and make nutrition easier for people.
The current panic around seed oils is a perfect example of this myth in action. Fear-based, messaging that isn’t supported by evidence, designed to make you afraid of your kitchen.
The “processed foods are poison” narrative also ignores reality. Not everyone has time to cook everything from scratch. Not everyone has access to fresh produce year-round. Not everyone has a kitchen or the energy after work to make elaborate meals. Framing all convenience as moral failure is classist and harmful.
Your body can absolutely handle processed foods as part of a varied diet. What it can’t handle well is the anxiety of trying to avoid them completely or the shame associated with needing to buy them and being accused of not caring about your health.
Myth #7: You can “damage” (or “boost”) your metabolism
This one sorta breaks my heart. I often hear people are terrified they’ve “ruined” their metabolism through dieting, or they’re trying to “speed it up” with certain foods or eating patterns.
What’s actually true:
Your metabolic rate is primarily determined by your body size, composition, age, and genetics. While extreme restriction does cause metabolic adaptation: your body becomes more efficient to conserve energy during what it perceives as famine – this is protective and reversible with adequate nutrition. Great news.
You cannot permanently “damage” your metabolism. And despite what the wellness industry wants you to believe, no food, supplement, or eating pattern significantly “boosts” it either.
The fear of “damaged metabolism” often keeps people stuck in their eating disorders (“I’ve already ruined it, so why bother eating more?”). This is the diet culture trap.
Myth #8: Thin = Healthy
This might be the most harmful myth of all, and it underlies almost everything else.
What’s actually true:
And weight is not a reliable indicator of health. Weight is not a behavior. It’s not something you can directly control. You can only control your actions.
Health behaviors on the other hand like movement you enjoy, adequate sleep, stress management, social connection, eating enough varied foods matter WAY more than the number on a scale. Research shows that people can be metabolically healthy across a wide range of body sizes, and that weight cycling (the repeated loss and regain that comes from dieting) is associated with worse health outcomes than maintaining a stable weight at a higher size.
When health is the actual goal, weight-neutral approaches show equivalent or superior outcomes compared to weight-loss-focused approaches.
“I need to lose weight to be healthy” keeps people stuck in patterns that often harm their physical and mental health. It’s the lie that keeps diet culture in business.
If you’re reading this and thinking “okay but HOW do I actually unlearn all of this?”
You’re right. It’s one thing to intellectually understand that you need to eat enough in order to feel better about food. To admit you need to eat carbs for breakfast AND lunch. It’s another to eat a sandwich without the voice in your head freaking out because you had toast with breakfast too.
I write about this stuff every week in my newsletter, Lunch & Liberation. I include practical, compassionate, no-BS guidance on healing your relationship with food. Sign up here and you’ll find me in your inbox.
How to Evaluate Nutrition Information (Without a Degree)
Given how much misinformation is out there, developing some media literacy around nutrition claims is genuinely helpful. Here are questions I encourage you to ask:
About the source:
- Who is sharing this information, and what are their qualifications?
- What do they have to gain? (Selling products? Getting clicks? Building a following?)
- Is this from a peer-reviewed source or a social media influencer?
About the message:
- Does this information create fear or flexibility around food?
- Does this label foods as “good” or “bad”?
- Does this promise quick fixes or dramatic results?
About your reaction:
- Did this information increase your anxiety or decrease it?
- Does the fearful, rule-following part of your brain like this information? (Red flag.)
- Would following this advice help you eat more freely and peacefully, or would it add more rules?
Scary headlines get clicks.
Calm, balanced information rarely goes viral. The fact that something is being loudly promoted doesn’t make it true. Often the opposite.
What To Do Instead
If you’ve spent years absorbing diet culture messaging, unlearning it takes time. Here’s where I’d start:
Notice the voice. With Intuitive Eating, we talk about “the Food Police”, that internal voice declaring foods good or bad, creating rules, making you feel guilty for eating. The first step isn’t arguing with it. It’s just noticing: “Oh, that’s a Food Police thought.”
Get curious about origins. Where did you learn these rules? Mom? A PE coach? A doctor? Your skinniest friend? Social media? Understanding that these beliefs were absorbed, not discovered, helps loosen their grip.
Prioritize how you feel. Not how you look or what the rules say, but how you actually feel when you eat in different ways. Energized or depleted? Satisfied or craving more? Peaceful or anxious?
The goal isn’t to become a nutrition expert, but to eat in a way that supports your life without taking over your life.
The Bottom Line
Much of what you’ve learned about nutrition came from diet culture, not science. The myths feel true because they’re everywhere and because anxious brains grab onto fear-based information.
But nutrition is actually more flexible and forgiving than diet culture wants you to believe. Your body can handle variety. It can handle carbs, sugar, fat, eating at 9pm, and food that comes from packages.
What it can’t handle well is chronic restriction, constant fear, and the mental exhaustion of trying to eat “perfectly.” And often, if you think about it, your future self really doesn’t want to look back at your life and think “I spent way too much time worrying about food. I should have just enjoyed it.”
If you’re ready to stop fighting with food and start trusting yourself again, that’s exactly what we work on together.
Related posts you might find helpful:
- Does Intuitive Eating Mean Ignoring Nutrition?
- Toxic Diet Culture Examples
- How to Stop Obsessing About Food
About Emily
Emily Van Eck, MS, RDN specializes in Intuitive Eating, eating disorders, body image, women’s reproductive health, and healing from years of weight-bias and disordered eating. She helps people find balance, consistency, and peace with their eating habits so they can feel confident to get outta their heads and into their bodies. Emily is a registered dietitian and certified Intuitive Eating counselor with a master’s degree in nutrition science. Read more about her practice, values, and experience here.
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