Do you have questions about nutrition? Send them to us at comer@lavanguardia.es, our nutritionist Aitor Sánchez will answer all your questions.
Is it inadvisable to eat five meals a day? (Cris M., reader)
Hi Chris,
Currently the famous message of 5 meals a day has become quite outdated and is no longer the priority it was before.
It must be recognized that this message was never sufficiently evident either, but it began to become popular with good intentions because in this way it was thought that people would make less voluminous intakes. It was also a time in which the importance of avoiding glucose spikes was very important. . Something that has currently gone into the background despite the fact that certain best-selling books are trying to make it fashionable again as a great pillar of nutrition.
When we realized that it was happening in a real environment, we were able to observe that when people ate 5 meals a day, they tended to give more importance to the number of meals and not so much to their quality, for example, most of the foods we eat at mid-morning or mid-afternoon are not healthy (snacks, sweets, pastries, cookies…) and for that same reason, it is a guideline that is currently being questioned. Currently we prefer to focus on recommending healthy foods between meals, such as fruit or nuts.
Furthermore, new data tells us that it is not positive to eat many times throughout the day and that our body also needs stimuli in which it can draw on its energy reserves. It is also important that our body is accustomed to obtaining the energy that we have stored and not that we are in a constant mode of saving energy and constant availability of food.
In short, currently, a good eating pattern can be made up of 3, 4 or 5 meals a day without distinction, as long as the diet is healthy.
Are genetically modified legumes nutritious? How many times a week should you take them? (Anonymous)
Transgenic foods do not have to be more or less nutritious than conventional foods, since the term transgenic refers to the fact that this food is a genetically modified organism, or that it has been obtained from one of these organisms.
To understand it well, the genetic and variety selection that we have done in agriculture and livestock throughout our history can help us: those species that are most productive or that generated the greatest interest for those who produce food have always prevailed, whether due to their appearance, their resistance, its efficiency…
This selection formerly happened naturally and spontaneously and the selection of these species was carried out, all depending on the different mutations or varieties that the plants or animals could have. Transgenic technology allows genetic characteristics to be included in a species, but which are in another organism, and in a controlled and targeted manner. That is, the characteristic that is specifically sought is achieved in the laboratory.
For example, there are transgenic foods that incorporate pieces of the genome of other species to make them resistant to drought, others are developed to be more resistant to pests, there are some to make them more productive, and we also find the example that raises this question. and they are more nutritious. A known case is that of golden rice, a rice to which a fraction of different genes have been incorporated so that it can have more vitamin A, a vitamin that we do not find in this cereal.
Currently, although the process of obtaining transgenic foods is safe for the environment and for humans, it continues to be a controversial area in terms of its social and economic repercussions. There are those who defend it as a new way to obtain better crops, but Also those who oppose the emergence of new patents that cause some communities to lose food sovereignty.
Currently, transgenic legumes, especially soy, are oriented for animal feed precisely due to this controversy. We have very few products on the market for human consumption that are genetically modified.
As we have recalled other times in the office, legumes are today the most interesting source of protein in terms of health and the environment, and for that same reason, consumption at least 3 times a week is recommended, becoming desirable. for public health its daily consumption, especially if it manages to reduce the portions of meat in our diet.
