Here are some health declarations I’ve found to be false based on personal experience. The boldface myths are linked to websites that provide conventional views on the topic. Then I supply you with information that refutes it.

Avoid saturated fat. I seek out saturated fat these days and am slimmer and healthier for it. I wake up feeling, well, awake, rather than sluggish and pessimistic and moody. Fatty food sates me the way carbs never could, and there has been no definitive scientific study linking saturated fat to heart disease. This video clip from the documentary Fat Head explains it beautifully. And it’s entertaining.

The animal fats I eat are: Kerrygold butter, chicken “butter”, duck fat, lard, beef tallow, bacon grease. I also love coconut butter, coconut oil, avocados, full-fat hard cheeses and heavy whipping cream. Here are my favorite links that bust the fat myth—Free The Animal, Gary Taubes, Sally Fallon (video), Weston A. Price, Mark Sisson, Nora Gedgaudas, Cheeseslave.

Avoid cholesterol. Egg yolks and pate are health foods. Blaming coronary heart disease on cholesterol is like blaming the firefighter for starting the fire just because she’s there on the scene. Cholesterol is the body’s firefighter. It is vital on a cellular level. Without cholesterol we’d all be puddles on the ground. As far as “good” and “bad” cholesterol, the real culprits are small, dense LDL particles. That is what you want to look for when you get your blood work done. Here are some related links that will provide you with more information than you know what to do with regarding cholesterol—Chris Masterjohn, Uffe Ravnskov, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick (video) via Cheeseslave.

For optimal health eat a vegetarian diet. Not true for me. I’m not saying that a low animal product diet can’t be healthy. I’m not saying eat at McDonalds. Avoid factory-farmed meat if you can. But there are nutrients in animal products that cannot be compensated for on a vegetarian diet. Also, by nature of avoiding meat, butter, liver, etc., vegetarian diets tend to be high-carb. Links that support a non-vegetarian diet—Denise Minger, Weston Price, Nourished Kitchen, Cheeseslave, Lierre Keith (via Nora Gedgaudas).

Eat whole grains. My mother-in-law lost her temper at me the day I told her that humans have zero dietary requirement for grains. She nearly blew a gasket when she learned that I don’t eat legumes either. What the hell was she going to make for dinner? (I think we wound up eating chicken and green beans.) Since eliminating grains (and legumes—peanuts included—and sugar) from my diet, I’ve never felt better. Here are some of my favorite links that explain why going grainless is the grooviest—Nourished Kitchen, Hatin’ on grains (video), Nora Gedgaudas, These aren’t the same grains.

Never skip breakfast. I used to tank by 10AM if I skipped breakfast. I’d lash out at the nearest victim, usually one of my kids, my blood sugar in the gutter. If they weren’t around, I might shoot a nasty email to Swamp Chicken. I bet he doesn’t miss those days. Back when my primary fuel was carbs, I surged and crashed like an out of control robot from a Backyardigans episode Spike and Peaches loved. When I went Primal, my primary fuel changed to fat and protein. Nora Gedgaudas has a great metaphor for this. She says that subsisting on carbs is like feeding a fire with twigs. They burn hot and fast and you need to feed the fire constantly. If you’re a mom with carbivorous kids, do you notice that they ask for food all the time? Subsisting on fat is like throwing a nice big log onto the fire. It burns slow and steady for hours. When your fire is fueled with a big fat log, you naturally begin to realize that three meals a day can be too much. Most days I wake up and have a decaf with heavy cream or a mug of bone broth. I can go until noon with high energy and no hunger. Skipping breakfast works for me. Here are my favorite links that explain in further detail—Primal Bodybuilding, Ditch Diets, Live Light, Mark Sisson, Gnolls.

Eat six small meals a day. If you just read my paraphrased version of Nora Gedgaudas’s twig/log analogy above, then you already see why this is a myth. If you’re still subsisting on carbs, you will need those six or more meals per day because your fire keeps going out. If you are eating Primal, you can go far and lose weight on 2 meals a day.

Perform some kind of aerobic activity for at least thirty minutes three or more times a week to lose inches and pounds. This can make you tired, injured, irritable, frustrated and possibly fat. Why? Here are my favorite links that soundly and roundly diss “chronic cardio”—Mark Sisson, Sisson again, Free the Animal, Art De Vany.

Don’t work out on an empty stomach. If you swill a bottle of Gatorade the fuel you burn will be primarily glucose, namely the glucose you just drank. Your love handles and saddlebags will remain planted on your body where you don’t want them. If you exercise on an empty stomach, your body will use, guess what? FAT. Try it and see. Here are some links that delve deeper into this health myth—Free the Animal, Sisson, MSNBC.

Wear sunscreen. I don’t do this anymore and I don’t put any on the kids either. Maybe a touch on our noses if we’re out early during summer months. I don’t let us burn—I make sure we’re not out half-naked in July at noon, say. Typically, we’ll head out in the summer at 2 or 3 PM and get some decent color and vitamin D, which ironically prevents skin cancer. Here are my favorite links that explain why getting unprotected sun is a good thing, and why sunscreen only benefits the sunscreen companies—Mercola, Natural News, Mark’s Daily Apple, Tanning Truth. Primal Body, Primal Mind also has a great section about this.

Expensive products, creams, potions and lotions will make you prettier and look younger. I have witnessed in myself that there is no product in the world (okay I haven’t tried them all, but I have tried Clarins) that you apply topically to your skin that can come close to the benefits you will derive from eating Primally. Get rid of the processed foods, grains, legumes and sugar. Load up on coconut oil, well-cooked greens, healthy fats (saturated included) and protein from grass-fed, pastured sources and watch yourself glow from the inside out. Here is the lowdown on that—Primalmeded, Primal Toad, Sisson.

Brown rice is better than white. I love this one. I used to eat brown rice all the time and felt smug about it too, even as I drenched it in sugary, MSG-laden sauces. It turns out that brown rice, even without the sauce, is filled with phytates and lectins that make it difficult to digest and shred your tender intestinal walls. Carby white rice, while not very high in minerals, will not do a number on your insides. Avoiding it altogether is my thing these days, but if you miss rice, go for the white. It won’t damage your gut. For more on this, see—Healthy Home Economist, The Perfect Health Diet, Gut Sense (video).

If your head is spinning from all this contradictory information, I apologize. All I can say to simplify matters is follow the money and check the sources. The cigarette ads sound a blaring warning that the same insane inversion of the truth is happening now with processed foods including factory-farmed meat and pasteurized milk, GMO foods, pharmaceuticals and yes, even grains. Corporations don’t care about humans. Humans care about humans. (Hopefully.) The larger the company, the higher the stakes, which might mean that they gloss over the harmful aspects of their products, or not test them at all. And while they make financial gains, the losers are us—the consumers. But guess what? We get to vote with our wallets. Every single day. And we get to express our opposing views on the World Wide Web. Revolution imminent? You never know. I like to think it’s already underway.