The sh*t you can find on the internet...

The world wide web...I LOVE it. Really, I do. I have met so many amazing folks through social media, seen a lot of really inspiring content, and learned a ton of useful stuff (like how to change my car battery...saved me $35 bucks!). Not to mention the development of my Facebook page which has over 1,000 followers! Woo hoo! 

Hoooooooooowever...there is a ton of CRAP on the internet too. Probably more crap than good stuff. For example, please refer to Exhibit A: 

Exhibit A: posted on my Facebook page by a friend asking me what I thought about it

Now THIS is royal crap. La creme de la crap. It's no wonder people are afraid to eat meat, think low fat diets make you lean, boast about their whole grain intake, rely on cereal for fiber, and snack on string cheese because it's just brimming with calcium. So, what's wrong with the graphic above? Looks clean (although pixelated), believable, important, etc. Let's start with the photos. On the left, the caption reads "4oz ground beef" and there is a thick cut of beef steak pictured. That's not ground beef. But who cares, right? Honest mistake. Beef is beef. Ok, fine! I'll get over it. But I won't get over the following:

• 4oz of LEAN ground beef (which is what everyone should be eating) will put you just under 200 calories. You would have to be eating beef that is at least 80/20 (20% fat) to even get 300+ calories from 4oz. Stupid.
• 24g of protein from 4oz of black beans? PREPOSTEROUS!...I love that word and never get to use it! This "little" bit of false information was the sole source of inspiration for this entire blog. It really pissed me off. You would have to eat about 1.75 cups (14oz) of beans to get 24g of protein from them. NOT TO MENTION this isn't even the same type of protein that the beef will provide you. Black beans contain incomplete protein and beef (and all other animal products) contain complete protein. This also, clearly, pissed me off.  And by the way, 2 cups of black beans would put you at 400+ calories and about 75g carbohydrates. Hello, saddle bags. 
• Yes, beef is an acid forming food. BUT, pairing the beef with vegetables (as you should), cooking it properly, and choosing a lean cut of GRASS-FED ORGANIC beef will help balance the pH and you won't have to worry about the "high acidity." It would only be a problem if you were eating fatty, nasty, inhumanely raised, corn-fed beef. Unfortunately, most people do. 
• Are black beans lower in acidity? Yes. 
• All animal products contain cholesterol. And cholesterol is essential in the body for many reasons. Most dietary cholesterol has little impact on the cholesterol levels in your blood. Fried and processed foods, lack of exercise, genetics, weight, and stress all have a higher impact on your blood cholesterol levels than ground beef does. 
• Do black beans have cholesterol? No.
• Saturated fat...so? What's your point? 
• None in black beans, true. But again, so what?
• No fiber. Ummm, if you're eating meat for fiber, the nutrient comparison of ground beef to black beans should definitely be the last thing you need to be analyzing. 
• 9g of fiber in 4oz of black beans? More like 6 or 7 but I'll give it to them, since they have nothing else going for them. 
• Heterocyclic amines...no one even knows what that is. They just put it in there to sound bad, which it does, so congratulations your plan worked. Heterocyclic amines are compounds found in meats (NOT just beef) which have been overcooked or cooked at high temperatures, especially charred meats. Some believe these compounds can be carcinogenic in humans but research has not reached any definitive conclusions. Beef and many red meats are best eaten nearest their rare state if you can manage it. This is one of the reasons. So, turn down the heat and don't burn your meat! 
• What's a phytonutrient? Sounds better than heterocyclic amines so let's just add that to the black bean list too to hype it up. The dictionary definition: a bioactive plant-derived compound (as resveratrol) associated with positive health effects. Jesus, can you be any more VAGUE? Basically they are chemicals found in plants. NOT JUST BEANS. All vegetables and fruits have them in some form or another and there are thousands of them. 

Whoever spent the time to design and share this graphic should truly be ashamed of themselves. What a waste. They seriously pulled out some big guns to make black beans look like a food of the Gods and beef look like the worst thing you can put in your body. Neither is true. I just have to wonder how many people came across this misleading sh*t and thought it was true. Sad. That is just one example of crap on the internet. I'm sure you have ALL come across your share of it. I can Google "is coconut bad for you?" and this is what I get: an article stating that the oil from coconuts is NOT good for you, that the American Heart Association does not recommend cooking with it, that it raises the bad cholesterol levels in your blood, and that it could harm the health of your heart. Not to mention, the viewpoint of the article flip-flops every other paragraph leaving you pondering life by the time you've reached the end. Are coconuts good for you or not damnit?! 

UPON FURTHER INVESTIGATION...we see that this article was written in 2008 by a freelance science journalist. How much does a freelance science journalist know about the nutrients in coconuts? About as much as I know about what it's like to walk on the moon. There's less gravity so you feel lighter? And why is it significant that it was written in 2008? Because nutrition IS a science (kind of, partly, somewhat...) and science changes based on technology, funding, etc. therefore the research and analysis of foods will change with it. We now know that current health reports and research released and reviewed by professionals in the field of diet, health, and nutrition have a different opinion about coconuts and the overall attitude about them is completely opposite to what it is in this article. 

Point of the story? You can't trust everything you read online! Do your own research, ask questions, read books and research articles, talk to professionals. Only about 5% of the content on the web is actually certifiably accurate and honest. 

And yes, I just made that statistic up.