by Lyn Carew 

It's really embarrassing to have an April Fool jokes pulled on you. The best defense is to be on your guard all day long. Sometimes the attempt to embarrass you is obvious like putting a "kick me" sign on your butt. And, of course, in the end, this hurts. But some people like to give you misleading information and then laugh as they tell everybody how stupid you were to believe it. Well, let's not have that happen with information about nutrition and foods. So to help you, here are some things you might hear that are nutritional jokes.

Spinach is a good dietary source of iron. APRIL FOOL! Although spinach contains a lot of the nutrient, iron, it is not available for digestion and absorption. Iron in spinach is very poorly absorbed. Substances in spinach like oxalic acid bind to the iron and never release it. Red meat is still the best source, unless you're a vegetarian.

"Zero trans fats" on food labels means exactly that. APRIL FOOL! By law if one serving of a food has less than a half gram of trans fats you can call it zero. So by this logic, zero is not zero. If you eat four servings of certain "zero trans fats" cookies in one day, you may actually take in two grams of trans fats - that's not good.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contains a lot more fructose than table sugar. APRIL FOOL! Regular sugar contains 50 percent fructose. The two forms of HFCS in use contain similar amounts - either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose. Fructose is not the best thing to eat in large amounts, and its relationship to obesity remains to be determined. Nevertheless, minimize your intake of either sugar.

Hard water is bad for your arteries. APRIL FOOL! The minerals in hard water may clog your home plumbing, but the magnesium and calcium in it are good for your health. People who drink hard water have less heart disease than those who don't.

Saturated fats cause heart disease. APRIL FOOL! You cannot generalize here. At least one saturated fatty acid, stearic acid, found widely in meats, may lower your blood cholesterol. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences admits this but refuses to come up with any positive recommendation. But this is not a ticket to eat all the saturated fats you want.

Enriched foods have all missing nutrients added back. APRIL FOOL! Of the 50 or so classical nutrients (not counting hundreds of antioxidants), only a handful is added back. For example, in refined flour most of the magnesium, chromium, and vitamin B-6 are removed and not added back. Enriched foods usually are highly processed - replace them with whole foods.

You should get lots of vitamin B. APRIL FOOL! There is no such vitamin. It existed a century ago, but we now know that the original vitamin B consists of at least nine different B vitamins (the vitamin B complex) such as thiamin, riboflavin, and folate. Anyone suggesting you take vitamin B either doesn't know their nutrition or is very old.

A cheeseburger contains about 300 calories. APRIL FOOL! A cheeseburger actually contains 300,000 calories. We live a little white lie in nutrition. Food energy is measured in kilocalories not calories (1 kilocalorie = 1,000 small calories). A cheeseburger contains 300 kilocalories, which is actually 300,000 of the smaller calories. This concept applies to all foods. But except for dedicated nutritionists, not many pay attention to this "slight" prevarication.

A tax on soft drinks will help reduce obesity. APRIL FOOL! This has not been proven. Several studies have shown no effect of price increases on soft drink consumption. Furthermore, in one study, an increase in the price of soft drinks did decrease consumption, but intake of other foods increased so total caloric intake did not change. Taxation of foods could be tricky - would diet drinks be taxed as well? Instead, let's increase nutrition education in the schools and communities.

Happy April Fools' Day. I hope you get through it without too much embarrassment. On the other hand, maybe you pulled one of these jokes on somebody else. If so, I hope they didn't kick back.