“Zombie Facts”

Posted By elissa on Feb 24, 2010 | 7 comments

This Q & A in the New York Times really made me sigh…

Q. Must you eat fruit on an empty stomach, so it won’t mix with other foods and cause fermentation and rot?

A. “The answer is a definite no,” said Dr. Mark Pochapin, director of the Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “Fruit can be eaten at any time.”

Nothing can rot in the stomach, Dr. Pochapin said. Rotting, or fermentation, means bacterial action on food resulting in decomposition. And because of the presence of hydrochloric acid, the stomach has very few bacteria.

…Food takes 6 to 10 hours to reach the colon, which explains why it does not really matter when fruit is eaten, Dr. Pochapin said.

I’ve fielded the exact same question on the forums I mod…repeatedly.  A sample:

“In the meantime the whole meal rots and ferments and turns to acid. The minute the fruit comes into contact with the food in the stomach and digestive juices, the entire mass of food begins to spoil.”

And the physiological mechanism for this would be???

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around how food could “spoil”, “rot” or “ferment” in the stomach. These are terms associated with microbial growth/degradation. Is the author of this little screed claiming that fruit carries a greater microbial burden than other foods; and that – even in the hostile environment of the stomach – it can essentially “compost” the other stomach contents?

And…

When you read stuff like this, you need to ask yourself some questions…for example: given that fruit eaten with a meal would be mixed up with the other components, and churned around in the stomach during digestion, how in the world could it possibly “sit on top of the food and ferment”? And what agents are responsible for fermenting it? Why would this be a bad thing? What are the products of fermentation? Why would only fruit behave this way, and not other foods? And so on.

Eat your fruit any darned way you please, as long as it isn’t floating in heavy syrup or suspended in green Jello. That’s going too far.

But – no matter how often you debunk stuff like this – these “facts” are like zombies.  You can shoot them down, but you can never kill them.  The internet keeps them going… and going… and going… for eternity. This particular BS about fruit has – according to Snopes.com – been circulating on the internet since August 2001.  The fact that it’s still being debunked in a major newspaper in 2010 demonstrates it’s still on the move, despite being “dead” for years.

Zombies eat brains.  So do zombie facts, apparently.

As a physician colleague of mine quips: “the internet is not peer-reviewed.”  So when unsourced, goofy health advice like this pops up in your e-mail,  save your brains and hit “delete.”