You think you know nutrition? Test yourself.

False. Your body needs fat.

Fat carries vitamins A, D, E and K into your body, and the essential omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids can only come from food. The type matters more than the amount: the unsaturated fats in olive oil, walnuts, avocado and oily fish are linked to better heart health, while guidelines suggest keeping saturated fat to around a tenth of your calories. Eating fat doesn't turn straight into body fat either. Your weight follows your total energy over time, not one nutrient.

Correct: Eggs, Chicken breast, Tofu, Quinoa, Rice and beans eaten on the same day.

Plant foods can give you complete protein too.

Tofu and quinoa contain all nine essential amino acids on their own, just like eggs and chicken. Lentils and peanuts are a bit low in one or two of them, which only matters if they are your only protein. Grains and legumes fill each other's gaps, and they don't need to share a plate: your body pools amino acids across the day. "Plant protein is incomplete" is true for some single foods, not for a varied diet.

The sugar is similar. Everything around it is not.

Both contain the same kinds of sugar: fructose, glucose and sucrose. The difference is the rest of the apple: about 4 g of fibre, lots of water, vitamin C and potassium, all inside a structure you have to chew. It digests slower and keeps you full for longer, which is why health guidelines don't count the sugar in whole fruit towards the limit on added sugars. That doesn't make the gummy bears forbidden. It just means "19 g of sugar" isn't the whole story.

Correct: Table sugar in your coffee, Honey, Maple syrup, A glass of orange juice.

Honey and juice count. Whole fruit and milk don't.

The World Health Organization's guideline on sugars intake defines free sugars as sugars added to food, plus those naturally in honey, syrups and fruit juice. It recommends keeping them under 10% of your daily calories, ideally under 5%. Honey and maple syrup are nutritionally very close to table sugar despite their healthy image. Juice counts because squeezing leaves the fibre behind, and it's easy to drink three oranges in a minute. The sugars inside whole fruit and the lactose in plain milk aren't the ones to watch.

False. Genes set your starting point. Food is one of the biggest things you can change.

Genes do shape your risk of things like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, but they are only part of it. The World Health Organization names unhealthy diets, with too much salt, sugar and fat, as one of the main risk factors for heart disease, cancer and diabetes, which together with other chronic diseases killed at least 43 million people in 2021. Unlike your genes, your diet is something you can change. A family history is a reason to pay more attention to what you eat, not less.

Very different. Macros are only part of the picture.

Protein, carbs and fat tell you where your energy comes from. They say nothing about fibre, iron, vitamin D, calcium, potassium and many other vitamins and minerals, which depend on which foods supplied those macros. A day built around beans, vegetables and fish and a day built around white bread and ham can match gram for gram and look nothing alike underneath. A 2024 study in The Lancet Global Health estimated that globally, more than 5 billion people don't get enough iodine, vitamin E or calcium from food alone, and more than 4 billion fall short on iron, folate and vitamin C. Counting calories and macros won't show you any of that.

False, unless you have diabetes or your doctor suggests it.

Blood sugar rising after a meal is your body working normally. In people without diabetes, insulin brings it back to normal within a few hours. What harms health is blood sugar that stays high for long periods, as in diabetes, not short rises your body clears on its own. A 2024 review in Diabetic Medicine found little evidence that glucose monitors are accurate or useful for people without diabetes, and warned they may have unintended downsides. Continuous glucose monitors are genuinely valuable for people with diabetes. For everyone else the basics do more: enough fibre and protein, mostly whole foods, and regular movement.

It depends. You need some, and most people get too much.

Table salt is sodium chloride, and it's the sodium in it that matters for your health. Sodium is essential: it keeps your fluids in balance and lets your nerves and muscles work. The issue is the amount. The World Health Organization recommends under 2,000 mg of sodium a day (5 g of salt, about a teaspoon), while the average adult worldwide eats around 4,300 mg, more than double. Much of it comes from sauces and condiments like soy sauce, ketchup and stock cubes, and from bread, processed meat, packaged and restaurant food, rather than the salt shaker. Salt isn't bad. Eating too much of it day after day is what raises blood pressure.

False. They're often just as good.

Vegetables for freezing are usually picked ripe and frozen within hours, which locks in most of their vitamins. "Fresh" vegetables can spend days in transport and in your fridge, slowly losing vitamin C and folate. A study comparing fresh, fridge-stored and frozen produce found no significant difference in vitamin content in most comparisons, and frozen came out ahead of vegetables kept in the fridge for five days in some cases. Frozen vegetables are a cheap, easy way to eat more of them.

Very little. No single food makes or breaks a diet.

Your health is shaped by what you eat most days, over weeks and months. One slice of cake is a small part of that, and there's nothing to make up for. Skipping meals usually just leaves you hungrier later, and exercise is worth doing for its own sake, not as a punishment for eating. Labelling foods as good or bad tends to backfire too. A more useful question is how a food fits into the rest of your day. That's how Nutriely looks at food: no forbidden foods, just the full picture.