Do you have questions about nutrition? Send them to comer@lavanguardia.com, our nutritionist Aitor Sánchez will answer all your questions.
Hello, I have seen that chicken skin contains many nutrients. I wanted to know if it is healthier to eat this food with or without skin. (Javier Lorenzo, reader)
We would stick with the skinless version.
You can eat chicken in both ways because the skin is edible, however, it is not of great nutritional interest. Furthermore, it is one of the parts exposed to the greatest amount of contaminants and xenobiotics within animal production, so it does not provide added value.
It is true that at a culinary level and in the preparation of recipes, it is often sought to leave the skin of the chicken so that the animal's meat does not become so dehydrated, which can result in juicier meat.
In other recipes you can also look for the skin to be crispier to achieve contrasts, or for the interior to be prepared with a kind of "papillote", as could be the case with some wings.
Regardless of culinary preferences, nutritionally it does not provide anything remarkable and therefore would not be recommended for nutritional reasons.
First of all, congratulations first for this section. My question is: do low-carbohydrate diets or balanced diets lose weight more? (Silvia Pérez, reader)
Everything will depend on how that diet is constructed and what foods we have selected in it.
Choosing diets taking into account only the proportion of macronutrients is a fairly old approach in dietetics, today other issues more related to appetite, satiety and those issues that will allow the patient to adhere to that eating model are taken into account. .
We cannot say that low-carbohydrate diets are ideal for weight loss, but we do know two things at a scientific level:
1) Lowering the amount of protein in the diet is an approach that works very poorly for this goal, and that is why we do not recommend it.
2) Reducing the amount of carbohydrates in a model such as our Westernized diet is often convenient, which is why it is one of the favorite strategies of many people.
We must also consider that since our carbohydrate intake is determined mainly by our physical activity, in many cases people ingest an unjustified amount of carbohydrates. Example: if we are not active people, it makes sense to start cutting back on carbohydrates.
This approach may be valid, but it is neither the best nor the one that we should use preferentially. That will depend on each patient and each case.
