5 Nutrition Myths Destroying Musicians’ Health — and Their Performance
How mainstream nutrition advice backfires on musicians’ brains, bodies, and stage performance.
Naama Neuman
9/22/20255 min read
Most musicians think they’re eating “healthy.” Whole grains for “steady energy,” fruit for “vitamins,” nuts for “good fats,” low-fat snacks to “protect the heart.” This is what we’ve been told for decades by government guidelines, diet marketing, and nutritionists.
Yet despite following the rules, musicians still deal with creeping weight gain, brain fog in rehearsal, jittery anxiety before concerts, and injuries that refuse to heal. And society overall has only grown fatter and sicker on the same advice.
Why? Because foods are praised for what they contain in a lab — fibre, antioxidants, “heart-healthy” compounds — not for what the body can actually absorb. Fibre isn’t essential for humans, and plant antioxidants mainly protect the plant from its own toxins. Humans make their own antioxidants (like glutathione) when supported by nutrient-rich food, sunlight, and grounding.
Absorption studies tell the real story: oysters are rich in zinc, but eaten with beans, much of that zinc is blocked by phytates. Numbers on a label don’t reflect what your brain and body actually get.
Myth 1: Grains, Seeds, and Nuts Are Healthy Staples
Grains, seeds, and nuts are not neutral foods — they are the plant’s babies. Every living thing protects its offspring, and plants do it chemically. The defences they use — lectins, oxalates, phytates — are designed to make predators (including us) sick enough not to rely on them.
These compounds block absorption of iron, zinc, and magnesium, irritate the gut lining, and drive inflammation. That’s why even “healthy” eaters often suffer fatigue, poor concentration, and slow recovery from training or practice.
Whole grains are promoted as healthier, but most of the toxins are concentrated in the husk. Cultures that relied on grains often removed it: Asians chose white rice, and traditional European breads were sifted or refined. Modern “whole grain” marketing ignores that the husk carries the highest antinutrient load.
For musicians, relying on grains, nuts, and seeds means working against their own biology — fuelling fog and fatigue instead of focus.
Myth 2: Fruit Is Always a Safe Choice
Fruit used to be called “nature’s candy.” Today it’s promoted as a daily health essential: smoothies, five-a-day campaigns, fruit bowls in every rehearsal space. The message is: eat without limits. Think of the old line “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” — catchy marketing with no scientific foundation.
The problem isn’t only glucose spikes. Fruit sugar is mostly fructose, which the liver rapidly turns into fat and aldehydes — the same toxic by-products created from alcohol. High-fructose corn syrup is just concentrated fructose, but eating large amounts of fruit drives the same metabolic stress. This is a major reason why non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is now common even in people who never drink.
Fructose also increases hunger more than glucose by disrupting appetite regulation, leaving people hungrier after fruit than before. For musicians, that means unstable energy mid-rehearsal, cravings before concerts, and difficulty keeping a steady focus.
Myth 3: Plant Protein Is Equal to Animal Protein
Plant protein is promoted as an equal substitute for meat, eggs, or fish. It isn’t. Plants provide no B12 at all, deliver incomplete amino acids, and come wrapped in antinutrients that block absorption of iron and zinc. When B12 runs low, symptoms include anaemia, fatigue, poor memory, nerve damage, and mood instability.
Soy is marketed as a safe alternative, but it isn’t neutral. Phytoestrogens mimic estrogen, while androgen disruptorsinterfere with testosterone — hormones critical for energy, recovery, and motivation. That’s a risky gamble for musicians who depend on stability and stamina.
Protein gap in numbers:
100g cooked beef → ~25–27g highly bioavailable protein.
100g cooked lentils → ~9g protein, only ~5–6g absorbed.
To equal a modest steak, you’d need nearly 400g lentils — plus the carb load and digestive irritation.
Myth 4: Low-Fat Is Better for Energy and Focus
Low-fat diets didn’t just leave people hungry. They destabilised hormones. Cholesterol is the raw material for stress and sex hormones. The liver makes ~80% of it, but seed oils and certain plant toxins can push levels artificially low — which is linked with higher mortality, depression, and infertility.
One of the best examples comes from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, run between 1968 and 1973. When butter and meat were replaced with seed oils, people’s cholesterol dropped — but their risk of dying from heart disease went up. The results weren’t published in full until 2016. For decades, doctors and nutritionists never saw the data.
Consequences of chronically low-fat, high-seed-oil diets:
Women: irregular cycles, severe menstrual pain, infertility, low progesterone, worse menopause symptoms.
Men: reduced testosterone, muscle loss, low libido.
Both: thyroid imbalance, higher systemic inflammation, poor stress resilience, increased risk of depression.
For musicians, this translates into unstable energy, emotional volatility, and long-term health issues that quietly undermine careers.
Myth 5: Supplements Cover the Gaps
Musicians are told — and sold — the idea that multivitamins, protein powders, or fish-oil capsules can cover the weaknesses of a modern diet.
The problem is that nutrients don’t work in isolation. A pill with “X milligrams of zinc” isn’t the same as zinc from red meat with heme iron and full amino acids. And antinutrients still block absorption: zinc from oysters is barely absorbed if eaten with beans. Supplements can’t cancel that out.
Synthetic vitamins may even backfire. High-dose vitamin C increases oxalate load, raising risk of kidney stones and joint pain. Fish-oil capsules often oxidise before they’re consumed, delivering rancid fats instead of the anti-inflammatory benefits people expect.
Supplements may have a role in diagnosed deficiencies, but they cannot replace real food. For musicians, relying on them means fatigue, mood swings, and poor recovery never resolve — because the inputs are still wrong.
What Actually Works
A proper human diet works because it reflects what we’ve eaten for 99.9% of our history. Humans thrived on animal protein and fat. Plants were fallback survival foods — seasonal, occasional, and never the foundation. Our bodies were not built for year-round grains, legumes, and processed plant products.
History shows the cost. As humans shifted to plant-heavy diets, height declined, health deteriorated, and brain size shrank. Today, long-term vegan diets are already associated with measurable brain shrinkage within a single lifetime. The mechanism is clear: without animal protein and fat, the brain lacks the building blocks it needs to maintain size and function.
Mainstream nutrition advice is built on what looks good in a test tube — fibre, antioxidants, cholesterol numbers — and on what’s promoted by the agriculture industry, including the research it funds and circulates. But none of that reflects what actually sustains a human being under stress. Musicians don’t need more tricks, hacks, or pills. They need to stop fighting their own biology.
When the diet stops working against the brain, anxiety calms, focus sharpens, and stamina finally matches the hours of practice. Beyond performance, overall health improves too: stronger immunity, fewer infections, and less vulnerability to chronic illness. The right inputs don’t just build better musicians — they build stronger humans.
References
Ramsden CE, et al. Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: analysis of recovered data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968-73). BMJ. 2016;353:i1246.
DiNicolantonio JJ, et al. Omega-6 vegetable oils as a driver of coronary heart disease. Open Heart. 2018;5(2):e000898.
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Lee S, et al. Changes in Brain Volume Associated With Vegetable, Fruit, and Animal-Source Food Groups Over 4 Years in the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study. Nutrients. 2019;11(4):753.
Clemente-Suárez VJ, et al. Impact of Vegan and Vegetarian Diets on Neurological Health: A Critical Review.Nutrients. 2025;17(5):884.
Frédéric Leroy. Why Vegans Have Smaller Brains — and How Cows Reverse Climate Change. (2025).