Tag Archive for: nutrition

Why You Need to Supplement

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The author of the opinion article in JAMA recommended that physicians make their patients aware of the research that questions the effectiveness of supplementation, hence his title “Negligible Benefits, Robust Consumption” (1). In making that recommendation, he gives the precise reason why that’s a bad idea. As I said Thursday, the answer can be found in the data used in the original article in JAMA about supplementation use in the U.S. (2).

While the JAMA article focused on supplementation, it also included data on food . . .

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Nutrition: Knowing Isn’t Doing

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In Tuesday’s message, I said that both the experts and the public in a New York Times nutrition survey considered the vitamin and mineral content of food important or very important when they consider whether a food is healthy or not. But do people have enough information to make a decision about which foods are healthy? Not surprising that the nutrition experts almost all said they did. What shocked me was that 81% of the public also said they had enough information to make healthy choices.

That’s interesting because it contradicts what the authors of the New York . . .

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Nutrition: Experts and the Public Disagree

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A recent New York Times survey compared the survey results of nutrition experts, including me, with the public’s opinions. Some differences make sense—others, not so much.

When asked whether a food was healthy, experts said foods high in fat and/or sugar were generally not healthy. The greatest differences were in granola, granola bars, and frozen yogurt with over a 30% difference between experts, who thought they were not healthy, and the public who thought they were.

What surprised me was that experts viewed coconut oil as not healthy while the public indicated it was healthy. The only . . .

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Nutrition: Experts and the Public Agree

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A couple of months ago, I was asked to participate in a nutrition survey. I don’t usually answer surveys, but this was a request through the American Society of Nutrition (I’m a member) and we were told we’d get a chance to view the data, so I decided to do it. For comparison they also surveyed 2,000 people who were not in the nutrition field, and we’d get to see that data as well. The New York Times health writers published an article on the results (1). I decided to look at the data and . . .

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Improvements in the Nutrition Facts Labels

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The new nutrition facts labels are out and as promised, I’m going to tell you what I think is important about them. Let’s get right to it.

  • The listing of calories per serving is large enough that you can actually read it without searching for it. This is the biggest positive change; I had problems finding it at times and now, it’s the biggest type on the label.
  • The serving size is clearly identifiable. This should eliminate the misdirection food manufacturers used to use to suggest that a half . . .

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Processed Meat and Cancer: The Headlines

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Processed Meat Causes Cancer! That was the type of headline that dominated the Internet news sites, newspapers, and local and network news. One very well known nutrition expert wrote this comment:

The just-released report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer judging processed meat as clearly carcinogenic and red meat as probably carcinogenic has caused consternation among meat producers and consumers.

Note the verbiage that says processed meat is clearly carcinogenic. More about that in a minute. California just announced it’s considering adding processed meat to the . . .

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The Dark-Chocolate Study: The Problems

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After Thursday’s memo, you’ve got to be wondering what could be worse with the dark-chocolate study than its misleading conclusions. I’m going to examine the process the author explained in his faux study to show how that applies to many research studies from legitimate health research.

Not enough of the right expertise
There was no input from a nutrition expert that I could find. The author used a physician to do the study and collect the data. Even though the purpose of the study was to prove that eventually something will be statistically significant . . .

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Problems with the Dark-Chocolate Study

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The journalist and his colleagues who perpetrated the dark chocolate and weight loss study I talked about Tuesday were out to prove a point: typical journalists, even the ones who specialize in health, don’t really understand the fundamentals of nutrition, weight loss, and fitness. They especially don’t understand statistics and how they’re misapplied even in legitimate studies. Nothing new there.

What I think they did show was that there are many news and information sources on the web that will publish anything provocative. Dark chocolate helping weight loss certainly fit that profile.

The author explained everything he . . .

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Dark Chocolate and Weight Loss

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Late last week, Paula and a couple of readers sent me links about a journalist who managed to get a study on dark chocolate and weight loss published in a scientific journal in March 2015 (1). It made headlines everywhere. Then in late May, he wrote about how he fooled the journalistic world (2). While a lot has been written about his sting and the reasons he said he did it, there are more issues here than have been written about so far, and that’s what I’ll talk about this week. Let’s begin with the study.

The . . .

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The School Lunch Study

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If you’re going to get children to eat healthier foods, you have to employ the same tactics that food manufacturers, grocery stores, and restaurants use: make it look visually appealing and display it in such a way as to help them make the healthy choice first. Of course, it must taste good but if they never put it on the plate, they’ll never know if they like the taste. With that in mind, researchers selected 14 elementary and middle schools in low-income, inner-city locations with over 2,600 children to participate in a school lunch study . . .

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