I am a nutrition consultant and certified health coach passionate about human nutrition and the science of nutrition.
I will be back with regular blog posts as of October 6, 2015!
Showing posts with label avoiding nutrition headlines is a healthier nutrition choice". Show all posts
Showing posts with label avoiding nutrition headlines is a healthier nutrition choice". Show all posts
"News" reporters and gods of pop culture slather our minds with misinformed and misleading information like it was Bitchin' Sauce* on a cracker. Journalists and freelance writers create copy by copying the copy put out by institutions with vested interests in the success of the buzz. Nutrition news writers usually don't even read the scientific paper that the press release was about let alone investigate how the results fit into the larger body of scientific nutrition research.
Research is slow, expensive, and yields far more negative and uninteresting results than interesting ones. It is hard to publish results that prove a null hypothesis - results that find the treatment or intervention group ended up essentially the same as the control group and therefore had no effect. Research dollars are limited and funding agencies tend to give more money to potentially new and novel projects rather than ones that replicate experiments already done by other groups. However, science is not a one-and-done process and repeating research is an important part of the scientific method. We tend to skip that step these days.
Public relations departments, tasked with increasing funds and awareness of their institution's accomplishments, push out press releases. Unfortunately, PR writers sometimes (often) overstate and misrepresent results the research team may have accurately and responsibly reported in the actual scientific paper. PR departments do this to excite and encourage donors to give money. Nutrition "news" writers retool the press release and spit it back out. Consumers gobble up "news" with an endless capacity to suspend disbelief and common sense whenever there is promise for a little magic.
It is time for us to demand responsible, proportionate and relevant nutrition science news coverage. I love nutrition science, but nutrition news is rarely worthy of being called "breaking news." The exception usually involves food poisoning / food borne illnesses outbreaks.
John Oliver took on the problem of how science is reported in a Last Week Tonight segment that aired on May 8, 2016. If you have not seen the video yet, here it is:
