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Hungry for nutrition information? Follow this 10-step recipe to be a smart science consumer.
"Nutrition is nota science of breakthroughs," explains Tufts professor Jeanne Goldberg, PhD, founder and director of the Friedman School's Nutrition Communication Program, which trains professionals to explain research findings in ways that the public can understand. Nutrition research often moves the needle only a little bit at a time. "It's evolution, not revolution," she says.
Only in the last couple of decades has the media had the appetite to report on every nutrition study that comes out. Before that, studies would be read by other scientists, assimilated into the collective research consciousness, and the most useful information would eventually make it to the newspapers. Today, many more studies, deserving or not, get their day in the sun, which is one reason consumers complain that nutrition researchers are always flip-flopping on their advice.
In fact, "some 90% of the general recommendations that people need to eat a healthy diet are known and probably understood by them," says Rachel Cheatham, PhD, an adjunct assistant professor who teaches a course on consumer marketing for the Friedman School's new online certificate program, Nutrition Science for Communications Professionals.
But there are only so many times that people can hear they should eat more vegetables and fruits and get exercise. "The basic message is boring," says Goldberg. (For some not-so-boring ideas for eating more fruit, see the recipes inside this Special Supplement.)
So for consumers who are hungry for nutrition news, the Food and Nutrition Science Alliance, a partnership of several professional scientific associations, including the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American College of Nutrition and the American Society for Nutrition, published a list of "10 Red Flags of Junk Science." These "red flags" aim to help consumers evaluate nutrition recommendations-be they from a news article, a diet book or a product label-with a critical eye. Keep these in mind the next time you come across such claims:
1 Recommendations that promise a quick fix:
This is often the case with supplements that guarantee you'll lose weight fast. We would like to believe that eating novel foods such as mangosteen and açai berries will speed us along our quest for svelteness, even if the claims...