Mainstream Media on Nutrition
Mainstream Media on Nutrition
I’ll often hear people say things like, “They can’t make up their mind what’s healthy”, “They keep changing their mind about eggs” and “If the experts don’t know, how am I meant to know what I should eat”.
The problem is that these people are getting their nutritional information from the mainstream media. The intention of newspapers isn’t to educate you, it’s to sell more newspapers, or get more clicks and comments on their website to make more money from advertisers.
The mainstream media will often report on the results of the study without looking into if the study was flawed.
A great example of this is this article from The Mirror where they discuss eggs and heart health.
The article states that, “In the study, the researchers analysed the diets and medical results of nearly 30,000 participants for an average of 17.5 years.”
“An analysis of the results revealed that people who ate 3-4 eggs per week had a 6% higher risk heart disease, and 8% higher risk of death.
In particular, it seems that the cholesterol found in eggs may be to blame.”
Reading this you might assume that with it be done over 17 years, and using 30,000 participants, that this is a good study, and many people will think they should cut down, or cut out eggs.
However, what the article failed to even mention the faults with the study. The biggest one being that the study involved just one interview with each of the 30,000 participants, asking them to remember how many days they had eaten eggs in the past year. No food logs were kept. If I were to be asked to say how often I eat eggs last year, it would be a complete guess. There’s no way I could give an accurate reply. It would be a complete guess. Not only that, but they didn’t follow up at all for the rest of the study. Most people’s eating habits will change over 17 years, but they took everyone’s answers at the start, and assumed that they carried on eating the same amount of eggs for the 17 years.
These two things alone make the study a complete waste of time, and mean the results should be ignored, but the Mirror never mentioned any of this.
A reader comments on how they can't make their mind up.
Another example is this article, again from the Mirror, where it talks about how tomato juice can reduce your risk of heart disease.
To be fair to this article, they do mention some of the flaws of the study. It was a very small study with only 481 participants.
It also mentions that;
"The study also fails to look at what else participants were eating or whether they had consumed tomatoes in other forms and it does not take lifestyle factors into account which could have affected their blood pressure and cholesterol levels."
This study was conducted by researchers from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Plant Breeding Institute, and was funded by Kikkoman Corporation, a Japanese food company that produces tomato juice.
This was not a randomised controlled trial. All the study did was give free tomato juice to people and then measured their blood pressure and cholesterol before and after. We don’t know if any change in measurements was due to the tomato juice, or something else. Again, this study isn’t worth paying any attention to, and should be ignored.
Neither of these was worth being in the newspaper, but they help sell and make them money. These are just two examples, but if you keep an eye out, you’ll find this if is a common thing with newspapers, magazines and TV documentaries on nutrition, fitness and many other subjects.
Don’t use the mainstream media to educate yourself about fitness and nutrition, and don’t believe everything that you read on the subject.
In the case of the mainstream media, it’s best to ignore it all!
To be fair to this article, they do mention some of the flaws of the study. It was a very small study with only 481 participants.
It also mentions that;
"The study also fails to look at what else participants were eating or whether they had consumed tomatoes in other forms and it does not take lifestyle factors into account which could have affected their blood pressure and cholesterol levels."
This study was conducted by researchers from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Plant Breeding Institute, and was funded by Kikkoman Corporation, a Japanese food company that produces tomato juice.
This was not a randomised controlled trial. All the study did was give free tomato juice to people and then measured their blood pressure and cholesterol before and after. We don’t know if any change in measurements was due to the tomato juice, or something else. Again, this study isn’t worth paying any attention to, and should be ignored.
Neither of these was worth being in the newspaper, but they help sell and make them money. These are just two examples, but if you keep an eye out, you’ll find this if is a common thing with newspapers, magazines and TV documentaries on nutrition, fitness and many other subjects.
Don’t use the mainstream media to educate yourself about fitness and nutrition, and don’t believe everything that you read on the subject.
In the case of the mainstream media, it’s best to ignore it all!