Finding trustworthy nutrition information is almost as hard as finding a needle in a haystack these days. The internet is flooded with all types of bloggers, health influencers, diet advertisements, etc. that make it nearly impossible to find accurate information. There are a few reasons for why things are this way.
Nutrition research changes daily. In addition, studying nutrition in research is actually very difficult. More on this soon.
Bloggers and health influencers are not normally the ones with a credible education in nutrition, yet are the easiest to source information from. So the ones who call themselves “nutrition experts” who may only learn about nutrition as a hobby, from their own “research” on the subject, or maybe took an ACE training course in nutrition once, are the ones disseminating the most nutrition knowledge to the public.
Diet culture is a $60 billion and over industry. Advertisements are everywhere, competing with each other all to encourage one thing… weight loss. These diet advertisements pay google to get their ads in top viewed positions, thus being one of the first things you see when you google a nutrition topic. We will talk more about google ranking later on.
Given these 3 reasons alone, you can see how being able to find accurate nutrition information would be a huge challenge. It may seem as if there are tons of information out there, but just because there is a lot of information on a topic does not validate its claims or make it accurate. Quality over quantity in this case.
Research is difficult to get your hands on if you’re not a student, working in academia, or have access in your professional setting. For most individuals, reading a true research article is never something they had to do. However if you do ever have the chance to access real research articles, perhaps given to you from a professional, via Google Scholar, or in other ways, where do you even begin when determining if a research article is of good quality or not? Here are a few tools you can use to evaluate:
Look at the number of participants in the study. If its small, less than 30 individuals, how do you suspect this translates to the rest of the 7 billion people in this world? Not very well. Studies with this few of participants may still collect interesting data, however its meant for more of a jumping off point, not to give generalized recommendations to the world.
Look at the type of participants. Are they all healthy? Any similarities between them? Are they of different socioeconomic classes, male vs. female, which ethnicties are represented? What are the exclusion criteria (criteria that determines if an individual can participate or not in the study). All of this is outlined in the beginning of the methods section in the article. So, fairly close to the beginning.
Was this study something that was a snap shot in time, meaning the participants came and went in one day? If so, how can we really determine how the nutrition-variable will effect their overall health or lifespan? We cant. Some studies are longer in duration and follow participants for years. These are expensive studies, but what they look for is if they can track why an individual developed a certain chronic disease or why they didnt. Still, cause and effect is hard to prove, but these studies can give more information on the relationship, or correlation, between a nutrition variable and an outcome.
There are many more tools I could go through with you, but without getting too deep, these are some important ones that you can look for right away. In research we preach always be skeptical. Even research papers can be biased and make the results or outcomes look shiny and pretty to the public, when in reality the information is barely enough to make a claim or provide recommendations to the public. Be skeptical of what you read. For every research paper that says this works, there is another that says it doesn’t.
If there were a weight loss diet or supplement that worked by now, everyone would be taking it and all other competing diets would inevitably end.
But we haven’t found the “miracle” drug or diet. Most likely because it doesn’t exist. Here is another important thing for you to consider.
Often when an individual writes a book or blog post on a nutrition subject, the incentive is often times the accessory to the book, not the book itself.
What this means is the incentive for a health professional (or anyone for that matter) to write a book on nutrition is not for the money that the book brings in, but what they are selling on the side as a result of the book. For example, if purchase a book on the paleo diet for weight loss, the purpose of every word written is to convince you that the paleo diet is the best proven method for losing weight. By the end of the book the author expects you to fully be on board with the paleo diet and then go straight to buying paleo cookbooks, supplements, etc. The accessory, or in other words, the real product they are hoping to sell and make money from is the paleo supplement, cookbooks, meal plans, etc.
Stephan Guyenet, PhD from Red Pen Reviews, calls this a lack of accountability. He explains that there is no consequence for selling novel and exaggerated claims that are incorrect or non-evidence based. The incentive to these authors is to build their social media platforms, sell products, and scale a dieting business, not provide the public with accurate information. There is very little “pushing back” against these poor claims, therefore there is no accountability, or incentive to providing evidence-based claims.
Google SEO
Lets detour a little into more of a computer engineering realm, not my specialty, but I can give some nuggets of wisdom.
Google SEO, or Google Search Engine Optimization, determines how google will rank various websites. This determines what site will pop up when you google, for instance, “Dietitian Columbia, MO.” The first ones to pop up are either the ones who pay advertisements on google, get the most views, or have the best keywords in their descriptions that are linked to what you’re searching for.
There are individuals who build Google SEO for companies, large or small, as their profession and can help companies get more “hits” on google and increase their popularity. We have already learned that the diet industry is a $60 billion industry, they can afford a lot of advertisements and SEO. These are the most biased sources of information, where their main purpose is to convince you to buy their product, and at the same time these are the sites you go to for information first. You could scroll through the first 10 pages of google and I can almost guarantee you that you will not find a single article encouraging you against the diet you are searching. The articles explaining why the diet is dangerous or doesn’t work likely are not paying for advertisements, aren’t getting the most views, and don’t have the popular keywords that the convincing articles have.
Not to mention all the target advertising on social media and google.
So not only is it hard to find accurate and reliable information, but now all the inaccurate diet culture messages are in. your. face. all. day. long.
great…
All this to say…
Finding accurate nutrition information is hard. If you are someone in need of specific nutrition advice, the best thing to do is find a registered dietitian in your area who specializes in the condition you are inquiring about. If you are seeking weight loss or help with eating disorders or disordered eating, diet books will not be in your best interest. Again, a registered dietitian would be the best professional to contact who could provide you with the most accurate nutrition information, evidence-based and up to date.
Here at Bamboo Nutrition, Isabelle Bouchard is a registered dietitian who helps individuals learn how to combat the stereotypical principles of eating, learn how to nourish their bodies in a healthy way, not what diet culture preaches to us, and works with individuals who have disordered eating, in other words, a poor relationship with food.
If all of this information struck a cord with you and helps you to realize that diet culture and inaccurate nutrition messages have gotten out of hand, then hooray! I am so glad that I was able to help you see this world of nutrition through a clearer lens. For more specific guidance, questions, or support, please contact Bamboo Nutrition today and we’d be HAPPY to talk about this more with you.