Critical Thinking Skills + Reading Nutrition "News" = Success

I don't have a terribly long post for you today, dear readers, since it is Friday (and the first Friday back from the holidays so I imagine the week was a rough.)

We're all aware of the sensational, attention-grabbing headlines that are flashed before our eyes on a weekly basis either demonizing a food (Eggs! The silent killer...) or elevating a food to divine-miracle status (Eat this food to cure everything, including Mad Cow!). 

This drives me absolutely bonkers. (<-- post that expresses my ire.)

Opinions aside, Examine.com had a link on their website to a review article that uncovered nutrition "research" from the 1960s and 70s that started the "low-fat" craze. The main thrust behind the low-fat era was that fat caused coronary heart disease and it was bad, bad, bad, and everyone who wanted to stay healthy should eat a diet low in fat. 

Well, low-fat foods are generally not-very-tasty foods (at least not the manufactured kind) so food makers had to inject things like sugar and other fun things to make food actually palatable to normal human beings. 

Guess who funded the initial research? 

The Sugar Research Foundation. 

Yup... that happened. 

NPR also had a story about it, which you can read here. 

The point of this post isn't to point out the danger of sugar- it's not when you eat it in moderation in the context of an overall vegetable-rich diet- but to encourage and remind you to read news stories and even research with a critical, skeptical mind-set. If possible, dig a little bit more and see if you can find who funds the various studies that are trumpeted and touted by media outlets. You might be less surprised at the conclusions put forth by such studies... 

from makeameme.org