Nutrition in the news media: a mouth that's not quite reliable

In recent days, an article entitled "Examples of Public Opinion Manipulation: How I Made a Million People Believe Chocolate Can Lose Weight" has spread across the Web, detailing the author of the paper who came to the conclusion that "eating chocolate can lose weight" and a journalist's self-desitation. He says the study was originally designed to show how to simply turn a botched scientific study into a headline-grabbing diet, and that it's also a way of reporting: by participating to expose it. They first organized a real experiment, but the sample size was less than
20
, and then manipulated the
P
to get a virtually meaningless "research results", and after writing the paper, they voted for
20,
magazines, which soon expressed interest in publishing for a fee. Next, we all see the media following the hype.may be an extreme example, but health guidelines on nutrition do often make people err on the back. For example, the latest dietary guidelines for the United States
2015-
-
2020-
2020 were officially released earlier this year, with concerns raised about the "removal of the cholesterol
intake limit", while the
's older dietary guidelines for 2010 and
recommended a daily intake of less than
300

mg per person; A study published this year in The Science of Children found that if pregnant women ate fish more than three times a week, their children were more likely to develop rapidly and become obese, which seemed at odds with the previously accepted idea that eating more fish supplements
omega-3
and
DHA
during pregnancy was beneficial to fetal development; The media is full of nutrition reports like this, each of which is over-the-top, but it's confusing to look at all. In the information age,
You are what you eat
", which gradually becomes "
You are what you read
"as people read it". What exactly causes the variety of nutrition reports? How to improve the current situation of media and nutrition research? How can I choose my diet more reliably?truth
headlines on January 1st is a low-carbohydrate diet healthier than a low-fat diet? Eating red meat is prone to cancer? A glass of red wine a day keeps the doctor away from me?A class of foods that have become so-called superfoods, or otherwise healthy foods, because of the latest findings of their health benefits, has since been out of favour because of a report of health hazards - and nutrition-related research news is now everywhere. Media coverage affects people's choice of food and drink, but media coverage is often incomplete, inaccurate or taken out of context, leading to the chaotic dissemination of information on food and dietary science, sometimes even contradictory.richard Smith
, a former editor of the
BMJ
, said at a recent meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine that
"more and more health-related research coverage is flooding the media today." However, the increase in information does not mean that the understanding of nutritional science is more correct, and many reports are inaccurate. Aof research literature has found a relationship between various food and health diseases. Each new study may add new evidence to a conclusion, but a incomplete press story may contradict previous findings.

Vivek Muthu
of
, an Economist Intelligence Unit think-tank, also explained at the meeting that there is a big problem with the presentation of health-related risks, and that relative risks often attract more attention than absolute risks based on their statistical appearance., for example, last year many reported a link between processed meat and cancer incidence, citing data from people who ate processed meat had a
17 percent higher
risk of bowel cancer. But few reports mention baseline risk and absolute figures. In the UK,
about
61
out of every 1,000,
people will develop bowel cancer at some stage of life, compared with about
56,
out of every
,000,
people who are exposed to processed meat, while
66,
per
,000,
people regularly eat processed meat.
Rycroft
of the Food and Beverage Industry Alliance said, "Failure to explain the context of the study is the biggest problem in the media and is largely misleading to readers." There are other problems, including in-body studies, animal studies, or research with only small sample data, and a lack of information on the personnel of the institutions involved in the study.2
propaganda machine over-propaganda Muthu
said, "everyone is stimulated by real interests to over-propaganda." Researchers are under pressure to publish research results, competition for visibility and research funding among academic institutions, academic journals seeking more readers and citations, news media seeking maximum readership and attention, and journalists have no time and lack of expertise in rigorously evaluating rough original research.Smith
describes such research itself in terms of
weak science
, and there are endless observations based solely on observations, many of which lack reliable statistical data. Journals should be criticized, he said, because of their advocacy and exaggeration of evidence from nutrition research, and that editors should take greater responsibility for health news coverage.Improving the current situation depends on higher-quality nutrition research projects and a better methodology to make research data more reliable. For example, it's not just about questionnaires about food intake, it's not just about presenting observations from large randomized trials. In addition, we know that funding from the food industry is swaying research projects, which can bias research results, and that more public funding, or similar funding from the Wellcome Trust, can reduce the impact of the food industry on research.press conference is an important opportunity for the scientific community to deal with the media, to determine the content of news media coverage and to help journalists understand the significance of scientific research. However, the evidence suggests that there was also speculation at the press conference. Over-interpreted press releases in academic journals and research institutions often lead to inappropriate or unreal news reports. As a science writer and researcher, Ben Goldacre,
, has
academics to raise the standard of press releases. He suggested that authors should establish a professional reputation evaluation system so that the academic reputation of authors who inaccurately report scientific discoveries will also be affected. Alternatively, publish the media draft with the research paper and encourage discussion of the draft. Margaret McCartney, a columnist
British Medical Journal,
that academic journals and research institutions should be more cautious when holding press conferences., the public has a better understanding of scientific methods that can help them judge the quality of news stories.
NHS Choices
'
Behind the Headlines
(behind the headlines -
NHS
Picks) and
Health News Review
, the media that provides objective analysis of health-related news. How to strictly evaluate the research paper can be learned in the health knowledge science school. The relevant skills can help the public and experts to value the media information, so as to provide better advice on how to choose food.referenceNavjoyt Ladher, Nutrition science in the media: you are what you read. BMJ 2016; 353 (2016.4.7)Appendix 2 February

,
The New York Times published an article by
Gary Taubes, a prominent American health science journalist and founder of the
nutrition science program
,
Gary Taubes,
. When an
by The
And Life, "Is our knowledge of nutrition credible
and
?" Why should we be skeptical of nutrition advice
?
" question,
Gary Taubes
answered: 's correct attitude to science requires careful observation and rigorous validation of assumptions in order to sum up reliable knowledge about nature and the universe. This idea is feasible for hard science such as physics, because physicists do not study complex objects such as thoughtful human organisms. Physical experiments may be expensive, but they can be validated over and over again, variables can be controlled, and cause and effect can be established. Nutrition needs to solve the problem of how diet affects the health of human life. This means that it is necessary to study the subject humanly and track it for years or decades to reach meaningful conclusions, which makes the experiment very difficult, costly and time-consuming. I think some researchers in nutrition will accept and accept evidence of lower standards for the theories they believe in and spread. For me, at least, there is no denying that some of the evidence is ambiguous, freeing the so-called experts who interpret the evidence and leading to a lot of inferences that are one-sided and biased. If you believe that observational research (
observational trials
) establishes causality
(
I don't believe, with a few exceptions
)
, then you can somehow interpret the evidence to convince you which foods constitute a healthy diet. If you believe that randomized controlled trials (
randomized control trials
) are necessary to establish causality
(
I believe
,
but the relevant research may be very rough
)
, you will interpret the evidence in a different way. results in inconsistent, even contradictory, news about nutritional health that we see every day. While experts are content to agree with different perspectives, the research team has never succeeded in proving which findings are conclusive and reliable, which is at the heart of the problem. References . .