Don’t Believe Everything You Read

October 22, 2018

Our inboxes and social media feeds are filled with attention-grabbing, "click bait"-type headlines announcing the latest research in the field of health and nutrition. But how much of this research can we actually believe?

There are two main problems with research in general -- one is that observational studies do not prove causation (just because people who own TVs have higher rates of heart disease does not mean that TVs cause heart disease). But the biggest problem with research is the FUNDING. Sadly, much of the health and nutrition research is funded by pharmaceutical companies, rendering the outcomes of those studies invalid, IMHO. Just last week, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center resigned, "amid reports that he had failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from health care companies in dozens of research articles."

Here's a shocking little tidbit I stumbled across on Stephan Guyenet's blog: he details the conflicts of interest of the 9 doctors who developed the National Cholesterol Education Program -- 8 of the 9 doctors were connected in some way or other with a statin manufacturer like Pfizer or Merck. As this group is in in charge of determining the cholesterol target values for our entire country, those conflicts of interest could be affecting the health of millions of people.

I ran across this problem myself when deciding which nutrition education program to take -- and found out that the Registered Dietician curriculum was sponsored by Kellogg's and the Coca-Cola Company, among others.

These are just a few examples -- sadly, there are countless more (here are some compiled by food activist Marion Nestle). Before just doing what the next headline tells us to do, we should all do a little research of our own and see who funded that study.