Debunking nutrition myths - a how-to guide

The internet is awash with claim and counterclaim about what constitutes a healthy diet for humans. How can the average person sort the wheat from the chaff?

In my monthly Ask Robyn sessions (a feature of my EmpowerEd membership program), members frequently send me articles on nutrition and health which they encounter online, and ask for my take on them. In the seven years since I launched EmpowerEd, I've assessed and critiqued articles on the supposed dangers of soy, lectins, phytates and oxalates, and the supposed miraculous benefits of collagen powder, kombucha, grounding/earthing and seed cycling... and just about everything in between. You can view the recordings of all 90+ Ask Robyn sessions, and view all the source material that I cite in my critiques, by joining EmpowerEd. Your first month of membership is completely free.

With the proliferation of websites, blogs, discussion forums, YouTube and Instagram channels and other social media devoted to the discussion of nutrition and dissemination of particular views about healthy eating, it's easy for people who don't have a background in nutrition science to become confused by all the different opinions. Especially when those opinions are spruiked by people who employ (unwittingly or otherwise) every logical fallacy in the book.

A complaint that I hear all the time from my clients, and EmpowerEd members, is some version of "There are so many different points of view about healthy eating, and I don't know who to believe!" Although members often ask for my opinions on various issues and nutritional controversies, I always stress that my opinion is completely irrelevant. My aim is to teach members to follow a disciplined process of assessment and analysis of anything they read or view online, so that they can come to their own conclusion - a conclusion informed by verifiable facts, rather than the persuasive marketing techniques employed by online self-styled nutrition gurus.

I cover, in detail, the process that I use to evaluate sources of nutrition information in the Empowered Eating seminar, the recording of which is actually a membership bonus of EmpowerEd.

In this post, I want to summarise the process I follow when carrying out a first-pass assessment of any nutrition information that I encounter on the web.

1. Check out the 'About' page.

What is the author's background? Does he/she have any qualifications in nutrition, and if so, what type? If the author/s list the institution that granted them their qualifications, look it up. There are many substandard organisations (including private colleges and universities) that issue qualifications that are barely worth the paper they're written on. Some, known in the US as 'degree mills', will simply sell you a diploma or degree. A quick online search will often reveal these dodgy providers.
If the author of the blog has no qualifications in nutrition, but simply has an interest in the topic and has read some books on it (as is the case with many blog posts that I critique in Ask Robyn sessions, let me ask you a question: Why are you reading what they write in the first place? If you have an interest in nutrition, you've probably read about as much as they have - maybe more!

I'm not saying that people who don't have a professional background in a subject might not be well-informed about it. They may very well have something worthwhile to say about the topic. But the absence of an in-depth understanding of human anatomy and physiology, basic and nutritional biochemistry, and the other biological sciences that nutrition professionals study in-depth as part of their training, leaves lay people vulnerable to fundamental misunderstandings and misconceptions about human nutrition.

By analogy, who would you ask for advice on your home renovations: a licensed builder, or an enthusiastic viewer of renovation reality shows?

2. Check the references.

If the author/s don't cite any, but are simply stating their opinion or sharing their personal experience, it's time to leave their site and look elsewhere for reputable information. As a free speech absolutist, I support everyone's right to express their opinion... but I am not obliged to respect that opinion unless it is backed up by verifiable facts, and/or a logical reasoning process.

If they do cite references, check them. I can't tell you how many times I've followed up on a reference cited in an article, only to find that the author of the article misquoted or misrepresented the reference, or that the reference did not even mention the topic of the article.

A case in point is the many anti-soy articles that I've critiqued in Ask Robyn sessions over the years. More often than not, the so-called 'references' that these articles cite are simply posts on the Weston A. Price Foundation's website. When I followed up on the references cited in these articles, I found that most of them were badly outdated (going back to the 1930s; my university lecturers frowned on students citing papers that were older than five years, unless they were 'seminal works'!); many did not even mention soy; and the majority of those that did were animal studies involving feeding isolated soy protein as the major or only item of diet to animals such as rats and chicks. It turns out that these species are "extraordinarily sensitive to [adverse effects of] dietary protease inhibitors", while those same protease inhibitors appear to decrease cancer risk in humans.

How do you check references? Some websites will have them hyperlinked (as I always do), which makes it easy. Others will list the sources cited in a footnote. Just copy and paste the article's title into your search engine. You'll either be sent to the journal's website, or to PubMed, which is a central database of indexed citations and abstracts (article summaries) from medical, nursing, dental, veterinary, health care, and preclinical sciences journals.

If the article that you want to read is behind a paywall, you can often find the full text by using the academic pirate website Sci-Hub. You can find all active Sci-Hub proxy links here. Just copy and paste the DOI of the article that you want to read into the Sci-Hub search bar and click the 'Open' button:

3. Check where the article fits in the scientific discourse.

There are just so many articles published, that it's possible to find a reference to support virtually any opinion. But all scientists know that one article doesn't prove a thing; it's the 'preponderance of evidence' that matters.

When following up on a reference, I prefer to go to its PubMed listing as PubMed has a handy 'Similar Articles' widget. (It's a bit like that "People who bought this book also bought these" feature that Amazon uses - but sciencey ;-).) I always check out the Similar Articles to get a sense of whether the article I'm reading is representative of the consensus view of the scientific community, or whether it's outdated, debunked or suspect in some other way.

See the screenshot below:

Bonus tip - if the author claims that "everything the 'experts' tell you about nutrition is wrong", click off the page.

There are certainly controversies in nutrition science. And some nutrition research is highly questionable, either as a result of food industry funding, the personal biases of researchers, or just plain old poor study design. However, the overwhelming majority of nutrition scientists and professionals agree on the foundations of what constitutes a healthy human diet, as you'll quickly discover if you peruse the Council Members of the True Health Initiative (THI). THI is an umbrella organisation established by Dr David Katz which comprises "a growing coalition of hundreds of world-renowned health experts, committed to cutting through the noise and educating on only the evidence-based, time-honored and proven pillars of lifestyle as medicine."

Would you be surprised to learn that plant-based diet advocates such as Emeritus Professor T. Colin Campbell and Dr Dean Ornish are in fundamental agreement on human nutrition with paleo diet advocates such as Professor Emeritus Loren Cordain and Dr Boyd Eaton? Well, they are. That's why all four are THI Council Members. So if you are going to follow the siren song of the self-appointed nutrition gurus who claim that all the nutrition experts are wrong about what constitutes a healthy diet for humans, you won't have much left to eat.

So there you have it - three preliminary steps to follow when you're deciding whether something nutrition-related that you find on the Web is worth your attention, and a bonus heuristic for identifying the snake-oil salesmen of the nutrition world. These steps will take you just a couple of minutes, and possibly save you a whole load of time that you would otherwise waste on material that you really shouldn't bother with in the first place.

The morals of the story are that a) You can't believe everything you read on the web (duh!) and b) You need to employ a systematic process to assess information that you're exposed to, to avoid ending up confused, overwhelmed, and racked with self-doubt about whether you're making the best choices when it comes to nutrition.

Would you like to share your tips for assessing nutrition information? Please comment below!

My membership program, EmpowerEd, is focused on equipping members with the information and skills they need to navigate the deluge of health information we're all exposed to every day... and it's the most cost-effective way to get your nutrition questions answered by me, based on up-to-date nutritional science. Find out more about the program, and register for your 1 month free trial, here.