Nutrition Misinformation: Dying from a misprint

Let me share with you one of the toughest things about being a registered dietitian/nutritionist. The toughest thing is reading, on an almost daily basis, nutrition information that is, quite simply, wrong.
Now don't misunderstand me. There are areas of nutrition where the absolute facts remain unknown, where the top experts in the field might disagree--for example, the role of sodium in elevated blood pressure. No, what concerns me are the errors of fact and this usually comes about from one of two reasons: 1) simple ignorance about nutrition and biochemistry, or 2) a hidden agenda.
An example of the former occurred recently when a national newspaper's reporter did a big story on detoxification. The topic itself (detoxification) actually introduces a third category of misinformation or is perhaps a combination of 1) and 2): the whole notion of detoxification or cleansing is nonsense but the health-food industry has done a pretty good job of convincing otherwise intelligent people that their body needs it. But, back to the misinformation. It came in the form of a declarative sentence that implied the writer actually knew whereof she spoke: "Dairy products", she wrote, "are one of the hardest food groups to digest." What sheer balderdash.

The notion of certain foods being "hard to digest" has been around for quite a while, usually ascribed to meat. There is not an iota of evidence to support the idea, and the stomach, unlike say, Olympic figure-skating judges, has no system for grading degrees of difficulty in the digestion process. The stuff gets dumped in there and the appropriate enzymes go to work and do their job. If you want to talk about a food that is "difficult" to digest, how about beans? Anyway, the writer says that dairy foods are banned from the "detox" diet and implies that her current diet is devoid of them as well. So there, based on a newspaper article, we have the possibility of thousands of women readers giving up the major source of calcium in their diet-and looking forward to future osteoporosis.

Another national newspaper story cites a "nutritionist" as recommending chocolate as a good source of iron and zinc. As an aside, let me point out that in most provinces the term "nutritionist" is not protected by law, so anybody can--and will--use the term/title...without having studied at an accredited university. Regarding the chocolate, which if it's dark, has a good level of antioxidants, there is no discussion of the difference in absorbability between "heme" iron (found in meat) and "non-heme" iron found in plant foods (poor absorbability), nor is there any mention of the size of a piece of chocolate you'd have to eat to get a significant amount of zinc. As it happens, the nutritionist who was quoted is one who advocates a diet free of animal foods, so perhaps her personal agenda/philosophy was influencing her judgment.

Then we have a blatant example of the hidden agenda. This is definitely the case with an article about a book by a so-called "diet doctor" who claims that cheese is addictive because it contains opiates. He compounds this bit of nonsense with the statement that cheese is 70% fat...completely wrong. Cheddar cheese, for example, is 32% fat. To begin with, calling this man a "diet doctor" is misleading in the extreme. He's an animal rights activist who happens to have an M.D. Either the reporter was unaware of this hidden agenda, or perhaps she bought into it herself.

Other bits of misinfo you might have run across include: spinach is a good source of calcium (it's not); the calcium in chocolate milk is unavailable to the body (not true--except for an extremely minor reduction); you need eight glasses of water a day (you don't; normal food and beverage intake can cover your needs nicely).

It would be nice if I could round off this story with a check list of what to look for when you're reading an article about nutrition, but that's easier said than done. First off you want to see if it's been written by or quotes a registered dietitian. That doesn't mean it can never be wrong; we make mistakes; we're human...but you're much more likely to get the facts from someone who has spent years studying the stuff. Other than that, the best I can tell you is to see if the information fits with your country's food guide. If it doesn't, then be skeptical.