Photo: Alonso Nichols

Spotting Bogus Dietary Advice

1. BASED ON ONE STUDY

A single study exonerating saturated fat was all it took for Mark Bittman to declare in the New York Times, “Butter is Back.” “If all of a sudden you saw a study that said oatmeal is bad for you, when up to that point all you’ve heard is good things, be a skeptic,” advises Diane McKay, G87, N97, N00, an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

2. DIRE WARNINGS ABOUT A SINGLE FOOD TYPE

“Fat makes you fat.” “Carbohydrates are toxic.” “Sugar is white death.” While too much of anything is bad for you, such claims can erase whole categories of nutritious foods from your diet, says McKay. “Worrying about the sugar and ignoring all the good things in a carrot is almost a crime.”

3. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

Whether the recommendation is to eat more chocolate (flavonoid-rich!) or enjoy a bunless burger with cheese and bacon (low-carb!), “the public likes it when the advice is consistent with what they want to do,” says Friedman professor Jeanne Goldberg, G59, N86. Beware of wishful thinking, in other words.

4. QUICK FIX

Lots of supplements promise to help you “lose weight fast!”—among them mangosteen, acai berries, and the current Internet darling, African mango extract. But if the claims were true, says McKay, “do you really think the ads would appear on late-night infomercials, tabloid newspapers, and the side panel of your browser?”

5. “GOOD” & “BAD” FOODS

While the Huffington Post’s list of “7 Foods You Should Avoid at All Costs” is appealing in its simplicity, “foods aren’t independently good or bad, as in you should always eat or you should never eat,” says Goldberg. A little ice cream can be OK. But what about fettuccine Alfredo, which the Center for Science in the Public Interest once described as “a heart attack on a plate”? “One dinner is not going to do you in,” Goldberg says.

6. PLUGGING A PRODUCT

If the health article you are reading conveniently ends with a sales pitch for a supplement, or if all the studies cited at the end of a diet book are by the book’s author, your quackery alarm should go off. “It doesn’t mean that study should be dismissed,” says Rachel Cheatham, N05, N08, a Friedman adjunct professor, “but there may be other research that either had null findings or contrary findings that didn’t get published.”

Inspired by the Food and Nutrition Alliance’s “Ten Red Flags of Junk Science”