Dishonest?

Milk is very healthy...(?)

According to the National Dairy Council milk is very healthy. They say consumption of three servings of milk "help reduce the risk of osteoporosis". Although it looks like they've done their research, this claim has never been proven by research. In contrast, milk consumption is not associated with bone fractures or osteoporosis Owusu 1997, Feskanich 1997, and some researchers even think milk consumption increases the chance of bone fractures because it increases the length of the bone, what causes it to break more easily.

media over gezondheid

Who Tells the Truth?

There are many myths about nutrition and health floating around. Even for nutritionists it is hard to find the truth about what foods really make you healthy, let alone trying to convince other people. A good start in understanding nutrition is thinking about what people are trying to tell you, and why. If someone is trying to sell you a product that makes you lose weight by sweating, think twice. Although sweating might be associated with exercise, losing water through your pores does not make you thinner. And the main motive of the producer is to empty your wallet.

Millions of dollars are spend to convince people to buy foods, but nutritionists and scientists who's main purpose is to make you healthy do not have this amount of money to spend on marketing. The amount of truthful messages about nutrition are drowned by the plethora of misleading stories about "miracle foods", "magic weight loss pills" and new food products. Pay a little bit more attention to the nutrition stories that appear in the media, and you will soon understand what those really mean. Everybody has the right to sound and true information, and I will try to make sure the lies about nutrition do not make more people unhealthy or confused.

Lose your gut in 8 weeks?

These are claims that health magazines make on their covers. But read this article from the New York Times about how transforming a body really works: it takes months to years to see visible changes in your body.
Fitness Isn’t an Overnight Sensation.

Health Claim "Whole Grains!"

Sugary Kids Cereal

Whenever you see a health claim, walk away and don't look back. Usually health claims like "No Trans Fat", "No Added Sugar", "Helps Reduce Cholesterol" or "Whole Grains" hide something. "Whole grains" on the front of a package only means that there is a tiny bit of whole grains (sometimes not even 20% of all flour is made from whole grains). And in the case of these cereals from General Mills, especially developed for kids, they hide 5 spoons (12 grams) of sugar. A safe bet is to choose processed and packaged products without health claims, and check the ingredient list yourself.

Further reading

The Nutrition Source has a great article on nutrition science and the media: The Nutrition Source — Deciphering Media Stories on Diet

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is an independent organization that "raise awareness about the role that corporate funding and other corporate interests play in scientific research, oversight, and publication". More information about these efforts and the database of associations between researchers and the industry can be found at: CSPI - Integrity in Science Database.