It seems that not a day goes by without the media reporting on some new health or nutrition study. Whether it's television, radio, the daily newspaper or a monthly magazine, new scientific studies on food, nutrition and health make headlines. In general, having such a wide availability of information on an important topic is a good thing. The more we know about our health, the better choices we can make. On the other hand, with the abundance of health and nutrition information around today, much of it delivered in small chunks, it can be difficult to decide which pieces of information are factual and relevant to our particular health situations.

News bites don't warrant behaviour changes

During television or radio reports on new scientific studies, it may be difficult to evaluate what you are hearing because the reports are usually short and may fail to provide important facts or place the information in the right context. In most cases, it is usually best to get further information before you act. For example, if you saw a television report on the results of a new study that showed that eating 25 apples a day helped to prevent cancer, you would not immediately stock up on apples and start munching!

Newsbites such as those featured nightly on the television news shows, often do not provide enough information to allow an informed decision to be made. There are many questions that could be asked about the report above. For example, what type of study was it? Was it conducted in animals or humans? How many subjects were studied? How long did the study last? Has the research been published in a respected peer reviewed journal?

Equally important is that, except in rare cases, the results of a single study are not conclusive. More studies are generally needed to confirm the results. Therefore, until more information is available, either by reading more on the subject or by talking to a health professional, look before you leap into changing your diet or lifestyle.

Tips for Evaluating Science

Written reports of new health and nutrition studies are easier to evaluate than television or radio reports because they usually present more information. Consider the following when reading about new studies.

Study design

The way in which a study is organised and conducted can affect the results and relevance to everyday life. A "preliminary" study offers just the first glimpse at what may someday become a recommendation, whereas the results of a study that confirms the findings of many previous studies may be considered a recommendation of sorts.

Furthermore, studies that show associations or relationships do not necessarily indicate cause and effect. Controlled studies, which test the effects of a specific treatment or condition, are the only type of study that can show cause and effect.

Often, the most relevant controlled experiments are clinical trials, which can use human volunteer subjects. The "gold standard" of clinical trials is the double-blind, placebo controlled study in which subjects are randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group.

Funding source

In today's environment, research has sometimes been criticised, or its findings dismissed entirely because industry or some other interested party has funded the research. To provide sources of funding information to the public, most scientific journals require that this information be referenced at the end of the paper. Funding information is important but should not be the principal criteria for the evaluation of a scientific study.

Good scientific research is costly. This is because it is complicated, frequently time-consuming and involves numerous people (researchers, statisticians and so on) who are paid for their time and expertise. This is why governments, universities, industry groups or individual companies fund most nutrition and health research. Wherever the funding comes from, what is important is to view the merits of the study using the yardstick of scientific standards.

Take the example of a food ingredient. The government normally requires that companies who want to market new food ingredients must demonstrate the safety and efficacy of their products. This requires scientific research using guidance principles established over the years jointly by government officials, academicians and industry scientists. Therefore, the company must fund studies before the government will even consider the new ingredient. If industry did not fund the research, it would not be done at all and many new products would never reach the marketplace.

The other side of the funding "coin" is the researchers themselves. Researchers have worked long and hard to obtain their academic and professional credentials and standing. As members of the broader community, they would neither risk the health of their family or friends nor would they risk losing their credibility by publishing flawed data or biased conclusions. Academic institutions where such research is carried out have policies in place to ensure that conflicts of interest do not play a role in the science.

What is the bottom line? The funding source should be just one of many factors that you consider when evaluating a scientific study. The results of a well-designed and properly conducted scientific study will stand on their own merit, regardless of the source of study funding.

Context

Context relates to the peripheral but relevant information that is needed to put a study's results into perspective and make the information useful in real life. The abbreviated nature of television and radio news reports means that contextual information is rarely included in coverage on new health and nutrition studies. In the print media, context is frequently presented at the end of the article so that only the most persistent will get all of the information they need to fully evaluate the credibility of the study.

Examples of context in stories and articles on nutrition and health might include the following: the amount of a food consumed or specifics about the dosage of a supplement taken, the frequency of its consumption, details about the study population (age, gender and so on) and information about risk-benefit trade-off as well as information on whether the study confirmed or contradicted previous studies.

When the topic of a new scientific study seems relevant, it's a good idea to try to gather as much information about it as possible. The old adage "if it sounds too good (or bad) to be true, it probably is" applies to nutrition and food safety as well as anything else. Getting the opinion of a doctor or dietitian and taking a common sense approach to evaluating all of the information available aids in decision making regarding the relevance of the study results to behavioural change.