Little Girl and Her Organic, Sprouting Sweet Potatoes

If you haven't seen the little girl's video that shows how 'alive' organic food is and how 'dead' conventionally grown food is, check it out: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/a-little-girls-experiment-will-change-the-way-you-think-about-food/

This situation is the perfect example of why dosage matters, and furthermore, why scientific education matters. As the little girl rightly points out (i'd like to know what adults used their child to push their unscientific agenda??), Chlorpropham, the chemical sprayed on conventional plants to prevent sprouting and extend shelf life, has been shown to be carcinogenic in animal models. But only in extreme doses never even close to being consumed by humans.

I talk a lot about dosage on this blog and how it's been removed from nutritional sciences ("eat as much as you want of these, never eat that"), but these same misunderstandings also apply to toxicology - this isn't to say there are no concerns over any pesticides and environmental/industrial chemicals in our foods, but those that are intentionally used go through a rigorous safety process.

For a great read on this issue, check out Joe Schwarcz's response on McGill's blog - this is a really important topic because we need to educate consumers on the use of chemicals and how safety levels are determined (hint: it's quite a rigorous progress!)

Always remember - drinking too much water can kill you, and everyone who drinks water dies! - it doesn't make water toxic! Dosage matters!

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Beware the Meta-Analysis: Fat, Guidelines, and Biases

Headlines were abuzz this week, reporting that a new review of randomized controlled trials at the time of the low-fat guidelines didn't support their institution. Time , Business Insider , and The Verge all covered the topic with sensationalist headlines (e.g. 'We should never have told people to stop eating fat' #weneverdid). I won't spend every part of this blog picking apart the entire meta-analysis; you can read it over at the open access journal, BMJ Open Heart (1) -- (note, for myself, i'm adding an extra level of skepticism for anything that gets published in this journal). I'm also not going to defend low-fat diets either, but rather, use this meta-analysis to point out some critical shortcomings in nutritional sciences research, and note that we should be wary of meta-analyses when it comes to diet trials. First off, let's discuss randomized controlled trials (RCTs). They are considered the gold standard in biomedical research; in the hierarc...

On PURE

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Much Ado About Funding

Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and advocate , recently published an expose of the ties between the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and certain industries - you can find the full report here . The report caused quite the stir on twitter, getting play from the MotherJones , ScientificAmerican , and the accolades of a number of twitter celebs. Yoni Freedhoff kindly tweeted the report, suggesting that Ms Simon is only 'questioning' the ties between ASN and industry; alas, reading the report shows that much more than just 'questioning' is going on here - the title alone speaks to that': "Nutrition Scientists on the Take from Big Food - Has the American Society for Nutrition lost all credibility?" As Andrew Kniss pointed out on twitter, ASN being "on the take" is quite the accusation. The report won't surprise anyone who has followed Ms Simon in the past. She wrote a similar report about the Academy of Nutrition and Dieteti...

Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

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