How to Decode Nutrition News (Ep 53)

Eggs, sugar, red meat—we know nutrition is important, but what’s “right” about nutrition seems to change. And it changes a lot. Plus, it can be hard to keep your knowledge around food and health from interfering with how you approach family meals and feeding yourself. Today, we’re here to help!

We had Jennifer Berry of Thrive By Spectrum Pediatrics on our latest episode of the Comfort Food podcast for help decoding nutrition news. Our goal is to help you keep what you know in perspective with your larger goals for feeding your family well. It’s so hard not to get wrapped up in the “shoulds” related to food, but worrying too much about metrics can really get in the way of enjoying food and time with our family.

How to Read Nutrition News

Here are some tips to keep in mind when reading any piece of nutrition news that you may find in the newspaper, online on websites, on Instagram, Facebook, newsletters, or even on food packages. All sources are not created equal and in many cases, they may not be based on quality research.

1. Know the source. If you’re reading an article about research, look for a link to the primary  source so you can read the summary—which is often called the “abstract”. This is important because often websites will pull out a random bit of the study since it makes for a compelling headline.
2. Look at the size of the study. Impacts of nutrition is very hard to study (because you either need people to self report their intake and results or you need to control participants in a lab setting) so many nutrition studies are small. Which means they may not actually hold up to be accurate when interpreted across the population. You’ll want to look at how many people were in the study.
3. Look at how long the people were followed. This can be particularly useful with weight loss studies, studies on specific ingredients, and ways of feeding kids.
4. Look at whether the population of people studied is similar to you.  If it was a study done on men and you’re a woman, it won’t be a good study to extrapolate to your own life.
5. Try to think of what the study doesn’t show. It’s easy to see a study and think that one thing is linked to another, but it may not be at all.

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