Scam Watch: Health Advisories

Introducktion

Be warned: This is a bit of a longer read than my shorter posts. (The inclusion of the word "duck" in the above header is most certainly intentional.) You may also want to have a look at my Sample Researching Guide if you haven't already, since I talk about how I research stuff in it.

I've been told over the years that ground beef collects in the digestive system and doesn't get fully processed. I had always questioned this idea, because, if this were true, ground beef would rot and release all sorts of nasty garbage into the body, causing damage to the body very quickly. (At least based on what I've read.) I've never experienced health problems from eating beef, ground or otherwise. However, it doesn't hurt to check to see what The Others are saying.

So, I decided to go on a romp around the Information Superspeedbump and see for myself. I opened up a Web search site and punched in the following magical terms: ground beef myths

I love myth sites, because most of them supply plenty of references to studies and links. These references are important to me. A lack of references means, to me, that the site is relying on hearsay or made-up "facts". Are they confident enough in their information to provide proof or not?

The first two links didn't give me a lot of information. However, the following site was very insightful.

Part 1: Looks Like A Solid Foundation

The Weston A. Price Foundation gives some very interesting info on ground beef in their Myths and Truths About Beef article. The article has lots of references to keep me working for a while, though not for too long.

A bit of a history: Weston A. Price was a dentist back in the earlyish 1900's (details here and here). He traveled around the world studying diets of indigenous peoples (natives living off the land), with special attention to those who lived on traditional diets and others who switched to more modern diets.

He found that traditional diets caused people to be less prone to tooth decay and other oral issues, whereas modern diets of processed foods led to oral problems. He expanded beyond their oral health and looked at other aspects of health and nutrition in these cultures.

Back to the Weston A. Price Foundation: members of this foundation have taken Weston A. Price's research and provided it for free on the Internet (which I'll shorten to Westonaprice.org for the rest of this article). The foundation gets money from its members, industry and fundraising ventures.

Part 2: Where's The Beef? Right here!

It seems that Weston A. Price was on to something important in his research. Many health professionals state that beef causes all sorts of problems, including colon cancer. Weston A. Price reported, however, that indigenous diets consisting of high levels of animal fats and proteins (the important part being "animal fats") resulted in less incidences of colon cancer and other related diseases.

There are more references on Westonaprice.org's "Myths and Truths About Beef" article than I could shake a handful of sticks at. I scanned one article after another, and there were a lot of references (and links!) to studies.

When I'm researching a person or an organization, though, I also like to see what the detractors (enemies) are saying about them. One such site, Vegsource.com, quoted an article on another site, Healthy at 100, about soy and pretty well said the authors of an article, who are president and vice-president of Westonaprice.org, were lying about their information on soy.

Perfect! Just what I was looking for! It's not beef, but it could spell trouble for Westonaprice.org if these authors didn't do their homework.

Up to this point, the articles I read on Westonaprice.org had plenty of references to keep me busy. However, I checked Westonaprice.org for their Myths and Truths About Soy article and found...

...no references?!

They had posted no references for this article. I checked their other Myths and Truths articles and the Myths and Truths About Nutrition article also had no references. I sent them an email asking about the lack of references and suggested they add the references or delete the articles. Pretty straight forward, I think. (I love causing trouble.) [Edit SUNDAY JUN 07, 2009: No response from WAPF at this time. Most distressing.]

Part 3: A Duck In Sheep's Clothing?

Nutritional organisations such as Vegsource.com have provided (from what I've seen) no references to studies.

Healthy at 100 calls itself an information resource based on "science". However, there are absolutely no references in any of the articles I viewed, and this John Robbins character seems more interested in talking about his daughter-in-law's you-know-what-but-children-might-be-reading-so-I-can't-say-it-but-it-starts-with-a-V and his patriotism than delivering factual data. Not as much of a valuable resource as it is an opinion, sadly. (Fortunately, I advised him of my opinion of him. I'm sure that'll be a load off his shoulders.)

Quackwatch.org prides itself on uncovering false or misleading information provided by health professionals. (Just because someone's a professional doesn't mean they're an expert - it just means they receive money for doing what they do.) Unfortunately, although Quackwatch.org does provide links to other sources, many links refer back to their own information.

Oh, and I also demand date stamps on the articles during my own research. If I can't tell how old it is, I can't tell how outdated it is.

It also seems, with the lack of references, that caretakers of the Weston A. Price Foundation have chosen to use his valuable research to carry their own agenda on soy. This will only be resolved once they post the references to their information on soy, though.

Part 4: Good Citations

Any organization that has an income has the potential to lie in order to get more income. The two authors I mentioned before are clearly at the top of the food chain at Westonaprice.org, which automatically makes them biased in their views. Bar none. This is also true for every Web site and business. I'm biased in my own view regarding investigation and research. Everyone has an agenda, hidden or otherwise.

Relying on second-hand information requires less effort than conducting a small investigation. From my point of view, though, knowledge based on fact has more relevance to reality. If the information hasn't been properly tested, it's potentially useless (or harmful) to people.

So, my basic rules for information reliability are:

1) The site must provide references.
2) The references must be legitimate.
3) The site must place a date of publication on each of their articles.

I haven't come across any situation where two opposing sites cited good references. So a quicker method could be to omit step 2 unless you have the time or brain space. (It took me about half an hour to digest the original article, another 30 minutes to find links. My own brain is aching nicely after this session, though - 3 hours of solid research, and 36 tabs open in Firefox related to this research, minus this blog entry. I only go to such extents for you, my beloved readers!)

By the way, before anyone sends me hate responses about cruelty to animals in slaughterhouses, I already know all that. So go change the system and let me eat my meat!