Taking a spin on the information turnpike can be a journey to better nutrition and health, but it is road fraught with pesky drivers, contradictory directions and even a few highwaymen eager to separate you from your money, if not your well being.
If you are one of the more than 5 million Americans hooked up to the on-line services and Internet, you need only press a few keys to tap into entire libraries of research and data concerning nutrition and health.
In any number of teleconferences and chat lines, people with similar interests converse electronically and share information and opinions.
In many ways the Internet is like shooting the bull at the corner bar or palavering in the beauty parlor. The difference is that the people you are talking with can be, and often are, strangers from all over the country–indeed, all over the world.
“There is virtually no control over nutrition information that’s posted on health forums,”says Sue Grossbauer, a dietitian who edits a newsletter, Byting In. “It’s caveat emptor. There’s no gatekeeper. You can have a health professional posting advice right beside someone selling a bogus weight-loss aid, someone with no background. The average consumer has no way to know.
“I recently did a search of nutrition sources (on the Internet) and came up with 56 hits from just one directory. Half of them were connected to someone selling supplements, and most of those I checked were making false or non-legitimate claims.”
Earlier this year, the Tufts University Diet and Nutrition Newsletter examined commercial on-line services and found people making claims for fat-burning coffee, raisin/gin diets and natural rain-forest herbs to reduce stress.
“There’s not a shred of evidence to support these claims,” the newsletter editors wrote.
For instance, a forum participant who called himself “Doc Health” said he had a Ph.D. in nutrition, but a check by Tufts showed it was from a diploma mill, not an accredited academic institution.
“It’s a terrible beat to police. The on-line companies say they are no more responsible than the people who own the assembly hall are for what a speaker says,” Grossbauer says.
Even the electronic forums for nutrition professionals have no way to prevent interlopers.
In one recent visit to an Internet news group called (SET ITAL) alt.med.nutrition, (UNITAL) serious participants recently chastised a woman who had made several claims about the positive effects of a food supplement before admitting she was selling it.
“I don’t need to waste my money reading your commercial messages,” one Internet motorist responded. Another disgusted writer wrote: “This is not a news group for advertisements. If you want a billboard, buy space on one along the highway.”
Nutrition and health discussions on-line range from the best cooking fat to whether chlorine in drinking water is dangerous. Sometimes it’s difficult to separate facts from fads. Not everybody knows what they are talking about, even those with advanced degrees.
“Everybody is a nutritionist,” says William Evers, associate professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. “If you eat you are a nutritionist. On the Internet there is no peer review.
“We have been taught that somebody with credentials is reliable, but that’s not always true, especially when they are not in their own field.”
Biochemists aren’t necessarily dietitians, says Evers, a dietitian and chairman of the American Dietetic Association’s nutrition education practice group.
“I tell people to be skeptical, to treat (the Internet) as a newspaper. Can you tell the credentials of the person writing? Is he or she associated with a reputable university or company, one you know?
“But even if you ask for credentials, they may not be real. Newspapers have their reputation at stake. On the Internet, reputation means little or nothing.”
Evers warns that a lot of stuff is faddish, not outright fraud. For instance, there is a lot of chatter about Kombucha tea, which is purported to cure everything from hemorrhoids to hair loss and to boost immunity and enhance memory.
“It looks like a fermented mushroom and yeast product,” Evers says. “It’s probably not harmful, but if it isn’t stored properly, it could turn toxic. Making your own could be dangerous. Also some side effects have been connected to it, including one death in Iowa.
“I’m worried about people who really need help and try to get it off the Internet rather than from a more reliable source.
“In a way it’s like astrology but dangerous,” he says, “especially if you take advice over the Internet over what you might get from a medical professional. It also can be dangerous if you eat a particular food or diet rather than getting a balanced intake of foods. And it’s worse if you do it for your children.”
HEALTH SCREENINGS
What kind of drivers are switching lanes and tailgating out there on the info roadway?
On alt.support.cancer, a computer forum for people concerned about cancer, the following exchange of messages recently appeared.
Message 1: “I have heard/read some good things about the watermelon fast (as a cancer cure), but I was under the impression that you should eat the fiber as well as the juice, plus chew the seeds.
Anyone have ideas about this?”
Message 2: “Uhh, you’ll have to rely on the people on alt.kooky.diets and rec.stupid.ideas for answers to this.”
Message 3: “Alt.support.cancer is for people with cancer, their friends, loved ones and families. There are cancer survivors such as myself, who participate as well. I’m here because mainstream medicine saved my life. If I had followed crackpot advice, I’d be dead. I mean, I’m sure that sucking down watermelon juice would have been less unpleasant than chemo and radiation, but these last two have the advantage of efficacy.”
ACCESS TO INFORMATION
The federal government maintains dozens of electronically accessible sources of food and nutrition information, including data banks, bulletin boards and some fee-based systems.
“Selected Electronic Sources of Food and Nutrition Information,” a 70-page book listing these sources, is available from the National Agricultural Library, 10301 Baltimore Blvd., Room 304, Beltsville, Md. 20705-2351. Telephone: 301-504-5719; Fax: 301-504-6409; Internet: fnic@nalusda.gov
The Food and Drug Administration has a bulletin board for Gopher users and a Web site run by its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). The CFSAN Web site (vm.cfsan.fda.gov/index.htm) has information on food safety, food labeling and nutrition.
A privately funded organization, the non-profit International Food Information Council, distributes science-based information on food and nutrition and maintains a Web site (ificinfo.health.org/homepage.htm).
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Steven Pratt’s e-mail address is SMPratt@aol.com
