The Co-op Food Stores of New Hampshire and Vermont

added 05/10/10

by Mary Saucier Choate, M.S., R.D., L.D.
Co-op Food and Nutrition Educator

Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.—Benjamin Franklin

A large part of my job at the Co-op is answering customer questions about nutrition. These range from “How much iodine is in seaweed?” to “Is soy safe for me to eat?” to “Is canola oil poisonous?”

My approach, which I would like to share, is one that I feel gives Co-op customers the highest-quality nutrition information available.

A lot of questions are stimulated by websites that are not fact–based. Rather, they are motivated by certain beliefs that ignore any information that might weaken their message, or they are manufacturer websites selling a certain product and disparaging others. Customers can tell something isn’t quite right with the information, but can’t put their finger on why it doesn’t ring true—so they call me to investigate further.

My first step is to find facts about the issue or product. For health and disease questions, I use reputable nonprofit sites: health organizations such as the American Heart Association for heart health issues, the American Diabetes Association for diabetes questions, the American Institute for Cancer Research for cancer and nutrition.

For answering food questions, I get accurate nutrient content information at the constantly updated USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory website. For recipe analysis, the dietitian-owned Nutrition Data website generates a single serving nutrition label based on the recipe entered.

I avoid websites that demonize certain foods. These sites may use misinformation to sell their particular product or viewpoint. Information on food industry sites, such as the tree nut council or the dairy council, can be double-checked using the reputable health sites noted above.

Additional research, such as looking up original studies or the effectiveness and safety of a natural remedy, is sometimes required. For this I use the library as well as online services such as the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database or National Library of Medicine’s PubMed study database.

Here’s how I found the answers to a recent customer question: “Is canola oil poisonous?” This question comes up periodically as an old email “scare-mail” goes around again. I went to the urban legends site at www.about.com where I found the original scaremail. Then I went to PubMed to search the research studies and found an authoritative article from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that reviewed canola safety and healthfulness. I looked at the canola oil industry site for more background on how it is produced and double-checked this information with North Dakota State University’s monograph written by Agronomy Specialists.

Answer: Canola oil is not poisonous; it’s a very healthful oil.

Most customers just want the bottom-line answer from me, but some want all of the research I use to come up with my answers, and I am happy to send this along as well.

My advice for evaluating nutrition information is: if it sounds sensational and unbelievable, it most likely is. Look up studies referred to see if they really say what the writer is reporting. Watch the sources of nutrition information you use. Use credible non-profit health organizations, university websites, and peer-reviewed journals to double-check health and nutrition information.

And keep in mind this advice from physicist Richard Feynman: “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself … and you are the easiest person to fool.”