all right welcome back in part three of this chapter 1 recording I am going to overview some credible sources of nutrition information as well as discuss how you can prevent being a victim of quackery or what we know as health fraud so you may want to take some notes here I'll be showing you websites that are going to be helpful for you in terms of identifying some nutrition Miss information first off though I thought it would be worthy to remind ourselves that credible research really is based on the scientific method so you guys remember learning about the scientific method I'm sure even back in high school this is where we start with a question we develop a hypothesis and we work through our experiment and you can see an example there of an application of the scientific method on the right they're looking at cod liver oil curing a condition called called rickets which is when the bones fail to mineralize so these are the steps the researchers are taking to do so what's important to remember is that we want to do quality research studies over time and do many of them to then be able to create a consensus so we don't want to rely just on one study or even two studies and say this is the truth right this is the end all be all uh we know that peer-reviewed projects are ideal and go over that in just a second but bottom line we want to have a multitude of these peer-reviewed projects to really lead to that research consensus so if you're not familiar with peerreview what this means is let's say that you and I were researchers and we're working on this study with rickets we would then invite or request experts in our profession to check our procedures to check our rationale to ensure that the conclusions that we have made are in fact not valid if we don't do this then no one's really checking our work if you will and that can be one of the detriments of research so again peer review we have experts who are assessing our work to ensure that it is in fact credible and then over time that's when that consensus can be made so now we can say potassium through food can lower blood pressure in folks who have hypertension and we know that's a statement that's based on a multitude of research studies the research designs that you see listed we're not going to go into great detail on these because we're not a research class but I did want to remind you that there's different types of studies out there some are just observing so just observing and gathering information over time whereas others are more experimental where we're actually manipulating the environment and seeing what happens which is an example with these rats and rickets that you see on the right so question why is this stuff important why do we want to have peer review why do we want to base it on scientific methods well ultimately we want to uncover fact from fiction right especially in the nutritional realm there's so much contradicting information and even misinformation one year we hear that soy is good for us another year we hear that it's not ketones the keto diet that's that's been a craze over the last few years there's diet plans for eating for your blood type there's diet plans for eating for your DNA so a lot of information out there and unfortunately the media can really distort some of this information and and Lead folks to doing things or trying products that really don't have any benefit for them likewise there's a lot of product pushers out there folks who sell supplements who will try to in essence grab you with some of these headlines and some of these lab or claims that you see on food packages so research really helps us to identify what what is actually accurate versus what isn't one of my goals for this course is for you to learn how to critically evaluate the things that you're hearing so I'd like to present you with some information that can help you do so so first off excellent section in your book it's titled Health connection and they give some specific directions and guidelines for accessing quality sources of information here are a few of the things they outlined plus this is where I wanted to show you some information on the internet so let me go ahead and get out of my PowerPoint and I'll pull up my internet here I've got several websites to show you actually this one here so eatright.org this is the National Organization that basically governs if you want to call it that way dietitians so again eatright.org they have fantastic resources for consumers they also have general information about nutrition and then a lot of hot topics that they have put information together for to where an individual can look on the website and identify uh some some truths versus some myths as you see here they have a section for eat right Pro this would be someone me I'm a dietitian so I have access to some special resources I guess you could say but the Eat Right regular website here on the the top tab is excellent so I do recommend for you guys to access this website if you're interested in nutrition something else I wanted to show you with eatright.org and the academy they also put out a lot of position papers so in my previous recording I talked about bit about nutritional genomics so I went ahead and I found their position paper the Academy's position paper over this topic and I have it in PDF format here CU it just a little bit easier to navigate but this can be for you as a future health professional as well as an educated consumer to see what is the Academy of nutrition and dietetics saying about nutritional genomics and certainly there's some background information that you can read through but then towards the end this is where I was alluding to the other day so I'm on page eight of this PDF this is where they talk about genetic testing and what to look for to make sure you're you're finding a reputable company to go along with that on the next page they talk about the regulation and oversight of genetic tests who is overlooking these to ensure that the test is actually testing what it should test uh there have been some reports that have suggested that some companies I don't really do what they say they're doing there's an anecdotal story a few years ago that I heard from a dietitian in which she and her husband both purchased these DNA kits and sent the information in and long story short they both got the exact same recommendations and it was very cookie cutter recommendations there really weren't many specific uh new things for her to learn so is telling her to eat more fruits and vegetables cut back on animal products that kind of thing so when you're looking into this stuff you do want to make sure that you're looking into a credible company so the Academy's position paper here will give you an idea of what quality sources are out there okay so that's just some extraneous information some FYI for you there peer reviewed sources I want to go ahead and show you this website first this is Memorial SLO ketering cancer Center's website about herbs so if you're wanting to Google it you can just Google Memorial some cering about herbs and this page will come up for you this is an excellent peer-reviewed organization and you can see there.org so that's going to give you a clue that they're uh not in it to sell anything many people take herbs and we want to see what is the research behind herbs are they effective for certain conditions so this is an example of an excellent website that can help you identify whether or not you might benefit from an herbal product so I clicked on search on herbs and I'm just going to scroll through here and you can see some of the ones that they have listed we could click on it let's say we click on aloe vera and then that would give us a nice description of the product or the the herb if you will and then also research both for it for these purported uses or even against it so actually let me just go ahead and click on this one just so you see what the web page looks like okay yes we continue so here's aloe vera we've got a spot where we can just look for general information patients or caregivers or healthc Care Professionals this gives us a little bit more of that research so clinical summary this is where they're studying aloe vera for various conditions and you can see here the superscripts these are research studies so if we were to click on them that would actually take us to a research study so this is that example of peer review as well as developing a consensus over a topic so again Memorial S ketering one of my favorite websites is this about herbs because we do get asked about this quite a lot with our clients uh dietitians as well we'll talk a little bit about what those uh health professionals do in just a minute but I wanted to show you one thing here going from my previous presentation to you remember the mother Gene this was the one I talked about where a defici or polymorphism can lead to overmethylation so what I've done here I've Googled the abbreviation for the Gene and nutrition and I want to just scroll through here and show you the stuff that comes up a lot of Dooms and if you read through these probably not the most credible how to rewire your genetics here we're looking at supplements here's a few decent ones we've got dogs but if we were to scroll on down there's going to be a lot of information that it well first of all it's overwhelming and secondly we're not going to be able to know is this truly accurate or not so when I say dietitians on my slide how about if we look for mother and dietician this is going to be a better search for us and you can already see here the first one that comes up this is an article by a dietitian so this is going to give us a bit more credible information than just just a plain old Google search so I haven't clicked on this gentleman's website but you can see here he describes the mutation and looks like we can click on a few more of his articles to read about the particular mother Gene and the mutation others here if we scroll on down we want to make sure we're looking for someone who's a dietitian here's that Academy position paper so just I guess you could say elevating your search and including the term dietician will provide you with more credible information than just a plain old Google search all right let me go ahead and go back to my slides here quackery what is this well quackery is any product practice that is that is deceitful uh it's often considered to be Health fraud and and there's a lot of this out there a lot of it unfortunately results in monetary or financial losses for the consumer so there's some guidelines that we'll look at here in a few minutes to help us not fall into this category so making sure the category of being victims to health fraud so making sure that we're accessing quality websites and resources so to go along with that here's the Academy's website again you see the logo and I do want to alert you to the fact that any kind of.org or.edu will certainly be a better choice than a do Com or commercial website the journals that you see here on the left bottom these are the gold standards right these are the published research articles they are peer reviewed so you can go back in and actually read what were the researchers doing what did they find not always are their conclusions extrapolated well in the mainstream media so the mainstream media might jump on a few sentences that the researchers wrote and then exaggerate and exaggerate a lot so if you really want to go back to the information itself it is recommended to go back to the Articles other ways if you didn't want to read the articles then going to websites like the Academy's website or something like a Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic those are organizations that are well well um what's the word I'm looking for credible and they also have with their reports that they put out they're peer reviewed and you'll see that on there where someone will be writing an article and then next to it they'll say this was reviewed by a physician this was reviewed by a dietician so at least you've got that extra protection clean eating here on the right uh I I'm sure it's got some good tips and good information but this is an example of a non peer reviewed publication so this is where they may only have half the story and also you want to use caution and look at who is writing the article is it someone who has credentials who is a registered dietitian or is it just a health writer there's a big difference in the level of Education when it comes to nutrition for health educ for health writers and registered dietitians so just food for thought if you will caution when you're out there reading some of these types of Articles so let's go into this dietician what is a dietitian well we're technically called registered dietitian nutritionists that's a mouthful many times we're abbreviated as RDS or rdns and we are individuals who have met criteria you can see the criteria here so an undergrad degree in dietetics or nutrition we then do a year-long internship which is often combined with a master's degree and then we have to pass an examination so bottom line seven years of school now that's a lot so this really gives you an idea of how much goes into the field of nutrition we are the only practitioners that use nutrition science to provide quality care we work in a wide array of settings hospitals certainly come to mind or nursing facilities but also Community agencies schools the health department uh private practice so meeting with clients one-on-one research management I mean the list goes on and on it's really a neat profession if if any of you are interested I'd be happy to talk with you more or I can send you some resources on it I think it's one of the most uh flexible undergraduate degrees you can have because you can go on in a wide array of uh different oh subcategories and sub professions we have some who go on and do more work in business we have some who go on and work more in public health so it's a pretty neat degree what is a nutritionist well here's the thing anyone anyone can be a nutritionist that term there is no legal definition behind it there is no credentialing or licensing organization that governs this term so you having one class in nutrition could call yourself a nutritionist now I recommend not to do so because that puts you you know ethically and morally uh not in a good place and you can be sued for providing misin information but bottom line we see a lot of folks who are not educated in nutrition certainly not having those seven years yet providing information to others so be cautious when you're looking at websites when you're looking at articles look to see if they're written by dietitians rather than nutritionists or just general terms that that don't have any kind of definition behind them what do we do I wanted to include a slide here for those of you who might be interested in the profession uh just to give you an overview so in essence we are assessing we're gathering information this can be from an individual or from a group let's say we're assessing the health of a community we're diagnosing so we're identifying nutrition problems or areas for improvement again either for an individual or for a community so as I mentioned in my last presentation food deserts if we are looking at a community and we're identifying the fact that they don't have a lot of grocery stores then that's a way that we can then potentially treat or address the situation so treating if we're doing one-on-one treatment we can provide meal plans we can do cooking classes we can do more clinical items like tube feedings if we're working in the community maybe it's a program that we're putting out there for the group or we're working with policy makers to make more produce available to certain populations so pretty neat as well as varied I included the nutrition assessment domains here the ab c d this is what we call them the ABCDs uh just so that you get an idea of how in-depth we go and put me on pause for a second if you like and take a second and read through these I do want you to understand these different types of Assessments and what types of measures they're they're assessing couple of notes Here the clinical the this is really important we are the only practitioners that are trained to be able to identify a physical sign and then link it back to a particular nutrient I add an e so I'll Define this I call it environmental just so that it fits with ABCDE e but I also includeed mention it to you guys in that we do want to also look at the individual's environment so whether that's their education level Health Care access money family situation activity level those are some other things that are important to assess when we're really looking to identify nutrition problems or areas for improvement for individuals so don't don't forget about those they just don't have a a clean definition there to to put them into the table so why am I presenting this to you well I want to tell you this because dietitians are trained to do this we are really the only ones trained to do this in this sets us apart from other so-called nutritionists or health coaches because we have the information about their dietary intake but then we can link it to what we're seeing on them we can link it back to lab tests and even feal tests at times for individuals so again that seven years of education really does add an element of extra credibility to our profession uh last thing I'll mention on this you do want to be cautious with individuals who are in the the health profession but may not always be the the most educated when it comes to nutrition and I'll use an example Physicians uh did you know Physicians only have one class one class in medical school on nutrition so it's probably very similar to this class uh unfortunately we know that's not enough right but our doctors have to learn a lot more about medical conditions and treatments therefore they're not always the best when it comes to nutrition recommendations I had a doctor several years ago he's an OBGYN so he deals with women's health issues and he told a client that I later saw to go on the keto diet this is when keto is starting to become more popular and more mainstream and he told her well I've heard some folks have lost weight on it so you might want to try it well bottom line I'm glad she came to me because this individual also had type 1 diabetes which is where she was taking insulin and do doing a keto based plan when you're a type 1 diabetic is not a good idea it can lead to hypoglycemia it can lead to a lot of complications uh likewise we haven't seen the weight loss that comes with the keto diet be maintained so in essence he's providing a recommendation that isn't valid in terms of science yet now might it be one day potentially but it isn't yet so that's an example of someone who's very educated but not necessar really in the nutrition field all right so I hope I've driven that home for you uh I just have a couple slides left here so how can we watch out for quackery in these red flags so quackery again by definition Health fraud or health misinformation often to try to get us out of money right so there's books and products I believe I read a statistic a few weeks back where it said that in 2019 there were over 3,000 diet books that were published 3,000 so not all of those are going to be the most credible right so this is the type of stuff we're talking about so in addition to reading your textbook that section I alluded to a few slides ago I also posted an excellent handout on blackboard for you to read I believe it's about three or four pages I recommend to save it and I also recommend to maybe give it to folks in your life who might be oh more prone to falling for some of this stuff uh the PDF goes over some red flags for for these misleading claims and you can potentially even read some of them here on the in the screen and the picture I took of it they also then talk about how to recognize quality sources in the media and then tips to protect yourself and on the slide here I've outlined a few the quick fixes to good to be TRS these are some of the main red flags that we find uh product pushers are are plentiful I always think of the Kardashians they are they're willing to sell anything and everything I believe a few years ago it was a lollipop that was going to help you lose weight so that's an example of crackery and that's a red flag where a celebrity who has no nutritional background is basically making money off a product one other item I have listed in my notes to mention to you about these commercial websites uh something you might ask yourself is who runs the website who pays for the website and even how is the information reviewed is it reviewed before it's published so not alls are terrible but you do want to make sure that people that are publishing their work on it are either credible or the work is being reviewed in some way shape or form so finally what about products and by this I mean supplements okay so primarily supplements the act of 94 which is abbreviated DEA was a very interesting piece of legislation basically what it does for for us and why this is relevant to us basically States the government or the FDA cannot regulate dietary supplements well certainly not as well as additives so this might be chemicals added to foods like the sweeteners or medications so just for your background additives medications they have to go undergo Decades of research to show that they're safe and effective before we can either put them in food or sell them as medications the supplement industry does not have to show these same things for supplements so you might be wondering why not well back in the day in '94 there were some proposed laws that would have had the supplement industry they would have been forced to regulate their products better however they are a billion dollar industry billions and billions each year that they bring in and they fought tooth and Nails against this uh and they said this is really a buyer beware situation these products should be made available to the public and if they want to purchase them that's on them and unfortunately with them being such a big industry they were able to get this law in place which more or less protected them I will say that there are some companies out there that are fantastic so not all supplement companies are terrible but there are some that aren't credible for example we as our class we could create a supplement company we could purchase those Placebo P pills the clear ones and we could put stuff in there like groundup radishes or groundup house plants both of those have been found uh we could do this and then sell it for a particular cause no one is going to check on whether or not we're putting in our product what we say we're putting in so we might say hey this is eonia but in fact it's your house plant no one's going to check on safety or efficacy and that is does it work or not and this is scary this is scary because a lot of consumers assume that if it's being sold on the market that there have been checks for this stuff but the FDA is very limited in what they can do uh safety they do have some abilities there if the product really hurts someone or kills them then they can go back and take it off the market or or start legal proceedings in that way but like I said it leaves a lot to be desired in the industry so what can we do to make sure that we're not falling for not being a victim of this stuff well there are some good companies out there and here are my main tips for you if you're interested in using supplements first off research the product itself so I showed you the memorial SLO ketering website research the product they've got more than just herbs out there see if there is any research for it for whatever you want to take it for so maybe you want to take it for GI health or depression look to see what's been done on it in terms of research and then purchase from a quality company so how can we find a quality company well there's two ways that I'll teach you guys one you can look for companies that have one of these three stamps on the labels what this means is these organizations the NSF USP and consumer lab one of those organizations has come into the supplement company and tested their products and made sure that they're in fact putting in them what they say they're putting in them so again if we owned a company and we invited the NSF to come in as a third party they would check our products and they would say yeah you're selling eonia and they would then allow us to put their stamp this blue and white stamp on the label saying that this product has been tested so that's a way for the consumer to identify that this is a credible product be careful because the these stamps have to look exactly like this I've seen some supplements that they'll just write NSF in black on the label that's not the same thing so the stamps have to look like this another way that you can quickly look something up for Quality company I'll show you here is a free website it's called labdoor.com so you see it up there this doesn't have every supplement out there but it has a a good amount where I think it's a good starting point for many individuals so I'm going to scroll on down here and oh let's look at CBD oil that's a pretty hot product right now so I've clicked on CBD oil and then what they've done for us this is a company that's gone in labdoor.com and purchased these products and then tested them to see do they actually have what they say they have in them so it looks like Garden of Life is is a good brand they've got a lot of a pluses here let's scroll on down and see some of the not so good ones so here's Diamond CBD premium infus let's take a look at it so it looks like they only scored a 76.5 out of 100 so we can look on down here and see what what was wrong why didn't they score more than 100 they'll tell you what they tested for here I'll scroll down here it looks like they only found 140 milligrams of CBD whereas the bottle claim 250 you can scroll on down here they actually found lead in this product yikes okay and then we can click on more details if you wanted to look at more so this is a great website for the more common supplements out there they're not going to have everything but they have enough to give you at least an idea of what products and companies are reputable here's calcium you can see some of the products that are are better in it than others so labdoor.com I wanted to show you one more website it goes back to researching products so I showed you a few minutes ago that Memorial SLO cering website the other one that I use with my clients is this one here and you can just Google dietary supplements and NIH National Institutes of Health and it will come up for you so here if I scroll on down this is giving me fact sheets on supplements themselves so here on this list I can look up any supplement I desire just due to time I won't look them up now but it's going to give me an overview of the product and whether or not there is any research for its purported claims okay so memorial stone ketering and the nih's website are great for actually understanding whether or not there is research for it and then step two would be to use a website like lab door to identify a quality product and supplement and that's the thing it's an unfortunate thing but not all uh not all products are bad there's times where a supplement is helpful to us we just have to be good about doing our due diligence when it comes to research so that we don't fall victim to losing our money and taking house plants all right so finally here just wrapping up chapter 1 I hope it was an interesting chapter to you uh we introduced several topics that we'll be getting into more detail over the semester I alluded to this in my initial recordings I recommend for you to get comfortable with the eext they've got some wonderful resources embedded in the book and then also the study area so this might be a time now where you wrap up listening to me and you go through and you take some practice quizzes and then you can start working on your homework certainly so I feel like we're off to a great start thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you next time