Sunday, June 23, 2013

"authoritative" writers owe their readers good reasons for their recommendations

This was a note i made to myself on the Low-Carb Cruise, and i meant to write on the subject when i became inspired.  The inspiration came yesterday, from the person who originally prompted the note.  She did it again!

This was the woman whose talk actually "put off" my husband during the seminars.  Her husband, a physician, came across very well both on the stage and off -- he gave me a piece of advice which impressed me with his insight and experience.  Apparently, before the two of them married she was in publicity ... and it shows.  She's probably been an asset to their professional success, but as the front-woman for nutritional educators, she leaves a good deal to be desired.

I read an article which she wrote -- one of those "x# foods you should never eat" kind of things.  I confess, that kind of article tends to annoy me in the first place because the style is so "cheap media hook-ish."  But when she was discussing the objectionable ingredient in the product being targeted, she threw in the logic-dismissing comment that this ingredient was also used in an industrial application -- after all, if they use THAT  to do this icky thing, you certainly won't want to EAT it!

Sorry, chickie, you just lost all the engineers in the audience, and probably a good chunk of the chemists, biologists, lab-techs, mathematicians, and other technical folks too.  You may win over the kind of people who think liver is "gross" with your kind of logic, but they're about all.

Anyone who makes recommendations to their fellow creatures from a position of "authority" SHOULD feel a responsibility to provide a sound and cogent reason for their point of view.  "Because they use ingredient X to do nasty-job Y" is not a sound and cogent reason.  Should i never cook with baking soda because it can also be used to clean toilets?  Should vinegar be off the menu because it will kill weeds in the cracks of my garden path?

Granted that a wax made from petroleum is probably not as good a choice for food use as one made by bees, that does not mean paraffin in certain applications is unwholesome.  There are an awful lot of neutral substances in this world, which are perfectly safe and reasonable to use in food applications.  The nutritional -- and chemical -- realms are NOT properly illustrated in black-and-white....

The same emotional illogic is used in the condemnation of sucralose and a lot of other products, the utilization of which may not be IDEAL, but is minimally problematic for most people.  This kind of thinking is behind why i had to buy my mother a special little soft brush for cleaning mushrooms -- "they're grown on COW MANURE!"  Uh -- no.  They're grown on COMPOSTED cow manure which is an entirely different substance.  Uncomposted manure has too high a nitrogen content to grow ANYTHING.

I hope this lady will learn that dropping buzzwords (natural! organic!) and scare/gross-out tactics (bugs! petroleum!) is not doing their nutrition-and-supplement business any good amongst thinking people.  At the end of her talk, as we were trotting off to the Red Frog Pub to get a drink during the break, J snorted, "we shouldn't eat THAT because it's used to de-ice airplane wings?  They spray beet-juice on roads to help de-ice them -- does that mean we can never eat beets again?"

13 comments:

  1. Did the article also have a quiz and an anecdote about "Marie" (not her real name), a striking redhead with expressive eyes?

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  2. i have to admit i didn't read the whole thing! :-) guilty confession.... i just looked at the bullet points, saw the mention about "petroleum products" and closed the window! when i wanted to look at the article again today to be more specific about what was said, i couldn't find it. a lot of the things i read are links in links -- here's to rabbit-trails!

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  3. Oh, I just meant that quizzes and anecdotes with irrelevant personal details are hackneyed literary devices. But yes, advice based on little or nothing that's repeated endlessly in the echo chamber of dietary advice is annoying.

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  4. " does that mean we can never eat beets again?"

    I love beets, they will continue to be included in our food choices.

    All the best Jan

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    1. we do too, roasted, boiled, harvard-style or pickled! we just don't eat them VERY often because of the carb content.

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    2. Hi Tess, agree they are a bit 'carby' so a small helping is best

      All the best Jan

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    3. One of the reasons pickled beets are a nice choice -- even a small serving has impact! :-)

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    4. Most of the time when I eat beets there are in a borsh.

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    5. Do you have a favorite recipe? I've never tried it....

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    6. Yes, there are seweral variations, but the short description of borsch is a cabbage soup with added beets and a VERY IMPORTANT INGREDIENT - paste made out of bacon or smoked fat and several cloves of garlic crashed together with a coarse salt. Feel free to add any herbs, especially basil and spices to the mix, the fat preserves all aromatics nicely. I use a granit mortar and a pestel for that, but folded parchment paper and some flat heavy object will work as well. I usually saute root vegetables for my soups, when I cook borsh, I add to the root veggies finely julienned raw beets, but it is optional. Sweet pepper tastes vell in a borsch.
      Some rules - add something sour, for example tomato paste, into the finished cabbage soup before you add shredded cooked beets of even chopped canned beets with the liquid, let it come to a boil , then add the bacon /garlic paste and immediately take from heat. Never ever let your borsch boil after adding the fat paste. It tastes better next day. Add some sour cream and fresh herbs before eating.

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  5. I was listening to a talk a while back by a guy who was stressing the importance of "credibility" among speakers & writers in the fields of health & nutrition. To him, credibility was everything.

    My take is pretty much the opposite (and in line with yours, I think): if you're going to give advice, then have something to back it up. Don't expect people to "trust" your expertise.

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    Replies
    1. exactly! "authority" means less and less to me as time goes on. :-) i get the best advice from aggregation of n=1 experience.

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