On the turps - it's insane.

In New Zealand where I live, we have a phrase "On the turps".  It means "drinking alcohol" usually, but not always, beer.  When you've been on the turps, you may have a hangover if you were serious about it.

I have a thing about ill-informed food and drink advice, some of which is downright dangerous.  Totally unqualified people seem to think that they can hand out advice on diet, so-called "super foods" and other health issues.

The latest whacky outpouring from a minor celebrity suggests that drinking a small quantity of turpentine with sugar will rid you of a cold overnight.  This is a BAD IDEA.

Turpentine is prepared from the resin of pine trees and, I have to say, smells really nice and fresh.  I used it when I was painting in oils to thin the paint.  Another person giving the advice, this time a disbarred doctor,  claims that her IQ "went up like 50 points".  I think she has the sign wrong - it should be -50 points.

There is plenty of scientific evidence to show that turpentine is poisonous, causing irritation to the eyes and central nervous system and severe damage to the kidneys, or, in sufficient quantities, death.

We have been considering natural turpentine here.  Hardware stores sell "mineral turps" which is a turpentine substitute prepared from petroleum.  Consumption of mineral turps may not be fatal, but can result in lung damage and irreversible brain damage.

Of course, this post is not strictly about food safety, but I believe it is important to get this message out there.

I feel so strongly about misleading food and nutrition advice that I am chairing a conference in New Zealand with the theme "In food we trust: confidence built on science and technology".

Lies, damned lies, and misinterpretation of the data.

I am constantly amazed by the apparent ignorance and credulity of the general public on matters of food safety and nutrition.  But should I be surprised?   Few people are lucky enough to have studied food technology, food science or nutrition.  Their main sources of information are then the popular press, magazines, television cooking shows and the all-pervasive Internet. 

Scientists and engineers know that the best sources of information are peer-reviewed papers published in international journals.  Experts in the field have read the paper and picked it apart, looking for poor experimental design, inconsistencies and faulty interpretation of data.  Believe me, I can say this with certainty from both sides of the fence: it is pretty difficult to get a paper published these days!

The other sources of information mentioned above are generally not peer-reviewed.  Articles can be published by people with no formal qualifications in the subject and are often either highly biased or downright wrong.  See:  http://foodsafetywithjaybee.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/dangers-of-google-degree.html

Sensationalism and sycophantic following of media celebrities are what sell newspapers and magazines.  We see more food scares and wonder diet advice every month without any reference to the original research.

A few examples spring to mind:

Towards the end of October 2015, the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer stated that processed meats, including hot dogs and sausages would be added to its list of high risk carcinogens.  Red meats were also declared a probable carcinogen.  Needless to say, this caused a furore in all the media.  A Google search, using the terms “sausages cause cancer” returned 469,000 results!  IARC classifications rank the quality of the evidence that something can cause cancer, but don’t assess the level of risk. The announcement was often quoted out of context.  For example, Discovery News baldly stated “Eating sausages, ham and other processed meats causes colon cancer”.  Other reports mentioned the increase in risk as a percentage, but did not state the base level of risk. This scare is enduring; at a barbecue recently, someone noted that I was cooking “cancer sticks”.

Coconut water appears to have been a major drink commodity this year. I have no sales figures, but the sales in 2013 were around half a billion dollars, see http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/75567921/how-healthy-is-coconut-water.html.  Claims for coconut water include helping with weight loss, improving skin tone and aiding digestion.   Other claims, now withdrawn, stated that it could fight kidney disease, osteoporosis and viruses.  Coconut water contains potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus, which are required minerals.  As a sports rehydration drink, coconut water is definitely unsuitable - when we sweat, we lose lots of sodium.  The ratio of sodium to potassium in sweat is about 10:1, but the ratio of sodium to potassium in coconut water is around 1:3.  Where are the peer reviewed scientific studies of the value of coconut water? They are never quoted.

Critics of the hypothesis that saturated fat consumption is linked with coronary heart disease use the argument that the correlation between total saturated fatty acids and risk factors is not very good.  Unfortunately, the scientific findings have been misinterpretated by the popular press media, with the result that we are told we can eat as much saturated fat as we wish. This advice is incorrect, unethical and irresponsible, see http://nzifst.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/the-recent-non-scientific-comments.html.

Despite all the information on food safety available, in my opinion, a large proportion of the population is still badly educated in this regard.  At an outdoor party this week (it's summer in New Zealand) I sat with a very-soon-to-be mother.  She got stuck into the soft cheese in a big way, but said that she would eat it only during the first half hour of its being unwrapped; thereafter it was to be avoided.  In fact, the cheese had been made with pasteurised milk and she was therefore probably safe in eating it, but where had she got this idea from?  I guess she had read about Listeria in soft cheeses, and believed that the bacteria could multiply as the cheese warmed up.  For reliable information on safe foods to eat during pregnancy, see:  http://www.foodsmart.govt.nz/information-for/pregnant-women/list-of-safe-food.htm

I believe that food scientists and food technologists have a duty to provide unbiased and easily digested (sorry!) information to the public in order to help educate them in food safety.  But how can we compete with big advertising budgets and the pronouncements of media celebrities?

I wish all my readers a happy, successful and safe 2016.

Dangers of the Google degree

With the explosion of information on the Internet, we all use Google or Yahoo, or perhaps other search engines, to find just about anything, from a second hand multi rotor to nutritional information. I only have to look at the behaviour of my own family to see how important the search engine has become.  I freely admit that when I write a blog or a scientific article, I consult various websites to collect information or links to other websites.

My favourite website is Web of Science; this gives me access to abstracts of scientific papers on just about any subject.  Of course, if you search for a topic such as "Antioxidants", you will get a huge number of hits.  Indeed, I just searched "Antioxidant" and got 35,600,000 hits in 0.27 seconds.  Wikipedia was the lead reference, but many others were from government, university and medical sites.  Others were from commercial sites promoting health foods and bodybuilding aids, and from less easily identified sites, including blogs.

There is a temptation to believe that all sites are of equal standing.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.  With the exception of government-sponsored blogs and websites, almost all blogs, including this one, are published without peer review.  For example, if I read about food borne disease on the Centres for Disease Control website, I can be reasonably confident that the information is correct.

This is not the case for all blogs and websites.  Some authors write authoritatively on the subject, but if you go deeper, you find that the authors have no qualification other than that they "have done the research".

Most times, this is not a big deal; if someone wants to push a point of view, then that's fine.  However, in the case of health and nutrition information, there is the potential to cause great harm.  One could almost label some of the writings as "misinformation".

An area that has been exercising the minds of New Zealand food technologists recently is the exaggerated and misleading claims for coconut oil.  There are regulations in place in New Zealand about making unsubstantiated claims for food products.

The Food Babe has also been hitting the headlines recently.  Her website is a mixture of fact and fantasy.  She writes well, looks happy and healthy, and is convincing in her enthusiasm for the subject.  However, her writings are shot through with errors too many to mention.  The problem is that those with appropriate scientific qualifications can recognise the errors, but the general public does not.  She plays upon the fears of the "worried well".  I'm not going to criticise Food Babe further here.  If you are interested in a more detailed analysis, visit Sciblogs.com and search for "From the mouth of Food Babe".  See also "What to take away from the Food Babe's meltdown" on Makeuseof.com

Oh, I nearly forgot.  Food Babe does have a qualification - it's in the field of computer science.