Cite Your Authority

A guide to analyze health claims

Dear Dad,

Can you guess the movie…?

“I make car parts for the American working man because that’s what I am and that’s who I care about!”

I hope that you remember it’s obviously, Tommy Boy! I’m hoping that you also remember what the “Auto Parts King” says immediately after the camera is off…

“The truth is, I make car parts for the American Working man because I’m a hell of a salesman and he doesn’t know any better.”

Last week we began dissecting the problem of nutrition information overload—Without mandating a burden of proof before accepting nutrition claims as worthy of consideration we will end up accepting all sorts of wild claims, many of which deserve no consideration.

What’s wrong with that? Well, Mr. Zalinksy hammers the point home in this short colloquy with Tommy Callahan. High fiber and zero calories may look great on a box and be guaranteed to lower cholesterol, but maybe it’s just a sales pitch and we don’t know any better.

Think of everything that you know about food and nutrition: What food is healthy? How many meals should you eat a day? And when? Low fat? High protein? Zero sugar? Natural flavor?

What’s the source of your information?  

Did it come from the television? Twitter? Your uncle? Maybe a research paper? A book? A documentary? Or maybe what someone else said about one of those things…

In the first semester of law school every student takes a course in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It’s an intimidating class, very rigorous, and heavily weighted with huge grade implications. On top of that, it seems that Civil Procedure Professors tend to be particularly demanding.

My CivPro professor and the way she conducted her class profoundly impacted my style of legal reasoning. No answer was good enough, unless we clearly and confidently cited what case, statute, or federal rule our answer relied on. Only then, would the Professor give the answer any credibility. I can still picture her in front of the class and hear her voice ring in my head.

“Mr. Rodgers, Cite. Your. Authority.”

It’s another important point to cling to in this age of abundant information. Not all information is good, truthful, and worthy of any credibility whatsoever. Much of the information provided is spun for an agenda. Some agendas are good, some are bad, but we will never really know the credibility worth assigning unless we’re willing to do a little critical analysis, click through to the article, question the data, and ponder the conclusion being put forth. When you’re not willing to put in this smidge of extra effort you become exposed to getting duped by the people whose job it is to dupe you.

Now, I understand that spending time analyzing research and questioning the veracity of health and nutrition data is not what most of us want to do; however, this might also be a reason that we find ourselves in such a precarious national health epidemic.  

To help you out, I want to provide an easy template to start evaluating nutrition claims that you come across. Anytime that someone, some paper, or advertiser tells you to eat a particular food because it has some health benefit ask these two questions:

1. With what?

2. Instead of what?

Is a piece of chicken a healthy option for you to eat? Well, with what? And, instead of what?

The ultimate answer will likely change based on the answers to those questions. Is it a KFC piece of chicken, soaked in grease and fat, or free range on the grill? Will you eat it slathered in BBQ sauce or on a green salad? Is it replacing a greasy pizza or a bowl of beans and veggies?

When you see an article that claims, “Research shows that a high protein diet is most effective for weight loss” Well, as it relates to the people researched: With what were they eating these high protein diets; and, instead of what? Start to pick it apart and call out arguments that don’t hold water. If the research subjects were previously fixed on a diet of chips and soda then I’d guess that about any other diet would show extreme weight loss benefits.

Never forget,

“What the American public doesn’t know is what makes them the American Public.”

-Ray Zalinksy, Auto Parts King. Tommy Boy (1995).

With Love,

JSR