Nutrition Action Healthletter

One of the key challenges and opportunities of our modern age is the deluge of data. It is amazing how much more of it there is now compared to when I was growing up. Actually, that’s not really true, although the amount of stuff to know is doubling every five minutes or so. The problem back in the day was accessibility—I can find darn near anything in five minutes or less, given a decent internet speed, a solid connection, and a Google search engine. When I was in high school, though, I had to go to the library and physically find what I needed, and the options were much more limited. Given enough time and inter-library searches, I probably could have been as current (for the times) as I can be today, but it would have taken weeks or even months the old way.

Our health information has been just as fast to change, and keeping up with it requires more than the skimming of headlines and snatches of news reports. And even when you study the topic decently—say, three reputable sources on-line, it’s still hard to be sure you’re getting all the facts or that the facts won’t change next month. (I’m not completely up on current research standards; when I was teaching expository writing as recently as 2012, I required that four out of ten sources cited in a research paper be acquired without the use of a computer or phone. Hey, some of those whacky kids even used books, if you can believe it.)

My own health research sources have evolved from encyclopedias to books to magazines to newsletters to internet sites. The advantages of on-line sources for information are obvious—they can be updated quickly and cheaply, and we consumers can access as many of them as we have time to hunt down whenever we decide we need to know. I’m old, I know, but even we geezers have to recognize that computers have changed how we do just about everything. And we will go over my favorite, reliable websites in a future entry. But today, I’m boosting a dying breed—the periodical, in this case, a newsletter: The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) Nutrition Action Healthletter.

Founded in 1971, CSPI’s main purposes have been “to educate the public, advocate government policies that are consistent with scientific evidence on health and environmental issues, and counter industry’s powerful influence on public opinion and public policies” (as stated on its website, which can be found at http://www.cspinet.org/). And it does all those things in its newsletter, which despite seeming to be limited to “Nutrition” based on its title, ranges far afield to cover most aspects of health and wellness. Topics range from exercise to drugs to GMOs to food labeling to diseases to lifestyles to recipes. (One of my favorite regular features is its “Right Stuff” and “Food Porn” examples every month on the last page of the newsletter.) It is amazing just how much wellness material Nutrition Action Healthletter (NAH) covers in its sixteen pages ten times each year.

But you should also understand that NAH pulls no punches in its advocacy. This is not some general interest fluff that aims to please the greatest number while offending no one. Its founder and executive director, Dr. Michael F. Jacobson regularly takes on governmental agencies and food producers in his monthly “Memo” on the second page of each issue. My guess is that most food corporations are not fans of NAH as it advocates for much more stringent regulations on both additives and labeling.

To give you a taste of CSPI’s 2015 agenda, again taken from its website, here’s a sampling of their goals: Get junk foods out of schools nationwide; rid the food supply of partially hydrogenated oil, the source of artificial trans fat that promotes heart disease; reduce sodium in processed and restaurant foods; improve food safety laws and reduce the incidence of foodborne illness; advocate for more healthy, plant-based, environmentally-friendly diets; ensure accurate and honest labeling on food packages; require basic nutrition labeling on chain-restaurants’ menus and menu boards; provide responsible information about the benefits and risks of agricultural biotechnology; obtain greater federal funding for alcohol-abuse prevention policies; and expose industry influence over the scientific process and in government policy-making.

Not a timid set of goals, that’s for certain. But NAH also provides a ton of practical, useful information and tips for individuals. Just recently, for example, it explained how the hype over coconut oil was grossly exaggerated; just as the damning of canola oil did not bear up under the scientific evidence. It’s articles like that which I find make NAH so valuable. Rather than jumping on the latest fads or trying to seduce its readers with unsubstantiated “breakthroughs,” NAH pushes hard for what the science shows to be true with balanced and fair analyses of what the research has shown to date. Some might be frustrated with its equivocations on various studies or major pronouncements from the world of nutrition, but it is that fact-based foundation that makes NAH worthy of its readers’ trust. There are thousands of sources for health information out there, but the CPSI’s Nutrition Action Healthletter is by far the best I’ve found so far. At $24 a year (or $42 for two) for information that can change your life for the better, there’s no better bargain around. ?l[p