Nutrition Product Research Evaluation: Discussion Post

Nutrition Product Research Evaluation: Discussion Post

Discussion Instruction

Purpose of this Discussion

This assignment will help you practice finding peer-reviewed research to evaluate nutrition products

Instructions

This week for your discussion post, please do the following:

1. Visit the website www.quackwatch.com (Links to an external site.)

2. Scroll down to the "General Observations" section of the website

3. Read the sections, "How should it be defined," "How it sells," and "28 Ways to spot it." Also, read in your textbook pages 14 – 18 (LO 1.5) on the importance of peer-reviewed scientific research in nutrition, and listen to the recorded lecture, "The Scientific Method" on Canvas.

4. Identify a nutrition-related product on the internet that meets the definition of quackery, according to the Quackwatch website. HINT: It would be a good idea to apply the strategy in the Scientific Method lecture & PowerPoint. After identifying a product that you think might be quackery, visit pubmed.gov to see if the product you identified has published research supporting it.

5. Write a 1-paragraph persuasive argument about why the product you identified meets the definition of quackery. HINT: discuss the results of your pubmed.gov search for peer-reviewed scientific literature in your argument. The presence or absence of scientific literature is key to identifying quackery.

6. Post your persuasive argument to the discussion board by Sunday at 11:59 pm.

7. By Sunday, review the responses of at least 3  student posts about quackery. Write a 1-paragraph response to your classmate. Please identify whether you agree or disagree with your classmate’s classification of the product as quackery. Provide a justification for your choice using the information from step 3 (above).

HINTS TO IDENTIFYING QUACKERY:

• Medications that are available by prescription and dispensed by a pharmacy (such as antibiotics, pain medications, etc.) are well-researched and are not considered quackery. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will not approve medications for general use in the population until they are proven to be safe and effective by many scientific studies.
• Products such as weight loss supplements or bodybuilding supplements are often considered quackery because they are unresearched and/or overpromoted.
• Consider researching products that have been recommended on the Dr. Oz show. Often times, you can’t search for the brand name of the product in PubMed; you must search for the individual ingredients. I just did a quick Googlesearch on "Dr. Oz recommended supplements" which led me to a product called Guna.

• When I searched Guna in PubMed, it got a lot of hits but none of them were for this actual product (Guna was a portion of other words, which caused the hits).

• Then I searched the first ingredient in the product (avena sativa) and also got a lot of hits, but none of the hits were related to the way Dr. Oz is promoting the product, which was as a sleep agent.

• Therefore, I can conclude that, based on a lack of scientific evidence about both avena sativa (and Guna), this product is most likely quackery.
• Remember, just seeing hits in the search field on PubMed does not mean a product is or is not quackery. You must look through the published scientific studies to see if they have anything to do with the advertised effect. If an initial search does not answer your question, you could read the study to see how the study was done and what the results were.

I hope this helps! Please contact me if I can be of further assistance. [email protected]

Grading of Discussion

Grading is based on the clarity and completeness of your initial post, as well as your ability to critically synthesize the information required. You will be awarded 10 points for your original post, and 10 points for your responses to other students. A detailed scoring rubric is appended to this assignment.