(I seem to keep enjoying my critical-thinking posts for school more than the psych posts. In some ways, I think that’s because I have difficulty keeping the subject matter of my psych posts narrow — I want to just keep researching! Anyway, I had fun with this one (as much as one can have fun doing schoolwork, anyway), so I’m sharing again.)

A Raw Deal

Americans are fat. Over the past twenty years, even though we’ve fought the battle of the bulge, obesity rates have increased, topping 30 percent in three states and only falling below 20% in a single state (‘U.S. Obesity,’ 2008). It’s no wonder, then, that the diet and weight-loss industry falls prey to pseudoscience and a lack of critical thinking. Diets seem to have come a long way since the days of the grapefruit and cabbage soup diets, but a look at articles in the popular media shows otherwise. While today’s fad diets may appear to be scientifically sound, this is only a façade.

In “Eating Raw: The Benefits of an ‘Uncooked’ Diet,” author Kyle Ellen Nuse (2007) describes one popular diet trend: that of eating only food that is either uncooked or heated to a temperature of 118 degrees or less. According to Nuse’s “experts,” such a diet boosts metabolism, allows higher levels of nutrients in food, detoxifies the body, builds energy, battles aging, and heals disease. Nuse, however, relies entirely on pseudoscience to back these claims. The testimony of Angela Stokes (also one of the article “experts”) may sound compelling, but its only use is as a starting point for research, not as evidence of the diet’s effectiveness (Stanovich, 2007). Until controlled testing is done, it is possible that competing reasons explain Stokes’ dramatic weight loss. For example, it is likely that eating a raw diet also requires eating more healthfully in general; research comparing equally-healthful cooked foods, a raw diet, and a control might address this question. The story was also replete with scientific-sounding jargon, another hallmark of pseudoscience (Ruscio, 2006). What, exactly, is food’s “healing life force” (Nuse, ¶5)? Does science back up the idea of “elimination of waste on a cellular level” (¶8)? Do raw plant foods “literally infuse [cells] with oxygen” (¶19)?

A quick database search of peer-reviewed medical journals not only didn’t back up this story’s premise; it actually demonstrated potential harm from a raw diet: lowered bone mass (Washington University, 2005). This search also eliminated one of the raw food movement’s claims to legitimacy: that the diet is a return to a more natural way of eating. According to anthropologists from Harvard University, human foragers have cooked their food through the entirety of known history — long enough that our digestive systems are ill-suited to the consumption of a raw diet (Wrangham and Conklin-Brittain, 2003).

The positive, unquestioning attitude of Nuse’s article may well have brought her employers high traffic. Just the same, a critically considered expose of the possible benefits — and detriments — would have better offered readers a “fair and balanced” view.

References

Nuse, K.E. (2007, July 12). Eating raw: The benefits of an ‘uncooked’ diet. FOXNews. Retrieved December 18, 2008, from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289000,00.html

Ruscio, J. (2006). Critical thinking in psychology: separating sense from nonsense (Second Ed.). Belmont, California: Wadsworth , Cengage Learning.

Stanovich, K.E. (2007). How to think straight about psychology (Eighth Ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon/Pearson Education, Inc.

U.S. Obesity Trends 1985-2007 (2008). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved on December 18, 2008, from http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm

Washington University; Raw food vegetarians have low bone mass. (2005, April). Aging & Elder Health Week,162. Retrieved December 18, 2008, from ProQuest Health and Medical Complete database. (Document ID: 821603091).

Wrangham, R. and Conklin-Brittain, N. (2003). Cooking as a biological trait. Comparative Biochemistry & Physiology. Part A, Molecular & Integrative Physiology. 136(1): 35-46, 2003 Sep. (abstract)

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