I read the other day that (and I'm paraphrasing here) that in one study children who ate only instant oatmeal for breakfast ate 80% more calories throughout the day than children who ate a veggie omelet and juice for breakfast (steel-cut oatmeal fared a little better). The conclusion was that it's important to include protein at breakfast.
Um, ok?
I'm ok with having protein for breakfast, but I have a few problems with this report, especially with the concluding statement. Did both meals have the same number of calories? Same amount of fat? Did they try adding protein powder to the oatmeal? How many kids were in the study? What were their eating habits before? Did the study conclude that we need protein at breakfast, or was that the magazine's inferrence? How do they account for steel-cut oatmeal's difference?
This is just one example of the millions of health-related blurbs we get bombarded with every day, each with authoratative "research" behind it. Too often I get sucked in, but this time I just got annoyed. And I had to share.
Talk amongst yourselves...
2 comments:
I find it irritating that so much reporting on research does not include important details, like you mentioned the who, what, how many and how long of it all. I wonder how many people are going to throw away all their instant oatmeal because they don't want their kids to get fat. Lame!
More points to ponder...
...sample size?
...how do these kids' intakes compare to kids who don't get ANY breakfast?
...what kinds of families have time to prepare omelets and juice every morning?
...how much physical activity was typical for each breakfast group?
...was this a cross-sectional study? interventional?
...controlled across age, gender, socioeconomic level, and geographic region (to name a few confounding factors)
As you noted, Heidi, you don't know if the study was done poorly or if the reporter is taking everything out of context and drawing his/her own conclusions. That's the worst part.
Even well-designed studies, controlled for numerous confounding factors, performed to the umpteenth degree of excellence can get a headline like "Food is poison"
So sad. I wonder sometimes if this situation is similar for other fields...or is it just nutrition?
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