Nutrition in the News
Emma McCarty
Summary
The article, Study finds that ‘bad’ carbs raise your cancer risk, by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore published April 07, 2016, draws conclusions upon how ‘bad’ carbs are linked to a higher risk of cancer opposed to just red meats. In her article Moore goes on to say how prostate cancer is most affected by bad carbs and explains a study done that agrees with these findings. The study followed 3,100 male volunteers as far back as the 1970’s. Each volunteer completed multiple food questionnaires to report what they were consuming annually. The foods were categorized by glycemic index which determined whether they were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ carbs. Moore then goes on to state how there were many problems with this study such as how almost all of the men were Caucasian, among others. However, she believes this flawed longitudinal study will spark the interest of other people and lead to the investigation of this topic in more depth with a better carried out experiment.
Critique
Elizabeth Armstrong Moore’s article, Study finds that ‘bad’ carbs raise your cancer risk, published April 7, 2016, studies how ‘bad’ carbs influence an individuals risk of getting cancer. Moore wrote this as a social/controversial that appeared in Fox News Health, however, it as little factual information in its’ content. Also, no where in the article does it state that Moore has any credentials or knowledge on the subject she is writing about, meaning most of this article is based off of little to no previous knowledge, and most likely googled facts about the subject. Moore does, however, have a fact or two from credible sources, such as the World Health Organization, however the facts presented seldom relate to her overall topic. Fox News, the sponsor of the article, is also not a reliable source for factual information because articles posted on this website are typically done to bring about controversy or spark interest on a topic. They often have no credibility and are written by anyone. The information and study results conveyed in this article make large assumptions with scarce support, and offer dramatic statements with minimal correct information to back them up. Moore even lists some of the problems with the study she is basing her article off of which further leads to the lack of factual evidence presented in this article. The article as well has a few grammatical and structural errors and an introduction that is misleading to the overall message. There is very little about this article that I would trust, or even find true, however, it does offer a plausible question that if studied with proper detail and experiments’ could prove to produce factual evidence supporting said question.