In today's world much of our daily media is surrounded in attention grabbing statements, risque advertisements, and novelty. It's rare to find completely agenda-free news. With that in mind, consider looking critically at anything that someone is trying to get you to read.

In that light, I really appreciate what Self has done in a recent article - they called out one of the diet fears that most people face: CARBS! More specifically the author called out the fact that carbs are not your enemy. The impetus for her article was a recently published study that correlated mortality and carbohydrate consumption. Read her article for some very good tips on things to question when research like this comes out.

As a busy person that is inundated with information you probably don't feel like you have time to read the sources of all the information being forced into your consciousness, and you're right. You don't have to. But you should ask yourself a few questions like these whenever you read, hear or see something in the media.

Why does the author want me to know this? What's in it for them? Is what's being said too good to be true? Is it too bad to be true? Does it side with only one viewpoint, irrationally discrediting others?

I think these are very important questions to ask especially as they relate to articles about diet, weight loss, fitness, and health. It's important not to take the results of one study and apply them to the world. It's important to recognize that correlation is not causation. Basically, studies look at how certain variables relate to one another (in the example above it was carbohydrate and fat consumption correlated to mortality). Just because the research suggests there is a relationship (correlation), it does not mean the reason (causation) has been determined.

In good health,

Francesco