By
David
Schardt
W
ondering about the side effects
The Best All Around Site
of that new drug your doctor
prescribed? Want advice on how to
At WebMD (www.webmd.com) we were
cope with a new diagnosis? Should
able to quickly locate top-notch informa-
you believe reports that calcium can
tion. A good place to start: the “Newly
prevent colon cancer?
Diagnosed,” “Stay Healthy,” or “Living
If you’re like tens of millions of
with Illness” buttons on the WebMD
Americans, you’re more likely to look
Health page. Each opens up a world of
for answers on the Internet than to call
resources.
the doctor. And you’re likely to start at
The site is loaded with feature articles,
a search engine. But type “preventing
news items, advice columns, recipes, charts
osteoporosis” into www.google.com, for
and guides, and links to support groups.
example, and up pop links to more
Some of the material is written by WebMD, and some comes from experts in
than 100,000 pages of information.
the field. (For example, a recent visit turned up a Q&A with weight-loss
That’s just too much to sort through.
researcher Kelly Brownell and a guide to prostate cancer by The Cleveland
What’s more, search engines dredge
Clinic.)
up commercial and non-commercial
Advertisements and material from the site’s sponsors (who are identified on
sites in no apparent order. And it’s not
the Home page) are clearly marked.
always easy to tell the difference (unless
you hit a page with a hard sales pitch).
To save you the aggravation, we
the nutrient breakdowns under “Search
search through more than nine mil-
searched the Web for reliable, con-
the Nutrient Database,” but the site
lion scientific articles (most have just
sumer-friendly health and nutrition
also contains separate listings of vita-
abstracts; a few have the full text).
sites. We found some first-class places
min K, carotenoids, trans fats, and
to start your searches from, and some
much more.
■
To participate in a study. At
www.clinicaltrials.gov you’ll find
sites that aren’t as helpful as you might
To calculate your body mass index
which government-sponsored studies
think (see boxes). We also found a
■
handful of other sites that are worth
(BMI). To see if you’re underweight,
are recruiting and what the require-
bookmarking:
overweight, or just right, go to
ments are. In early 2003, for example,
www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi. The
162 clinical trials on prostate cancer
■
To see what’s in any food. For the
site, which is part of the National
and six on osteoarthritis were looking
calories, calcium, folate, saturated fat,
Institutes of Health, also explains how
for volunteers.
or just about any other nutrient in any
your BMI affects your risk of heart
of 10,000 (mostly non-brand-name)
attack and stroke.
For links to the Web sites mentioned in this
article, go to www.cspinet.org/nah.
foods, go to www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/
To look up scientific studies. The
foodcomp. The U.S. Department of
■
Agriculture has been collecting data on
world’s largest database of published
what’s in food for more than 100 years.
medical research is at www.ncbi.nlm
You’ll probably make the most use of
.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi. You can
The use of information from this article for
commercial purposes is strictly prohibited
without written permission from CSPI.
››››
NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER ■ M A Y 2 0 0 3
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S U R F I N ’
U S A
Less than Meets the
ment was a USDA timeline from 1892
While the Tufts University dietitians
to 2002 showing that the agency
who do the reviews identify some
released its first analysis of foods for
worthwhile sites, they persistently
trans fats in 1995. While that may
favor mainstream government, aca-
not tell you much, at least the infor-
demic, and industry Web sites that
mation isn’t biased.
support the status quo and avoid con-
■ www.eatright.org. “Should you
troversy.
be concerned about trans fatty acids?”
■ www.nutrition.gov. It’s touted as
“easy access to all online federal government information on nutrition.”
While some of its material is useful,
much isn’t. When we searched for
the “Atkins diet,” for example, the
first document to pop up was an
unedited transcript of a three-year-old
debate in which Robert Atkins was
asks an article in the “Healthy
its highest ratings to www.ific.org, the
Lifestyle” section of the American
Web site of the industry-funded
Dietetic Association’s Web site. The
International Food Information
answer: “At this point, it’s not clear.”
Council (IFIC). Guess they didn’t
H-e-l-l-o? The National Academy of
look at IFIC’s “Questions and Answers
Sciences has told the public to eat as
about Mercury in the Environment
little trans fat as possible because
and Food,” which ignores major
there is no safe level. That’s why the
research showing that mercury in
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
seafood may harm children. And they
must have missed the “Questions and
one of seven participants. The second
Answers About Trans Fat,” which
was a list of 13 links to “Fraud and
stubbornly refuses to admit that trans
Nutrition Misinformation,” only one
increases the risk of heart disease.
of which was about the Atkins diet
Also receiving a “Better than Most”
(and it was one-sided and outdated).
rating: the pork industry’s site
And the third was a 1981 U.S. Postal
(www.porkandhealth.org), which
Service complaint against a company
implies that pork is nutritionally com-
for selling an anti-wrinkle supplement
parable to “white meats” like chicken
(Atkins was an expert witness).
■ www.nal.usda.gov/fnic. It may
be the place to go to find out what’s
in just about any food, but for other
information, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition
Information Center isn’t what you’d
has announced that it will require
and turkey and ignores the controver-
that labels list the amount of trans fat
sy over the environmental damage
in foods. What’s not clear about that?
caused by the factory farming of pigs.
(What is clear is that some of the
■ Phony “Public-Service” Sites.
ADA’s funding comes from food man-
They’re designed to look like public-
ufacturers that use trans fats in their
service sites, and they provide some
products.)
information about health. But they’re
■ www.navigator.tufts.edu. This
really reaching for your wallet. And, in
industry-funded site rates hundreds of
most cases, it’s impossible to figure
nutrition Web sites for accuracy,
out who’s behind them.
call user-friendly. When we searched
for “trans fat,” for example, up came
a technical scientific paper about food
analysis that only laboratory wonks
would find useful. The next docu-
10
NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER ■ M A Y 2 0 0 3
For example, Navigator gives one of
depth, timeliness, and usability.
S U R F I N ’
Eye
U S A
The Best Sites for Disease Facts
These two sites are stronger on diseases than on foods and nutrition. If you want
quicker results on nutrition, start at WebMD.
Take www.bones-and-osteoporosis
www.medlineplus.gov is maintained by
.com. The slickly designed site,
the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
which appears near the top of
the world’s largest medical research insti-
Google searches for “preventing
tution. The site has links to reliable infor-
osteoporosis,” offers “straight” talk
mation on more than 500 health topics,
about the disease. But the talk is
plus access to medical dictionaries, a medi-
window-dressing to lure visitors into
cal encyclopedia, facts about thousands of
buying expensive dietary supple-
drugs, information on alternative thera-
ments or participating in drug trials
pies like Tai Chi and acupuncture, and
run by major pharmaceutical compa-
directories of hospitals, specialists, government sites, and health organizations
nies. (Recruiting volunteers is a
like the American Cancer Society.
lucrative business.) The only clue
that the site may not be publicspirited: At the bottom of the Home
Page, in tiny print, are the words
“Copyright W3Commerce, Inc.”
(W3Commerce of San Diego,
California, manages Web sites for
drug and food companies.)
www.healthfinder.gov is the federal
government’s gateway to health information on hundreds of topics. Go to the
“Just for You” directory and click on
“men” and then “prostate cancer,” for
example, and you’ll be linked to 20 articles on prevention, screening, and treatment from the National Cancer Institute,
the National Institute on Aging, the
American Academy of Family Physicians,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American
Foundation for Urologic Disease, and major medical school sites.
Some other sites registered to
CSPI on the Web
W3Commerce: diabetesanddiet.com,
At www.cspinet.org you’ll find articles
about-hypertension.com, depression-
from the current and back issues of
and-anxiety.com, about-migraine-
Nutrition Action Healthletter; quizzes to help
treatments.com, and preventing-
rate your diet and see how much you know
obesity.com. (Whenever you see .com
about vitamins, fat, and harmful bacteria;
at the end of a Web address, remem-
information on which food additives are
ber that somebody may be trying to
sell you something.)
safe or not; guides to help you shed
unwanted pounds, lower your blood pressure, and reduce your cholesterol;
and a link to www.smartmouth.org, our Web site for kids.
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