Faulty logic

“Old is better!”

Just because a nutrition intervention has been used for a long time, or by many people, it does not mean that it helps or that it is safe.

People often believe that nutrition interventions that have been used for a long time, or by many people, must work and must be safe. But that’s often not the case.

For example, in some countries many people believe sea salt is less harmful than table salt because people have used sea salt for a very long time. They believe that it must be better to use because it has been used by so many people for so long. However, sea salt has about the same amount of sodium as table salt, and too much sodium can be harmful to health. So, the one is not necessarily healthier than the other. Sea salt and table salt only have different tastes, textures and processing methods.

BEWARE of claims that a nutrition intervention works or is safe just because it has been used for a long time or used by a lot of people.

REMEMBER: Think about whether the nutrition intervention has been tested in fair comparisons of interventions.