Relevant evidence

What outcomes matter to you?

Always ask yourself whether the outcomes related to a nutrition intervention that are important to you, have been measured in fair comparisons.

Researchers may not have measured all the outcomes that matter to you in studies that compared nutrition interventions. Also, the outcomes they have measured may not matter to you.

For example, studies often measure outcomes that are easy to measure, such as blood pressure, as a substitute for outcomes that are important, such as strokes or heart attacks.

However, the effects of nutrition interventions on those substitute (surrogate) outcomes (like blood pressure) often do not provide a reliable indication of the effects on outcomes that are important (like strokes and heart attacks). Similarly, short-term effects may not provide a reliable indication of long-term effects.

REMEMBER: Ask whether the outcomes that are important to you have been measured in fair comparisons of interventions, and look out for surrogate outcomes.