Food and nutrition policy and issues

: Food and Nutrition

: Here is the instruction for the essay that I have just received from the college today "You need to find 5 news articles related to food or nutrition - this can be from newss , magazines or appropriate websites e .g . BBC news

You then need to find the appropriate scientific literature to which the news story refers (it is obviously easier to select news that relates to a single issue

You are then in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the news in relation to the scientific article - basically

, can you believe what you read in the s ? You do not need to review the scientific so don 't worry if you don 't understand it all , you are trying to see whether the news has reported the findings accurately

Finally the audit trail is simply a list of the process you went through to find the scientific s - so which search engines , which search terms , etc . This will show how your skills in searching are , and also illustrate how easy /difficult it would be for a member of the public to follow up a story

Collect a minimum of FIVE different food / nutrition- related s which are currently in the UK media and assess the validity of the claims by researching the in the scientific literature . For each you are expected to write a short 275 words ) summary of the issue and evaluate it from both the popular and scientific perspective For each you are also required to include an 'audit trail ' - a detailed list of the database you used , search terms , libraries visited

1 . Food fats threaten women 's fertility

Both the journal and the article demonstrate the importance of lowering trans fats in the diet as it has a significant effect on the development of infertility in women . Researchers found that an increase of 2 of trans fats in the diet instead of carbohydrates led to the development of 73 greater chances of infertility . The increase was similar when an increase of 2 in the diet from trans fats instead of PUFA . The article reports an increase of 70 . Hence , the journal is more precise in its findings . Individuals who obtained 2 of energy from trans fats compared to monounsaturated fats had a twice-higher risk of developing infertility . Thus , the details provided by the journal are more comprehensive than that of the article . The journal is also more specific about the design of the study group . It quotes the number of subjects as 18555 , compared to 18500 by the article . It gives the exact period during which the trial was conducted (1991 to 1999 . Both the article and the journal exactly quote the number of cases of infertility recorded after the trial was conducted (438 . The journal reports that the subjects of the trial were pre-menopausal , whereas the article reports it as women trying to conceive . The article is going a step beyond the trial , in suggesting...