Category Archives: Food Science

The Study on Emotion and Wine Revisited

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

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emotional wineLast month I discussed a report of a new study  that showed  correlations between wine and emotions. At the time I didn’t have access to the complete study, and was relying on a helpful synopsis by Becca Yeomans. I have since been able to view the original study, which is not yet available on line. The study is fascinating because it shows that we respond emotionally to wines which potentially opens a whole new arena for wine appreciation. Yet there are some very odd results that are hard to explain as I noted in my earlier post. Now that I’ve had a chance to read the study, I wanted to revisit the conclusions to be drawn from it, although it turns out that the puzzling results remain puzzling.

The study, conducted by the School of Agricultural, Food and Biosystems Engineering at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain, consisted of a sensory evaluation of several wines by a trained panel in order to identify the organoleptic properties of the wine and a  consumer evaluation of the same wines accompanied by an emotion response analysis. The wines evaluated were a Verdejo, Chardonnay, a rosé made from Garnacha, two Rioja Reserva level wines, one from 2012, the other 2013, and a Ribero del Duero Reserva from 2012.

The consumer panel consisted of 208 students of various ages, and roughly equal cohorts of men and women, whose only qualification was that they consumed wine at least once a month. After a warm-up flight, they were given wines in a random order to be judged according to how much they liked the wine and then were given a list of 26 emotion words from which to choose the emotions elicited by the wine.

Here is a summary of the results

  • 22 of the 26 emotion terms showed a significant correlation with the wines.
  • “good”, “happy”, “joyful”, “mild”, and “pleasant” were associated with fruity and floral aromas
  • aromas/flavors of vanilla, clove, and licorice were associated with “aggressive” and “guilty”.
  • Astringency, the drying sensations caused by tannin, was associated with “aggressive”.
  • Subjects grouped wines differently based on sensory analysis vs. the emotion analysis.
  • Men and older adults scored the emotion words higher than women or younger adults but women were more discriminating regarded the emotions elicited.
  • Young adults scored the two white wines and the rosé higher for the emotions “good”, “happy”, and “pleasant”; the 2013 Rioja Tempranillo scored lowest on these emotions for this cohort.
  • Older adults identified “mild” as the distinguish characteristic between the white wines, rose and the 2013 Tempranillo.
  • Negative terms such as “guilty” or “worried” were more prominent for younger adults.

The gender and age differences are interesting but I have no idea how to explain the results so I will ignore them.

I have no training in reading statistical analyses so I’m not sure I have a sophisticated understanding of the paper. But here is what I find puzzling.

If I’m reading the charts correctly, liking a wine was positively correlated with the positive emotions. But the negative emotion terms such as “aggressive” or “guilty”  were associated with aromas of vanilla, clove, and licorice, and with astringency. These are all descriptors associated with big, red wines such as at least some Tempranillo. The positive emotions were associated with white wines.

But surely we can’t conclude from this that tannic, red wines with vanilla and clove notes are unpopular because they evoke negative emotions. I looked up data for wine sales in Spain and they show a decided preference for red wine especially Tempranillo which is the signature grape of Spain.

The consumers were asked to assess their degree of liking a wine before identifying the emotions so these results can’t be easily explained by the emotion biasing the judgment about the wine’s likeability. The only explanation I can come up with is that consumers outside the laboratory don’t make the connection between likeability and emotion. Only in the laboratory when the test subjects know they’re expected to make the connection is the association salient thus leading the subjects to have an experience unlike that of ordinary consumers.

But there is one more hypothesis that is worth mentioning. The authors of the study state,“If a wine conjures up negative emotions for an individual, that person is probably not going to buy that bottle of wine in the future.” Whatever the relationship is between wine and emotion, I doubt that wines “conjure up” emotions. As I have argued elsewhere the association between wine and emotion is typically metaphorical. We associate astringent wines with aggressive emotions but they don’t make us feel angry or afraid. It’s an association, not a direct causal relationship between the wine and an emotion. “Conjuring up” may be the wrong way to describe this relationship. Similarly, a piece of music may express anger or fear, but we don’t feel angry or afraid when listening, and it’s that expression that we find enjoyable despite the fact the emotion may be classified as “negative”.

If in conducting the test, the experimenters were encouraging  the study participants to think of wines as causing emotions rather than metaphorically expressing them, their experience of the wines might be quite atypical. A wine that causes one to feel aggressive or guilty might indeed be unpleasant; a wine that expresses aggression or guilt might be interesting.

I have no idea how much plausibility to assign either of these explanations.

On the surface, the study seems well done and the results are certainly interesting. But the fact that the results of the study seem to contradict what we know about wine preferences means that much more work will have to be done to tease out the factors that explain this relationship between emotion and wine.

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Emotions and Wine: Finally Some Empirical Data

15 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Art and Wine, Food Science, Philosophy of Food and Wine, Wine Culture

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wine and emotionAs dedicated readers of this blog are likely aware, I’ve been arguing that we respond to wines not just with our senses but with emotions as well. (See articles here and here for example) In some cases a particular wine may directly induce an emotional response in us. In other cases, we make metaphorical associations with a wine that has emotional connotations.

Thus far I’ve been relying primarily on my own experiences and the experiences of others who report such experiences. My thesis is not that associating wine with emotions is a common activity. I don’t know how widespread it is. Rather I claim that such associations are available to us if we pay attention to them and that they enhance the aesthetic experience of wine in just the way paying attention to emotional expression in music enhances the experience of music.

Now there is some empirical data to support my thesis. The Academic Wino is reporting on a study, apparently the first of its kind, to be published in the journal Food Quality and Preference entitled “The Relationship Between Sensory Characteristics and Emotion in Wine Preferences”. The study shows that consumers do in fact make these associations between wine and emotions. Unfortunately, the study is behind a paywall and I don’t yet have access to it. But The Academic Wino helpfully summarizes it for us.

This study had two parts:  a sensory evaluation of the wines by a trained panel (11 total: 5 women, 6 men; faculty and researchers from the School of Agricultural, Food and Biosystems Engineering at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain), and a consumer evaluation of the wines with an additional emotional response analysis…

The sensory evaluation by the trained panel used standard tasting methodology. The consumer evaluation is the interesting part.

For the consumer evaluation, participants were first asked to complete questionnaires on demographics and wine consumption habits. Next, they participated in a “warm-up” or “practice” tasting session with 7 wines presented [blind] at the same time.  Finally, after the warm-up, they were presented with the sample of 6 test wines briefly mentioned above.

After tasting the wines (which were presented in random order), participants were asked to rate their liking of each wine (using a 9-point hedonic scale), and what emotions were elicited by each wine (using the EsSense 25 software). Emotions were rated using a 10-cm line scale with the labels “very low” and “very high” at the ends (and everything in between).

The 208 participants were recruited from the School of Agricultural, Food and Biosystems Engineering at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, consumed wine at least once a month, and included young adults, middle aged adults and older adults. Here are some of the results:

  • “Most of the emotion terms evaluated were found to be significantly different between the wines.
  • Only 4 out of 26 terms did not show significant association with the wines (“adventurous”, “free”, “wild”, and “worried”).
  • The emotion terms “good”, “happy”, “joyful”, “mild”, and “pleasant”, were positively associated with fruity and floral aromas/flavors in the wines.
  • The emotion terms “aggressive” and “guilty” were associated with the aromas/flavors of vanilla, clove, and licorice.
  • “Aggressive” was also found to be associated with astringent characteristics.
  • Using cluster analysis, wines were found to be grouped differently when looking at sensory characteristics alone versus when looking at emotional variables alone. (NOTE:  cluster analysis shows which wines are most similar to each other.)
    • Sensory analysis grouped the wines as: 1) the verdejo white in one group; 2) the chardonnay and rosé wine in another group; 3) a Rioja Tempranillo (2012) and a Ribera del Duero Tempranillo in another group; and 4) a different Rioja Tempranillo (2013) in the last group.
    • Emotion analysis grouped the wines as: 1) the verdejo and chardonnay wines in one group; 2) the rose wine in another group; 3) the two Rioja Tempranillos (2012, 2013) in another group; and 4) the Ribera del Duero Tempranillo in the last group.”

There were some differences depending on gender and age which I will ignore for now.

The conclusions however are a bit puzzling. I’m not sure if these are conclusions drawn by the authors of the study or by The Academic Wino. She writes:

Out of 26 different emotions of focus in this study, only 4 were found to be insignificant (“adventurous”, “free”, “wild”, and “worried”), providing evidence that emotions are important in the overall enjoyment of a wine and thus preference.

It is certainly evidence that such associations are intelligible and meaningful to consumers. However, it’s not clear to me how emotional response figured into overall enjoyment. Participants were asked to rate their liking of each wine so perhaps the study correlated preferences with various emotional responses. But the conclusion has some odd implications.

If a wine conjures up negative emotions for an individual, that person is probably not going to buy that bottle of wine in the future.

This doesn’t sound right to me. The summary states that emotion terms “aggressive” and “guilty” were associated with the aromas/flavors of vanilla, clove, and licorice. And that “aggressive” was associated with astringency, meaning the coarseness of the tannins. These are all descriptors associated with big, red wines such as at least some Tempranillo. But surely we can’t conclude from this that tannic, red wines with vanilla and clove notes are unpopular because they evoke negative emotions.

In terms of relationships between emotions and specific wine styles, the study found that white wine characteristics were often associated with more positive emotions, while aged wine characteristics were associated more often with negative emotions.

It is true that aged wines are not to everyone’s taste. But among wine lovers, connoisseurs, etc. aged wines are esteemed. And in the general wine drinking public big red wines, dubbed aggressive in this study, are also much admired. So I’m a bit suspicious of the claim that wines associated with negative emotions are therefore not enjoyable. Again, as I’ve been arguing, the association is often metaphorical. We associate astringent wines with aggressive emotions but they don’t make us feel angry or afraid. It’s an association, not a direct causal relationship between the wine and an emotion. Similarly, a piece of music may express anger or fear, but we don’t feel angry or afraid when listening, and it’s that expression that we find enjoyable despite the fact the emotion may be classified as “negative”.

So we need more studies that can tease out this relationship between what is expressed, what is felt, and how these factors influence preferences.

At any rate, this is a fascinating area of research and thanks to the Academic Wino for summarizing it.

Bugs in the Vineyard May be the Key to Wine Quality

21 Thursday Dec 2017

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soil bacteriaComplexity and differentiation are the drivers of the wine world. If we cared about neither wine would be a commodity like orange juice, a homogeneous product with 2 or 3 mega-producers battling for competitive position via marketing and price.

We know that complexity and differentiation in wine are a function in part of geographical location with climate and weather playing the most significant role. But we also know that grapes harvested from regions with similar weather can produce vastly different wines even when we hold winemaking techniques constant. It seems like the soil matters a great deal in explaining why wines have their unique characteristics.

Yet when I ask winemakers what it is about the soil that explains the differences in wine aromas and flavors the answer I usually get is “water and heat retention characteristics”.  Soil types differ in their capacity to retain water and hold heat. The problem is lots of soil types share water and heat retention characteristics but produce different wines. The mineral composition of the soils  probably plays a role but the the science on this is controversial.

In short, we still don’t know how wine creates the magical diversity we all love.

The newest theory attracting lots of attention is that it’s the bugs in the soil that are influencing the character of the wine. Deborah Parker Wong in SommJournal reports on a research project conducted by Spanish biochemist and wine importer Paco Cifuentes and the U.S./Spanish company Biome Makers. They use DNA sequencing to evaluate the microorganisms in various vineyards and then show correlations with the flavor and texture of the finished product.  Dr. Ignacio Belda of Biome Makers reports:

…microorganisms exist that act along the fermentation cycle, modifying existing compounds in juice and must; they can also add other characteristics, some of which could include expressions of minerality.

Cifuentes claims,

The more bugs you have to begin with, the more potential you’ll have for diverse chemical compounds in the finished wine…

This is exciting research, perhaps inching us closer to unlocking the mystery of wine. Winemakers may soon be competing to see who can create the most robust bacterial soup in their vineyards.

Smoke influence and the 2017 Vintage

07 Thursday Dec 2017

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smoke in vineyardsAlthough most of the grapes for the 2017 vintage in Napa/Sonoma were harvested before the devastating fires began, there was still a significant amount on vine and will be affected by smoke taint. The elimination of smoke taint was the main topic at the Postmodern Winemaking Symposium that I’ve attending this week. We tasted through several smoke-damaged wines (along with some Islay Scotch and Mezcal to gain a sensory understnding of smoke influence). And then heard presentations about what is known about the elimination of smoke taint. My quick summary of what is known is that there are some methods  of removal such as flash détente  that seem to work in some situations but they all carry risks and none have been proven broadly effective.

But from an aesthetic point of view, smoke taint poses an interesting question.

The engine of wine aesthetics is difference, differentiation. That is why we have AVAs, vineyard expression, varietals, origin stories and all the rest—its about distinguishing your products from your competitor’s products. This is not surprising because the aim of aesthetic winemaking, is to create something of beauty, and almost all philosophical conceptions of beauty include the idea that what distinguishes beautiful objects from merely pretty or attractive objects is that there is something deviant about them, something uncanny and unfamiliar. Beautiful objects have an individuality about them that the artist or winemaker succeeds in harmonizing, making all the parts of the object work together.

Isn’t 2017 vintage an opportunity to create something quite distinctive with wines influence by smoke? As a consumer I’m always looking for what’s distinctive about a wine, what sets it apart from others. How winemakers go about handling smoke will be one of the fascinating things to look for in this 2017 vintage, especially because the influence of smoke will not be tied to the presence of oak.

Thus, if the smoke influence is handled in such a way that it doesn’t overwhelm the other virtues of the wine, and can be made to harmonize with them, it’s not obvious why we should call it a taint. It may be a mark of distinction.

This issue of smoke taint is related to the whole idea of a flaw. When you go down the list of wine flaws that are taught by the various certification organizations almost all of them have aesthetic value in some contexts. Where would traditional French Syrah be without brett, or Barolo without VA, or Sherry without oxidation?

Perhaps the 2017 vintage will encourage us to be more careful about the language we use—smoke influence is not taint if it produces something of beauty.

How to Eat Sinfully

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Contemporary Food Culture, Food Science, Uncategorized

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thanksgiving gluttonyJust in time to guarantee a guilt-free feast on Thanksgiving,  Dr. Aaron Carroll’s book The Bad Food Bible:  How and Why to Eat Sinfully has arrived at your favorite bookseller. Among the gems that Carroll hurls at the nutrition Nazis are that most fats are not bad for you; unless you already have high blood pressure, the amount of salt in your diet is probably fine; your chances of getting severe Salmonella poisoning from raw eggs are miniscule; and processed meats eaten in moderation will not increase your susceptibility to cancer.

As for his advice to Thanksgiving revelers from a recent interview:

Your health and your eating habits are not established by one day a year. It’s perfectly fine to enjoy yourself and to live! You need to weigh — in all your health decisions — the benefits and the harms. And too often we only focus on the latter. And included in benefits are joy, and quality of life and happiness. There are times when it’s a perfectly rational decision to allow yourself to be happy and to enjoy yourself. I’m not sort of giving a license for people to eat whatever they want, anytime they want. Yes, the Diet Coke, the pie, these are all processed foods. So you should think about how much you’re eating them in relation to everything else. But on the other hand, a piece of pie on Thanksgiving is not going to erase everything else you’ve done the rest of the year.

This is good advice, even without Carroll’s analysis of the lack of evidence for much nutritional advice. Unless you have health issues, choosing Thanksgiving Day to make a stand against poor nutrition is just a form of asceticism.

But Carroll’s book does more than give us all an excuse to indulge on occasion. He provides a careful analysis of the data supporting various nutritional guidelines in easy-to-understand prose. In fact, his book would be a good primer to use in a critical thinking class on statistics. Most of the nutritional guidelines we’re encouraged to follow are not well supported by the underlying studies. The problem isn’t that nutrition scientists are dishonest or careless—the problem is that nutritional science is very hard to do well and very expensive, so must studies are too limited and equivocal to allow definitive conclusions. Yet, the public, regulatory agencies, and the press want definitive conclusions so we end up with advice that outstrips evidence.

According to Carroll, not all nutritional advice is bad. Studies supporting the harmful effects of excessive sugar and refined carbohydrates are persuasive, and if you’re among the minority whose dietary cholesterol effects blood cholesterol then dietary modifications may be appropriate. Obviously, excessive calories and the resulting weight gain are not good; healthy eating requires moderation. But generally speaking trying to regulate health by making particular foods off limits is ineffective and unnecessary.

And surely Carroll is right that an occasional indulgence for reasonably healthy people will have no ill effects.

So this Thanksgiving put away the guilt and put away the turkey and stuffing. And think of that food coma as a well-deserved nap.

A World without Chocolate?

27 Wednesday Sep 2017

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a world without chocolateWe don’t really need another crisis at the moment and there are more important things to worry about than the supply of chocolate. Nevertheless, a world without chocolate would be a diminished form of existence.

Cacao crops are under constant threat from disease and environmental pressures. Yet producers continue to plant only a narrow range of varieties and that has experts concerned.

“Most varieties produced worldwide belong to a narrow set of clones selected in the forties,” said Wilbert Phillips-Mora, who oversees this collection of 1,235 types of cacao trees and heads the Cacao Genetic Improvement Program at C.A.T.I.E. (an acronym in Spanish for the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center).

A narrow gene pool means that most commonly cultivated varieties of cacao are susceptible to the same diseases, and these blights can spread quickly.

In the early 1980’s frosty pod rot virtually killed off cocoa production in Costa Rica and Phillips-Mora argues it could happen anywhere

“For me, the cacao industry is in permanent risk, because intentionally or unintentionally this disease could be spread in just one flight,” said Dr. Phillips-Mora. Increasing travel and commerce in the developing world have provided new pathways for infection.

The threat of disease, especially exacerbated by climate change, makes growing cacao a risky business.

These difficulties make cacao ever less appealing to producers; yields and profits are low, and the average cacao farmer is aging. The next generation seems to be abandoning the family business.

Yet demand for chocolate is rising, especially as gargantuan markets like China and India indulge a taste for what used to be a treat primarily for American and European consumers. A chocolate shortage may be on the horizon.

Dr. Phillips-Mora’s project of creating greater genetic diversity in the cacao plant population may be all that stands between us and a world without chocolate.

In the early 1980s, Dr. Phillips-Mora worked to identify the most naturally tolerant and productive cacao trees, then painstakingly hybridized the candidates to create novel varieties.

Apparently, these new varieties are more productive and more disease resistant than conventional varieties, yet have all the flavor characteristics that chocolate lovers crave.

Dr. Phillips-Mora, a grateful world turns its lonely eyes to you.

Give It Up Guys

31 Thursday Aug 2017

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female winemakerThere is a mountain of evidence suggesting that women have a better sense of smell than men. Julie Case takes us through a summary of the data.

Then, in the 1980s, Richard L. Doty, a professor of otorhinolaryngology and the director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and a team of researchers designed the Smell Identification Test, which asks subjects to identify 40 odors. When the test was later used in a study on sex differences and the ability to identify odors—the results were published in 1985 in the journal Neuropsychologia—women consistently outperformed men. The test has since been commercialized and used in a myriad of ways, including the study of air pollution and olfactory dysfunction and the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Beyond merely identifying odors, however, Doty says women also seem to perform better than men in detecting odors at the lowest levels of concentration, and in tests of odor discrimination and memory. In the late ’90s, a research study used MRIs to examine the volume of the brain activated when men and women were subjected to olfactory stimulants The MRI activation maps for the women’s group showed up to eight times more activated voxels (by analogy with “pixels,” “voxels” are an element of three-dimensional space) than the men’s group in specific regions of the brain.

And so on. More studies leading to the same conclusion. But then at the end of this informative article she does what women too often do when male egos are at stake—she defers:

Does having more neurons and glial cells, and being better at detecting aromas, make one a superior winemaker or somm? Not necessarily. For some, all of the extra details and minute aromas are distractions.

Well yes but you can learn to manage the distractions. If you lack the ability to detect aromas there is nothing you can do. Is it better to have lots of money that must be managed or too little money with no recourse?

Unfortunately, we get more of the same lame excuses’:

Just as the fastest person in the world doesn’t make the best soccer player, or the strongest person in the world doesn’t make the best wrestler, [wine] tasting is so much more than just being able to taste the compounds,” says Rob Ord, prestige manager for Treasury Wine Estates in California and a former diploma instructor for the International Sommelier Guild. “It’s being able to put everything together in the puzzle.

Right. But is there any evidence that women are less adept at puzzle-solving?

Moreover, says Ord, it’s impossible to be able to smell something—or at least to identify a smell—unless it’s been described, defined, or imprinted in memory with a label attached. “It’s very difficult,” he says, “to be able to pick out those compounds and say, ‘Oh yeah, this smells like peach,’ unless you’ve actually spent time smelling peach and really defining that in your palate.” Even people with the most sensitive olfactory bulbs won’t be able to break down an incredibly aromatic wine if they can’t name or define what they’re smelling.

So is there evidence that woman lack the discipline to practice labeling smells? Of course not.

Obviously, a good sense of smell is not sufficient to make you a good winemaker or somm but without it you’re at a real disadvantage.

Give it up guys—they’re probably better than we are at the most important skill in the wine business.

A Neuroscientist on Wine

15 Thursday Jun 2017

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neuroenologyNeuroscientist Gordon Shepherd, author of Neurogastronomy, has a new book out entitled Neuroenology: How the Brain Creates the Taste of Wine (Columbia University Press, $25). Neurogastronomy was fascinating. I haven’t gotten to the new book yet but Harvey Steiman has a brief interview in which Shepherd makes several interesting points.

Shepherd thinks you have to swallow wine to get a full picture of its flavor and has charts on fluid dynamics in the mouth to back up his contention. Steiman disagrees arguing that

“…my experience as a taster tells me otherwise. I get no difference between how a wine tastes to me from actually swallowing it vs. slurping and bubbling it in my mouth, then spitting it out, so that I can stay (relatively) sober.”

I agree with Steiman here. I haven’t noticed that spitting lessens my perception of aromas.

Shepherd thought for a moment. “As you breathe out, those volatiles can carry from the mouth to the back of the nose. With practice maybe you can train your uvula to be open when tasting, and others can’t.”

Perhaps, but I have no such training and Steiman doesn’t mention any either. I think you have to trust the phenomenology here. If we’re not perceiving differences then there are no perceptible differences. Perhaps  this varies from person to person but the scientific hypothesis  needs to be supplemented with subjective reports.

Secondly, Shepherd argues that human beings are not particularly inept when describing aromas and flavors.

His peers get it wrong, he says, when they claim a poor connection between language and what we smell and taste. Our ability to describe what we taste is no different than describing a painting. “We can describe Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers. They look like sunflowers,” he says. “But it’s almost impossible to describe anything nonrepresentational in words to someone who hasn’t seen it. The same applies to music.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. In reviews of pop and rock albums the bulk of the commentary is about lyrics. Descriptions of the music when they exist are vague and general. The same with paintings. Discussions focus on what the painting is about. Descriptions of formal elements are either general descriptions of patterns of colors and lines or quickly become metaphorical and allusive.

Describing aesthetic experiences is inherently difficult and wine writers are no worse off than anyone else in that regard.

Is Flavor Intensity Destroying the American Palate?

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

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sriracha almondsThe thought occurred to me while wandering down the snack aisle at the supermarket that constant exposure to inflated flavors is destroying our ability to taste. From ginger and lime oil potato chips to dill pickle cashews to sriracha pretzel chips, ratcheting up the taste intensity scale is big foods’ ticket to higher profits. But where does it end? Wasabi guacamole? Scotch bonnet yoghurt? We quickly adapt to intense flavors so each year the intensity level must go up.

The problem is if we crave only flavor intensity the subtlety and complexity of food is passed over unnoticed.

When food technology companies put together their chemical concoctions designed to mimic natural flavors, cost considerations dictate that only the most prominent flavor components find their way into the finished product. It is expensive to manufacture the sometimes hundreds of components in an ingredient that accounts for its flavor. That’s why flavored foods seldom have the depth and complexity of natural ingredients. It’s cheap to make something hot or salty; much more expensive to re-create the genuine taste of a tomato. By learning to crave intensity we’re learning to ignore complexity and refinement.

Despite the vast flavor choices in the packaged foods section of the supermarket, they’re almost always one-dimensional. Our relatively new-found interest in flavor is being compromised by food that demands no discernment.

If you want to preserve your ability to taste it’s best to stay out of the packaged food aisle.

Misleading Headline Case #692

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

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newspaperNPR that bastion of objective reporting published the following headline on the Salt for a story that ran on All Things Considered as well:

“How Much Is Too Much? New Study Casts Doubts On Sugar Guidelines”

It makes you think that triple scoop of Baskin Robbins may not be so bad for you after all, doesn’t it.

The headline is utter nonsense. First of all, we find slipped into a sentence in the second paragraph that this is an industry-funded study. Hmm. I wonder why they decided to publish and promote this?

But more importantly, when you read the study it shows nothing of the kind. This so-called “study”, which is just a meta-study of the real science and involves no new data, shows that the science behind choosing a specific guideline about how much sugar should be a part of one’s diet is uncertain.  Should it be 5% or 10%? The science isn’t fine grained enough to be sure.

Well of course that’s uncertain. It would be enormously expensive and time consuming to do studies that would sort out with high probability the precise healthy level of sugar in our diets.

But the fact that we don’t know what the precise guidelines are does not entail there should be no guidelines at all. This bit of elementary logic seems to escape the attention of the vaunted reporters and editors at our flagship news outlet.

And did the reporter investigate to see if this meta-study left out important contrary research that might be relevant? No e

Of course, specific guidelines are going to be a best guess. That is the best medical authorities can do until we get much more data.

But nothing in the underlying data casts doubt on the role of sugar in obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.

When the history of the post-truth society is written (should there be a future in which people care about such matters) it will be media organizations that will be justly held responsible.

No one has any good reason to read or listen to these people who claim to be journalists.