Advertisements and Logical Fallacies Part 1

Lately I've been thinking about logical fallacies used in advertising and marketing. The argument from authority when someone in a lab coat tells you what to buy, argumentum ad populum which is "appeal to the people" because everyone else is buying this product so you should too.

One of my pet peeves is multigrain labels emblazoned on foods lately. Technically the food has more than one grain in it, but they are touting the product as something healthy when they have still stripped all fiber and goodness out, so the health benefits are still lacking. This is very popular in cereals, and unless you read the label you'd think you were buying something healthy, when really it's just as junky as cocoa puffs.

The "no sugar added" label is another one I find quite vague. There are several different iterations of this one. No sugar added, sugar free, the list goes on. What do they all mean? Again, you have to carefully read the nutrition facts and ingredients to get a better picture of what you'll be buying.

I guess it's basically the idea that advertisers must follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of it. So for something like Airborne (which I've ranted about before), they can make vague claims that basically say nothing to skirt the issue that there is no science behind their product. Then, to make it worse, they strategically make sure it's placed near the pharmacy to appeal to authority. I think in some places they have signs saying that pharmacists recommend Airborne. But really, to make that claim you only have to pay two pharmacists to say what you want to be truthful.

I find it all incredibly frustrating and discouraging. And the only solution is to be aggressively proactive about shopping and watching ads or commercials. Be skeptical!

This is part one of tackling this topic for three reasons.

• One, I don't think we can do it justice in one post.


• Two, I really want your feedback. What are your pet peeves in advertising? What examples stand out for you? What logical fallacies do you see in advertising and marketing?


• And three, I just got the new parts for my computer and have to build my newer, better, faster computer today (with the help of my geek friend, Gary. Thanks Gary!). :P This is my birthday present from my sweetie. Thanks, my love! :D

Ok, I'm off to go fiddle with my new computer parts. Hopefully it all goes well. I look forward to hearing from you about fallacies in advertising! :)

I'm Curious!

The other day I shared my favorite podcasts, one of which was the SGU. Well, I just found a new one! From Skepchick.org with Rebecca Watson comes a new podcast called Curiosity Aroused. There's one episode up now which is about calorie restriction for long life. The episode is about 20 minutes long and you can subscribe through iTunes.

In the first episode, they talk to Monica Reinagel who is pretty neat in her own right. She's a nutrition expert and through her short podcast and blog she helps weed through the hype and nonsense of nutrition. As a person who wonders what is fact and what is bullshit when it comes to food, diet and the like, it's very cool to find a resource for good information.

Here are her sites:

www.nutritiondata.com: her blog is on here along with a wealth of information.

http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/: Her podcasts are on here. If you go to listen or read and episode, you can then find the link to iTunes to subscribe and get them all. They are each about 5 minutes long.

Do you have any great resources for good nutrition and diet that are based in science and research? Please feel free to share! :)

Delusions of Calories Dance In Our Heads

As a typical person trying to watch my weight, I count calories. Not obsessively, but I try to keep an eye on how much I eat. Like a lot of people, even though I watch what I eat, I'm still always fighting to not gain weight, and getting more frustrated all the time.

New Scientist put together a 3 page article called The Calorie Delusion: Why food labels are wrong today and I wanted to share it with you. Here are the main points that I got out of it:

• Basically, it's good to balance calories in and calories out to maintain your weight. Common sense, right?


• Some food labels over or underestimate how much energy your body will get from a food by as much as 25%


• Eat a meager 20 kcal a day more than you need and you'll gain about a kilogram - or about 2.2 lbs - of fat per year


• Wilbur Atwater, a chemist, came up with how to calculate energy in food in the late 19th century, and we still use that system today
  
  
  
  • The Atwater method determines the energy content of food through incineration, not digestion
  
  
  
  


• Dietary Fiber: provides energy for gut microbes (which is good), is more resistant to mechanical and chemical digestion than other kinds of carbs, and therefore gives us lower energy than previously thought  (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol 51, p 617)


• Protein also apparently takes more energy to convert to amino acids than previously thought (British Journal of Nutrition, vol 85, p 271)


• Softer foods lowers the energy cost of digestion! Food texture can greatly affect weight gain
  
  
  
  • A 2003 study in Japan found that feeding one group of rats hard pellets and the other group soft pellets (same flavor and calorie content), after 22 weeks the rats on the softer food were obese with more abdominal fat (Journal of Dental Research, vol 82, p 491)
  
  
  • A similar study in people had similar results: women who ate the hardest foods had significantly slimmer waistlines than those who ate the softest foods (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol 86, p206)
  
  
  
  


• The Atwater system assumes that the proportion of food that doesn't get digested is more or less constant, around 10%, but actually we've known for the last 60 years that this isn't the case
  
  
  
  • So while processed foods like white flour and white sugar are able to be almost completely converted to energy in the body, complex carbohydrates like course-ground wheat flour will only give up about 30%