Snake Oil Superfoods by InformationIsBeautiful

In my stats classes, we discuss popular claims that have been proven/disproven by research. So, learning styles. Vitamins. One claim we dig into are the wide array of claims made about the health benefits of different foods and folk beliefs about nutrition. But how to get into it? That is such a big field, looking at different foods used for different conditions. Send your students to InformationIsBeautiful's Snake Oil Super foods, which sorted through all of good studies and created an interactive data viz to summarize.


For instance, these are three foods, backed by science, for very specific issues:

BUT GET THIS: If you scroll over any of them, you get a quick summary of the findings AND a link to the research article. See below for Oats. NOICE.

The information isn't limited to slam dunks, either, it fleshes out promising foods and weak links as well.

AND...this is great...below the visualization there is all sorts of information on their methodology AND a link to their data. See below.

How to use in class:
1) Again, this can be a useful discussion prompt for evaluating scientific/click bait nutritional research.
2) I think this reminds students that research has to research very specific claims. No where in the data viz does it say "Garlic be good", instead, it looks at specific health claims and garlic. While Garlic:Cancer Treatment is in the "No Evidence" category, Garlic:Colds is in the "Inconclusive" category.
3) Plenty of links to published research, speadsheet provided to play with.