People Who Write to be Read

I was looking up the nutrition information for dried pineapple this morning and ended up hopping to a couple of different articles and sites. It really struck me how different the impression would be if you only read one of them.

One site proclaimed that pineapple was super good for you if it was fresh but if it was dried it was not because of the sugar content. Well, let’s be clear here – it’s the same sugar content in a piece of pineapple after you dry it. The difference is in the weight of the pieces. An ounce of fresh pineapple contains a lot of water so by weight a ounce of dried pineapple would contain much more sugar, but it’s the same amount of sugar it had before you dried it. It doesn’t gain sugar.

Another site told me that dried pineapple was not a healthy choice because so many manufacturers added sugar onto the outside. Well, that’s not really the same thing as dried pineapple being a bad choice is it? That manufacturers brand would be a bad choice. Oddly, a very quick and minimal search could not find me any manufacturer of dried pineapple that added sugar.

It can be very difficult to separate fact from opinion.

Immediately after looking up pineapple I accidentally opened a post on my chemo drug group, Kadcyla, because I had forty pounds of beagle pushing on my arm. This post was talking about the use of hair products while on the drug and the information it contained was such a jumble of opinions with only one person producing any fact.

I have to really rein myself in when reading these kinds of posts because so many of them start with “my oncologist said”, though to be fair this one started with “my stylist said”. Well, if you are talking about what either of them told you please also provide independent facts because your oncologist and your stylist may have been at the bottom of their class on this particular subject.

Far too many people die because their oncologist said “eat whatever you want” “this is the only treatment available”* “No, there is nothing we can do” and some of them probably have really ugly hair because their oncologist said “no, you should use no hair products “. It might be true, or it might not, that’s not point. My point is just because someone has been trained to treat your hair or your cancer doesn’t mean they have all the answers.

Also – the person producing fact was talking about hormone disruption caused by the plastics used in the bottling process of hair products, just an FYI.

My point is just that everyone isn’t an expert in everything remotely related to their profession. I would think the really expert experts also spend a lot of time looking for new information and learning daily about what science and the world have uncovered. It’s good to trust people, but verify.

*recently once again heard this, patient told nothing more to do and enjoy your last days, and the drug they were referencing was the very first OF SEVEN chemo drugs that were tried on me.