Saturday, April 25, 2020

Just because it's on a famous website doesn't mean the advice is any good

I like my water with a little flavor, so between lemonade mixes, Crystal Light, and so on, I am looking into the world of water enhancers. You've seen those in supermarkets... Either in a box of 6-10 little sachets or in a little bottle that you squeeze a squirt or two into your bottled water or such.

Obviously, people have opinions on what's good or bad, but are there any studies or scientific discussions on what's good and what's not? I decided to do some research. What I read disappointed me, as a lot of the websites, even big name ones like eatthis.com, the companion site to the "eat this, not that" series of books, are prone to "food babe" type hysteria and bad advice.

(If you forgot who "Food Babe" was, here's a reminder.)

Anyway, back to the rant. Here's the part of the article that bothers me.

"The second ingredient in these little bottles is propylene glycol, a preservative, thickening agent, and stabilizer, also used as antifreeze to de-ice airplanes, as a plasticizer to make polyester resins, and found in electronic cigarettes."

There is little NOTHING here that explains what's good or bad about MiO. Yes, it listed a lot of alternate uses for propylene glycol, but again, NOTHING that explains why having this is "bad". Instead, we're left with insinuations as the item was linked to various "bad" things like "anti-freeze", "electronic cigarettes", "preservative", and so on.

And I'm not kidding, that was ALL the author wrote on MIO.

Clearly, the author has nothing bad to SAY about MiO, but the author wanted us to dislike MiO, so she chose to link MiO with a bunch of "bad words" but are still factual.

That is propaganda and manipulation.

This becomes obvious when you read the part about one of the items she DOES recommend...