Not all food preserving resources are good resources
(and how to tell which ones are)
I wrote this section for my next book, The Essential Preserving Handbook: But we’ve been so inundated with misinformation in general, and in the realm of food preservation as well, that it felt important to share with you now.
Make sure to read to the end for a bibliography compiled by my friends Dr. Jonathan Hollister and Ryan Cohen, who I interviewed for this!
Evaluating food preserving resources
Living in a world where all the information you want is at your fingertips is both a blessing and a curse. I can, in about 5 seconds, get thousands of recipes for canned strawberry jam (for example) without even having to get up from the couch. But the fact that anyone can publish anything on the internet, or as a self-published book, or as an AI-generated book, means we need to approach food preserving sources with cautious optimism, making sure that they're trustworthy.
At the time of this writing, AI-generated mushroom foraging books have flooded a certain large online retailer, and the incorrect identifications in those books have already gotten several people sick. As far as I'm aware (and this may change by the time this book is in your hands!) there are not AI-generated fermentation and food preserving books. May it ever be so.
As Ryan Cohen, a librarian at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) told me, "humanity is at an inflection point of shaping AI so that the benefits outweigh the risks. AI demonstrates vast potential, but also demonstrates current obstacles and limitations, such as precision, reproducibility, authorship, ethical considerations, availability, and interpretability. One thing that is clear is that human intervention and knowledge will always be needed. AI will never be a total replacement for thousands of years of human judgment and expertise."
But human-made information can be problematic, too: Recipe videos on social media and YouTube can glean plenty of views and inspire people to try new things, but not all of them are going to net you a delicious, or even safe to eat, final product.
Now, more than ever, it's important to know how to evaluate sources so you can choose ones that meet your needs and help you expand your culinary horizons.
So how do we know a good preserving recipe when we see one? What is a "trusted" source when it comes to preserving? And how can we build up the information literacy we need when it comes to food preserving?
Finding good information created by knowledgeable folks is especially critical when we're talking about food preserving, because some types of preserving carry real risks if done incorrectly. A recipe that gives you incorrect processing times for canning, or the wrong salt ratios for meat preserving, is a recipe that might make you sick.
I've had many a conversation with fellow cookbook authors and recipe developers who are so careful about what we share and about testing our recipes for this reason, but who also lament the overwhelming amount of not-so-good preserving information out there.
It's not all doom and gloom, though: because while not every preserving recipe in the world can be trusted, many can, and there are a few ways to help you distinguish them.
And while I focus on preserving recipes here, because this is a preserving book, these skills apply to anything, and building and flexing your information literacy muscles is something that will serve you whatever information you encounter.
There are some guidelines that work for any kind of source, and apply to cookbooks too. One of my favorite acronyms is the CRAAP Test, which is a good first step for quickly assessing if a resource is trustworthy and appropriate to your needs:
Currency: Timeliness of the information
Relevance: Does this information meet your needs?
Authority: Where the information came from: What expertise does its creator have? Who funded it? Where/how was it published?
Accuracy: Is this information correct?
Purpose: Why was this information created and shared?
Dr. Hollister suggests a few other techniques, too:
-Try lateral searching
…to see what other trusted sources are saying about a questionable item, or an idea you aren't sure about: Check reputable websites, authors, trade journals/magazines, or other trusted sources and see if they have published any reviews of the questionable title or its author(s). The reviews on the online store might also be useful.
For preserving recipes, look at multiple recipes from multiple trustworthy sources and compare things like processing times, cooking times, salt ratios, etc. Make sure to compare the recipe with sources you know you can trust, like So Easy to Preserve, or Joy of Cooking, or the Ball blue book, to name a few. If the recipe you want to make seems really off from the other recipes (for example: every other recipe says to process jars for 20 minutes, but the recipe you want says 10), then it may be a dud.
-Learn about the author and their background
What is their background? Do they have demonstrated experience with this kind of cooking, or other experience that would make them knowledgeable in a given cuisine or cooking process? Do they do lots of preserving or is this particular recipe a one-off?
-Look at the author's patterns of publishing
The sudden publication of many books or academic papers at once is a red flag, for example. Likewise, if they've only added one canning video to their new homesteading YouTube channel, you don't have enough information to assess if they know what they're talking about when it comes to canning.
-Look at the publisher and editor
Look up the publisher, or whoever is financially supporting the work (e.g. a government-funded study): Is this a publisher that has published other preserving books in the past? Or is this the only preserving book in their catalog?
An editor (and other staff at a publication, like recipe testers) who is familiar with food preserving knows what questions to ask of authors to help make recipes clearer and keep readers safe. An editor who is less familiar with food preserving may not know what to look for or what questions to ask. Many food-focused publishing houses, as well as food-related government and academic publications, should be staffed by knowledgeable folks.
If it's self-published, make sure to look closely at the author's experience closely, because they may not have had a second set of eyes on their recipe before putting it out in the world.
If it's funded by a source that isn't a publisher, consider what stake that funder might have in the subject (or in promoting a specific perspective). This isn't necessarily an evil conspiracy: A canning jar brand that shares recipes using their jars is just trying to sell jars, for example (but also, hopefully, also knows about canning?), but knowing who's footing the bill and why can help you evaluate how they approached and framed the work itself.
-Or, look at what kind of site (or other resource) the information is in
For online recipes, take a peek at the larger site. Is it moderated or edited in any way? Is it a newsletter or blog run by a knowledgeable person? What other content is on the site?
If it's on a blog platform or a newsletter site that hosts creators of all sorts, it's up to you to determine if this particular creator is one you can trust (the same is true of social media: look beyond the shiny videos and photos and understand who's making them!)
If it's on a website dedicated to food (say, the online presence of a food magazine), it's more likely to have been vetted in some way, but peek at the author's credentials and, if you still have doubts, compare the recipe to similar recipes to check that it passes muster.
-Check with your local public library
"Librarians on staff can help you find what you need and should be able to explain and teach you how to find good information, too. Many libraries also offer free programs to help their communities develop information and digital literacy skills. Ask a local public librarian or visit their website and check their events calendar!"
-Use the SIFT approach
This method was developed by M. Caulfield: it’s designed for online content, and attempts to address some of the emotional and psychological factors that influence how we search for information.
It has 4 simple steps to follow when you encounter information online (with my own examples about canning added in):
STOP: Let's say you encountered a source on canning squash that you haven't encountered before. What do you do?
If you are not familiar with the source or the claim, or unsure if its trustworthy. If you are not sure, then take it with a grain of salt (and don't share it around like it's fact).
If you are getting overwhelmed during fact-checking, stop and reconsider your purpose in seeking this information and what you hope to find and learn (and maybe step away for a bit)
Investigate the Source: Rather than diving in without analyzing, learn what you can about who's writing and publishing this resource (or recording the video, or whatever else). Are they an expert in this topic? Have they written or made videos about canning before? Where are they sharing their work?
Before you read, try to find out more about the source of the information and whether it is trustworthy, has authority, or if there may be an agenda
Find Trusted Coverage: You ended up finding out that the original source you looked at suggested you can safely can squash butter, and you aren't sure if that's true [you can't!], so you look elsewhere to see if this is corroborated.
Try to find sources that are trusted that cover the topic instead
Trace Claims, Quotes, & Media to their Original Contexts: After examining the USDA Guide to Canning and So Easy to Preserve, you confirm that you cannot safely can squash butter, and have established that the original book you read is not a trustworthy source of canning information (There may not be an original source for quotes and claims when it comes to food preserving knowledge, but you can cross-reference with trustworthy resources)
Try to identify the original source to better understand the original context to see if what you found reports the same
-Remember popularity does not mean expertise
Like with any resource, think about the authority of your source (in other words, can I trust this author to make the claims they're making?): A food scientist who covers pathogenic microbes can probably be trusted to speak authoritatively about botulism, for example. And here's where it gets tricky because, in the age of everyone being Very Online, lots of folks are trying to establish authority quickly to get your attention.
Large social followings or celebrity do not correlate with someone's ability to find, evaluate, create, or share trustworthy information. In other words, rather than believing that a guy in a lab coat on YouTube is a scientist, check and see if he is.
Just because they're well-known doesn't mean they're automatically right: Be aware of their background and expertise, the sources they're sharing information from (e.g. a YouTube talking head video versus a peer-reviewed study). And, notice how they present information: Are they being objective? Do they have an agenda? What's the purpose of their work (to inform and entertain? To persuade you to buy or think something? Etc.)
-Consider potential conflicts of interest
"Especially online, many creators sell ads or have endorsements from products, services, and other sources that may promote a particular item or ideology," says Hollister.
-And finally, I encourage you to trust your own knowledge and intuition:
This is a starting point, not an endpoint when it comes to assessing information, but it's an important one. Especially if you've made similar recipes before, you already have a sense of what the process is, so if your gut feeling is that this recipe is off, listen to that.
If it seems like something seems off, even if you can't put your finger on why, it's worth taking a few minutes to investigate and learn more.
-And, I encourage to you continue building up your knowledge: Classes with Master Food Preservers, your county extension office, or other experts, and reading trusted preserving sources, are a great way to continue building up your own preserving knowledge so you can spot less-than-great recipes, or incorrect preserving information, more easily.
Here’s the bibliography of resources from Ryan Cohen and Dr. Jonathan Hollister:
Baer, A. (2018). It’s all relative? Post-truth rhetoric, relativism, and teaching on “authority as constructed and contextual.” College and Research Libraries News, 79(2): 72-97.
Battelle for Kids (2019). P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning: Frameworks & resources.https://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21/frameworks-resources
Beall’s List of Potentially Predatory Journals and Publishers
https://beallslist.net/
Caulfield, M. (2019). SIFT (The Four Moves). https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/
Connaway, L. S., Seadle, M., Julien, H., & Kasprak, A. (2017). Digital literacy in the era of fake news: Key roles for information professionals. In Proceedings of at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology, ASIS&T, Washington, D.C., October 27-November 1, 2017 (pp. 554-555).
Cooke, N. A. 2017. “Posttruth, Truthiness, and Alternative Facts: Information Behavior and Critical Information Consumption for a New Age.” Library Quarterly, 87(3): 211-221.
Cooke, N. A. 2018a. “Critical Literacy as an Approach to Combating Cultural Misinformation/Disinformation on the Internet.” In Denise Agosto (ed.),Information Literacy and Libraries in the Age of Fake News. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.
Cooke, N. A. 2018b. Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era. Chicago: American Library Association, 2018.
Craft, S., S. Ashley, & A. Maksl. (2017). News Media Literacy and Conspiracy Theory Endorsement. Communication and the Public, 2(4): 388-401.
Day, T. (2023). A preliminary investigation of fake peer-reviewed citations and references generated by ChatGPT. The Professional Geographer.https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2023.2190373
de Vries, K. (2020). You never fake alone. Creative AI in action. Information, Communication & Society, 23(14), 2110-2127. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1754877
Gran, A.-B., Booth, P., & Bucher, T. (2021) To be or not to be algorithm aware: a question of a new digital divide? Information, Communication & Society, 24(12), 1779-1796. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1736124
Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2012). What’s skill got to do with it? Information literacy skills and self-views of ability among first-year college students. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(3): 574-583.
Hollister, J. M. (2020). The problems of information, knowledge, and truth: An epistemological thought experiment with implications for information literacy in the era of post-truth. Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society, 51(4), 279-311. https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=ART002662960
Hollister, J. M., Lee, J., Elkins, A. J., & Latham, D. (2020). Potential implications and applications of Terror Management Theory for Library and Information Science. Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science, 54(4): 317-349. https://doi.org/10.4275/KSLIS.2020.54.4.317
Julien, H. (2015). Digital Literacy. In M. Khosrow-Pour, D.B.A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Third Edition (pp. 2141-2148). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-5888-2.ch207
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. 2017. Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the “Post-Truth” Era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 353-369.
Lewandowsky, S., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Countering misinformation and fake news through inoculation and prebunking. European Review of Social Psychology, 32(2), 348-384. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2021.1876983
Munger, M. C. 2008. “Blogging and Political Information: Truth of Truthiness?” Public Choice, 134, 125-138.
Murrock, E. et al. 2018. “Winning the War on State-Sponsored Propaganda: Results from an Impact Study of a Ukrainian News Media and Information Literacy Program. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 10(2): 53-85.
Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S. and Greenberg, J. 2015. Thirty years of terror management theory: From genesis to revelation. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 52, pp. 1-70). New York: Academic Press
Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). Fake news games confers psychological resistance against online misinformation. Palgrave Communications, 5, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0279-9
Rathje, S., Roozenbeek, J., Van Bavel, J.J., & van der Linden, S. (2023). Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information.Nat Hum Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01540-w
Salgado, S. 2018. “Online Media Impact on Politics. Views on Post-Truth Politics and Post-Postmodernism.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 14(3), 317-331.
Smith, L. 2013. Towards a Model of Critical Information Literacy Instruction for the Development of Political Agency. Journal of Information Literacy, 7(2), 15-32.
Tully, M., E. K. Vraga, and L. Bode. 2020. Designing and Testing News Literacy Messages for Social Media. Mass Communication and Society, 23(1), 22-46.
UNESCO. (2021). Media and information literate citizens: Think critically, click wisely! UNESCO.https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000377068?posInSet=1&queryId=N-9b0fd8c9-1bf6-44f6-9138-d5144d3737da
UNESCO. (2020) Journalism, fake news, & disinformation: Handbook for journalism education and training. UNESCO.https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000375169
More information about the CRAAP Test: https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082343
https://medlineplus.gov/healthliteracy.html
Kington RS, Arnesen S, Chou WS, Curry SJ, Lazer D, Villarruel AM. Identifying Credible Sources of Health Information in Social Media: Principles and Attributes. NAM Perspect. 2021 Jul 16;2021:10.31478/202107a. doi: 10.31478/202107a. PMID: 34611600; PMCID: PMC8486420. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8486420/
Resources for evaluating news:
The News Literacy Project (https://newslit.org/) is a nonpartisan educational nonprofit focused on promoting news literacy, which is a close relative of digital literacy, and provides a lot of useful guides and resources for everyday citizens as well as educators.
Project Information Literacy (https://projectinfolit.org/) is a nonprofit research institute that focuses on information literacy from multiple disciplines.
Bad News (https://www.getbadnews.com/) is a free, browser-based game that teaches about the dangers of fake news from the perspective of an influencer trying to build a following. This game helps players understand how and why disinformation is created and used. Roozenbeek and van der Linden (2019), who created the game, found that it was an effective inoculation against misinformation regardless of educational level, age, political orientation, or cognitive style.
Resources for evaluating health information:
The NCBI Bookshelf, a free online resource to access books and documents in life science and healthcare.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for health statistics, travelers' health guides, information on diseases, and health topics. CDC has a Spanish-language Web site.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) homepage for background and regulatory information about treatments (drugs, biologics, medical devices), food and cosmetics, and radiological health.
Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) for food and dietary guidance information for health or disease control.
US Preventive Services Task Force for recommendations from an independent group of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine.
Healthfinder.gov for consumer health information and tools.
HealthCare.gov Insurance Finder for help finding health insurance best suited to your needs.
USA.gov for links to more government health information.
National Agricultural Library: https://www.nal.usda.gov/contact-us
NRC's National Science Library (NSL): https://science-libraries.canada.ca/eng/national-science-library/
Science.gov: https://www.science.gov/
Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce (PHPartners): https://wayback.archive-it.org/7189/20210912161350/https://phpartners.org/ph_public/topic/nutrition/
Detecting AI-produced materials
How to spot AI-generated text, MIT Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065596/how-to-spot-ai-generated-text/
How to Detect Text Written by ChatGPT and Other AI Tools, PC Magazine: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-detect-chatgpt-written-text
Herbold S, Hautli-Janisz A, Heuer U, Kikteva Z, Trautsch A. A large-scale comparison of human-written versus ChatGPT-generated essays. Sci Rep. 2023 Oct 30;13(1):18617. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-45644-9. PMID: 37903836; PMCID: PMC10616290. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10616290/
AI Writing Detection: Red Flags, Montclair State University, Office for Faculty Excellence: https://www.montclair.edu/faculty-excellence/teaching-resources/clear-course-design/practical-responses-to-chat-gpt/red-flags-detecting-ai-writing/
7 Ways to Detect AI Writing Without Technology, Tech & Learning: https://www.techlearning.com/news/7-ways-to-detect-ai-writing-without-technology
