There is a huge interest in nutrition, herbal remedies and alternative therapies in Singapore. Supermarkets and specialist stores are bursting with a wide range of supplements that claims to maintain health, promote virility and increase well-being. Even The Straits Times carries multiple advertisements for weight loss programmes, some endorsed by 'world class scientists', 'leading doctors' and celebrities.

How does the consumer make sense of all this? Our General Education Module, GEK1525 "Do you believe what advertisers say? Evaluating Claims Related to Health", aims to help students do this and develop an enquiring and critical mind at the same time. The module is largely taken by students from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Demand is high but we limit the class size to 100, otherwise the interactive sessions will be impossible to organise. The first session introduces the course, teachers and finds out about students' backgrounds. We ask them to complete a questionnaire to assess how well they understand terms like 'cell', 'evolution', 'amino acid' and so on. We also reveal in this first session how published advertising can be totally misleading; the illustrative cases are updated every year. Last year (Semester 2, AY 2005/2006), we included the case of the 'Famous Chinese Scientist' who had never published a single paper in a decent journal, the diet that allegedly caused an impossible weight loss and the endorsement of a skin care product by the 'Head of Dermatology' at a famous European Research Institute who turned out not to be even on its staff. More importantly, we demonstrate to students how to use databases such as PubMed and Quackwatch to check the credentials of 'experts' for themselves.

A student studying novel nutrients

A senior scientist examining effects of anti-oxidants on lifespan

The next few sessions are a little more didactic (although often a lively debate begins!), introducing students to the human diet-what we need and what we eat (often not the same, sadly). Students examine the relations among diet, disease and age in relation to the Singapore populace. We reveal how the human body handles food, why we gain or lose weight and what goes wrong in common diseases like diabetes. The human requirement for vitamins and minerals is also discussed in relation to the available data (actually pretty poor as most official 'recommended allowances' are based on educated estimates from an inadequate database) and the commercial 'push' to take supplements. Students are tested for their basic core knowledge in a closed-book mid-semester examination based on short answer questions and data interpretation.

The rest of the course is almost entirely interactive; students are divided into groups with each researching a topic and presenting it to the whole class. The groups grade one another on their efforts and this grade contributes to the course assessment, in addition to the grading by the academic staff. For example, in a session on obesity, each group researches a particular diet while in a session on supplements, each group picks a particular health claim to present (and usually demolish). The final part of the course assessment is an individual student project researching a health claim which ranges from herbal penis extensions to coffee enemas. Plagiarism, especially from the Internet, has been a problem and students are warned at the start of the course and several times during it.

The final examination (35% of total marks) is open-book and asks students to evaluate and comment on several previously unseen problems, advertisements and/or scenarios. We look for a critical and analytical approach, not a 'correct' answer (indeed, there often isn't one).

Feedback on the course is good; many feel that it is demanding but achieves its objectives. Every year, some students achieve a breathtakingly analytical approach to a complex problem in the final exam. An example would be one student's classic mathematical approach to Biology. He explained why the T-Rexes who escaped from their enclosures in the movie Jurassic Park did not die from deficiency disease even though they were genetically engineered to be unable to produce an essential amino acid on their own without the help of the Park including it in their diets. It was a wonderful calculation of the number of humans of a certain body mass that had to be eaten per day.

One problem has arisen: some students may choose to only obtain a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grade for this module (so that their grades will not affect their overall CAP) and sometimes final-year students bid highly for the module to 'clear their GEMs' and have no real interest in it. Their participation in the group efforts tends to be substandard, which is why we now include an assessment of this in the evaluation. Another solution is to block the S/US option. Despite this, most students put in much more effort then required, enjoy the module and sharpen their knowledge of life and disease processes and their critical thinking skills. That's why we enjoy teaching it!