We recently came across another of those lists that the media is so famous for. In this case, the culprit was a Web site called Great Schools and its five foods for school children to avoid. Included in the list was microwave popcorn, hamburger, high fructose corn syrup and fruit snacks.

And in a quintessential case of which of one-of-these-is-not-like-the-other, Great Schools included canned tuna in their list. That’s right, canned tuna, a lean protein packed with omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin D, tacked on to a list of processed foods. Foods packed with sodium, cholesterol and the sort of sugar that could contribute to diabetes if you just looked at it wrong.

As we’ve pointed out at other times, you could cut these other foods out of your diet and suffer no ill effects. But if you cut canned tuna out of your diet, well, you’re going to be hard pressed finding an affordable lean protein packed with Omega 3s that you can serve to your kids on a regular basis.

The folks behind Great Schools make a very poor case for why tuna belongs on that list. In fact, much of the research they used to back it up has been marginalized and appears to have come from Google searches not interviews with Doctors, dietitians and researchers.

They referenced a February 2008 New York Times story on sushi that was thoroughly debunked by NFI and attacked by numerous third party critics. The newspaper’s Public Editor admitted that the piece wasn’t terribly well balanced and delivered a rare rebuke to his paper’s own reporting.

The piece mentioned Michael Hawthorne at the Chicago Tribune and his “Mercury Menace” story, while ignoring sources that clearly disputed his findings.

Finally, it references reporter Sue Kwon from KPIX in San Francisco.But conveniently ignores the extensive work NFI has done presenting facts that undermined her reports. Lets keep in mind that in the past Kwon has shown to be less than impartial on this issue, for instance dolling out advice on how activists can organizing against the fishing industry.

Great Schools failed to perform even basic research on this topic before committing pen to paper — or pixels to the screen in this case. In fact, if a typical American high school student tried to hand in this article for a grade, they would have received an “F” for failing to research the subject adequately. You see, in the schools we attended, our teachers taught us that if you were going to present a piece of evidence in a research paper, you were required to also present sources that had a different point of view. You could disagree with those sources, but you were still required to present them and say why you thought they were incorrect.

Taken together, it’s could be concluded that the crowd at Great Schools are more concerned with teaching our children what to think instead of how to think. When you read any other advice they parcel out, please keep that in mind.