As some of you know, English is not my first language. My questions below may not be related to language differences, but to the accurateness of how something is said or written.... anyway, we have some writers here, and I'd like to have some feedback on these four questions.
Question A:
Please look at these two sentences:
#1) The only reliable source of nutrient X is product (group) Y. (What X and Y is doesn't matter here, but here's one example to make this look less like a mathematical formula: "The only reliable sources of protein are animal products").
#2) Due to the only reliable information we are aware of, we can currently only recommend product(s) Y if you need nutrient X.
To me, it definitely looks like 'reliable' in the first sentence is pointing to the nutrient source itself, and not to the lack of information or lack of trust in the information that's available.
In sentence two, 'reliable' is pointing to both the information the person has gathered, and also evaluating how reliable the information is.
Do you agree? Are there any semantic reasons that this would be different in English?
Question B: Due to the use of 'only' in "The only reliable source of nutrient X is product Y", this sentence also describes that all other products than Y does not contain a reliable source of X. Do you agree?
Question C: If someone has claimed that Y (let's say that Y = cow's milk) in some cases is not a reliable source for nutrient X (eg. calcium), doesn't #1 suggest that they know that this info is wrong? (Unless, of course, if the person who claim this haven't heard these about these claims, and therefore comes up with a statement assuming that there is no conflicting research out there)?
Question D: if someone claims that there are other reliable sources of nutrient X than Y, doesn't statement #1, due to how it's written (and also #2) claim that all this information is wrong? I think it does, because if some of this information would be right, there would be other reliable X sources than Y.
Sometimes it doesn't matter if one isn't using precise and accurate language, but in other situations - like when informing about nutrition - it's potentially very important. There are many myths about non-vegan vs. vegan nutrition, and it's easy to contribute to keeping these myths alive if the language we use is inaccurate. Please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance!
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